Japanese Culture
The complete rules of Shogi: the 9x9 board, all eight pieces and their moves, promotion, the drop rule that puts captured pieces back on the board, and a first opening.
Shogi descends, like Western chess and Chinese xiangqi, from the Indian game chaturanga, with textual references placing some form of it in Japan by at least the twelfth century. Its defining innovation crystallised later: the drop rule. A captured piece switches sides rather than leaving the game, and can be placed back on the board by its new owner. The modern game coalesced in the twentieth century around the Japan Shogi Association, whose title matches draw serious newspaper and television coverage; in the 2010s the engine Ponanza's defeat of a sitting title-holder gave Shogi its own AlphaGo moment.
If you know chess, you already know eighty percent of Shogi. The remaining twenty percent is what makes it feel like a different game.
A Shogi set is a 9x9 board (shogiban) and 40 wedge-shaped pieces, 20 per player. Pieces are not distinguished by colour but by which direction their point faces, because pieces change ownership through capture and drops. Each piece bears its name in kanji on the front; most have a second name on the back, revealed when the piece is flipped to promote.
Each player sets up three rows. The back rank, from the edge inward, holds lance, knight, silver general, gold general, king, gold, silver, knight, lance. The second rank holds only two pieces: the bishop on the left (from the owner's view, second file) and the rook on the right (eighth file). The third rank is nine pawns. The player who moves first is called sente, the second player gote; sente traditionally uses the black-tipped pieces in diagrams.
Shogi has eight piece types. Several of them promote into a more powerful piece upon reaching the opponent's home territory.
The three ranks farthest from you form your promotion zone. When a piece moves into, within or out of the zone, you may flip it over to its promoted side. Promotion is optional except when the piece would otherwise have no legal move: a pawn or lance on the last rank, or a knight on the last two ranks, must promote. A promoted piece stays promoted until it is captured, at which point it returns to the capturing player's hand unpromoted.
This is the heart of Shogi. Pieces you capture go "in hand" and are placed beside the board facing your opponent. On any later turn, instead of moving a piece on the board, you may drop a piece from your hand onto any empty square, unpromoted, where it is immediately yours. Three restrictions apply:
The consequence is that material never leaves the game. A piece traded off in chess is gone; a piece traded off in Shogi becomes ammunition for whoever captured it. Attacks can be renewed from hand, defence has to account for drops on any empty square, and dead draws are almost unknown.
In chess you spend pieces. In Shogi you recycle them. That one change reshapes every plan.
As in chess, a king under attack is in check and must escape on the next move by moving, blocking (including by drop) or capturing the attacker. A king that cannot escape is checkmated and the game is over. Perpetual check is illegal for the checking side: after the same position repeats four times with checks, the player giving check loses. Resignation is the normal end of a game between experienced players; a player resigns by saying makemashita and bowing.
Beginners can play the static rook (ibisha) style: leave the rook on its starting file, push the pawn in front of the bishop one square to open the diagonal, then build a castle for the king on the opposite side from the rook. The simplest castle is the yagura: king on the second file, protected by two golds and a silver in a compact wall. With the king safe, advance the rook pawn and use the rook, bishop and a silver together on the opponent's weak side.
Whatever you play, follow the proverb "castle first, attack second." Because drops can arrive anywhere, an uncastled king is far more exposed in Shogi than in chess.
Reading drops and threats is pure working memory. MyRin trains it with 30 games, ten of them free in your browser.
Play free in the browserPieces are placed with a click, the king first when setting up. Promotions are made by flipping the piece in a single motion. Players bow before and after the game, and the loser announces the resignation aloud. In tournament play, the game record is kept in a notation that reads file then rank (for example 7g-7f for the classic first move, pushing the pawn on the seventh file).
Play a handful of games with the drop rule before you study openings; the rule is easy to state and hard to feel until you have lost a game to a dropped knight fork. Then read the Shogi chapter in The Mind Games of Japan, the free ebook in MyRin, which includes the board diagram, the complete piece table and a worked opening. For the game Shogi is most often compared with, see How to play Go, and for the tile game that rounds out the classic trio, Riichi Mahjong rules for beginners.
The drop rule. In Shogi a captured piece switches sides and can later be placed back on the board, on almost any empty square, as a move. Material never leaves the game, so there are no dead draws and attacks can be renewed from your hand.
Twenty: one king, one rook, one bishop, two gold generals, two silver generals, two knights, two lances and nine pawns. Both players use identical wedge-shaped pieces distinguished only by which way they point.
The three ranks farthest from you are your promotion zone. A piece that moves into, within or out of that zone may be flipped over to its promoted side. Pawns, lances, knights and silvers promote to gold-general movement; the rook and bishop keep their moves and gain the king step; the king and gold do not promote.
No. Dropping a pawn to deliver immediate checkmate is illegal (uchifuzume). You also may not drop a pawn on a file where you already have an unpromoted pawn, or drop any piece where it could never move again.