Promotion in Shogi: The Zone, the Choice, and the Six Promoted Pieces

Turn the piece over.

Six of the eight kinds of piece have a second face on their back. Reach the far side of the board and you may turn the piece over: a pawn becomes a gold in all but name, a bishop and a rook grow into the two strongest pieces in the game.

The zone

The three ranks farthest from you are the promotion zone, or enemy camp (敵陣). A pawn needs four advances from its starting square to enter it: for example, 7g–7f–7e–7d–7c.

Your zone is the far three ranks, tinted here. The opponent’s zone is your own first three ranks.

A piece may promote at the end of any move that starts in the zone, ends in the zone, or both. Entering, leaving, or moving within it all count. Promotion happens as part of the move, at no extra cost, and a dropped piece cannot promote on the move it is dropped.

Choice, and no choice

Promotion is normally optional. You choose at the end of the move, and the app asks. Two things to know:

You must promote a pawn or a lance that reaches the last rank, and a knight that reaches the last two ranks. Unpromoted, they would have no move left, and a piece is never allowed to stand where it can never move.
You may decline in every other case. A silver loses its backward diagonals when promoted, a knight loses its jump, and a lance loses its long forward move. Rooks and bishops keep their existing moves and gain new ones, so promotion is usually best, but still optional.

Must. A pawn stepping onto the last rank has to become a tokin; as a pawn it could never move again.

Must. Either jump lands on the last rank, where an unpromoted knight would be stuck for good.

May. The silver moving to 5b can become a promoted silver, or stay as it is and keep its diagonal retreat.

The six faces

Promoted pieces are written in red, and four of the six move exactly like a gold. So the gold's shape, one step everywhere except diagonally back, is the shape to learn first; you will meet it far more often than the two golds you start with.

Piece	Becomes	Moves	Note
→	Tokin と金	moves as a gold	The most common promotion in the game. Must promote on the last rank.
→	Promoted lance 成香 narikyō	moves as a gold	Must promote on the last rank.
→	Promoted knight 成桂 narikei	moves as a gold	Must promote on the last two ranks.
→	Promoted silver 成銀 narigin	moves as a gold	Often declined: the silver’s diagonal retreat is worth keeping.
→	Horse 龍馬 ryūme, “uma”	moves as a bishop plus one step straight	Almost always promote.
→	Dragon 龍王 ryūō	moves as a rook plus one step diagonally	Almost always promote.

The king and the gold do not promote.

Staying promoted

A promoted piece stays promoted until it is captured, wherever it goes afterwards; it does not turn back when it leaves the zone. When it is captured, it goes into the captor's hand as its plain self, and comes back onto the board unpromoted. That is the famous bargain of the tokin: it fights like a gold, and if you lose it the opponent gains only a pawn.

In notation

A promotion is written with a plus sign in Western and machine notation (P-2c+, or 2d2c+) and with 成 (nari) in Japanese; declining it is 不成 (narazu). More on reading moves.