How to play · ルール
Shogi in ten minutes.
Shogi is Japanese chess: two players, a 9 by 9 board, and one goal, to trap the other king. If you know chess you already know half of it. The other half is one rule, drops, and it is the reason a shogi game never runs out of pieces or ideas.
The board and the pieces
The board has 81 squares, all one colour. Each side has twenty pieces: a king, a rook, a bishop, two golds, two silvers, two knights, two lances and nine pawns. They are all the same wood; a piece belongs to whoever it points at the enemy for. Files are numbered 1 to 9 from your right, ranks lettered a to i from the far side, so the square in front of your king is 5h.
The player who moves first is sente (先手), the other gote (後手). Every piece and every move it can make is on the pieces page; the short version is that most pieces step one square and a few slide.
A turn
On your turn you do one of two things: move a piece on the board, or drop a piece from your hand onto an empty square. Then it is the other side's turn. There is no passing.
Capturing
You capture by moving onto a piece, as in chess, and the pawn captures the same way it moves, straight ahead. What is different is what happens next: the captured piece is not gone. It comes off the board and into your hand, and from now on it is yours.
Drops
Instead of moving, you may place a piece from your hand on any empty square. It arrives unpromoted and pointing your way, and it can give check like any other piece. A few squares are off limits: a pawn or lance may not land on the last rank, a knight not on the last two, a second unpromoted pawn may not join a file you already have one on, and a pawn may not be dropped to give checkmate. The drops page shows each with a diagram.
Promotion
The three ranks farthest from you are the promotion zone. When a move starts, ends or passes inside it, you may turn the piece over: it becomes its promoted self, written in red. Six kinds promote, the king and the gold do not. A pawn, lance or knight that would have no move left must promote; the rest choose. The promotion page has the six faces and the cases.
Check and checkmate
When a king is attacked it is in check, ōte (王手). You must get out of it at once: move the king, capture the attacker, or block the line, and a drop counts as a block. You may never make a move that leaves your own king in check.
Checkmate, tsumi (詰み), is check with no answer, and it ends the game. In shogi that is where most games are headed: with pieces returning to the board there is no grinding down to a bare king, so attacks on the king decide things.
How a game ends
- Checkmate. The king cannot escape.
- Resignation. The most common end between experienced players: when the mate is clear, you say makemashita (負けました), "I have lost", and the game is over. In the app that is the Resign button.
- Time. A player whose clock runs out loses. Time controls explains the two speeds.
- No legal move. A player with nothing legal to play loses. There is no stalemate draw in shogi.
- Repetition. Four occurrences of the same board, both hands, and side to move are sennichite (千日手). JSA games are replayed with sides exchanged; online services may record a draw. A player who checks on every move throughout the repeating sequence loses.
- Impasse. Entering kings can lead to a point count: rook and bishop 5 each, other pieces 1, kings 0. Agreement and declaration rules differ by event or service. Entering the camp or falling below a threshold does not automatically make a draw.
Things you may not do
Move into or stay in check. Drop a second unpromoted pawn onto a file (nifu, 二歩). Checkmate by dropping a pawn (uchifuzume, 打ち歩詰め). Drop a piece where it could never move. In the app these moves simply are not offered; over a real board any one of them loses the game on the spot. Perpetual check is different: the app lets you play it, and the side giving every check loses when the position comes round for the fourth time.
Manners, in one line. Games begin with yoroshiku onegaishimasu (よろしくお願いします), roughly "let us have a good game", and end with the loser's makemashita. Then, traditionally, both players go back over the game together: the kansōsen (感想戦). The app keeps the board open after every online game for exactly that.
Where to start
- Learn the eight pieces and what they turn into. Ten minutes with the pieces page is enough.
- Play the bot at its lowest level and lose a few games. Undo is there. Use it.
- Before you attack, tuck the king into a castle. Three king steps, a silver, a gold: the Mino takes five moves and is where everyone begins.
- Solve one tsume a day. Checkmating patterns are most of what a beginner needs to see.
Play your first game.
The app has ten lessons that start here, a bot with twelve levels, undo and hints while you learn, and the day’s tsume. Free on Google Play and the App Store.