Kyu, dan, and what a grade means.

Amateur grades

Kyu (級) grades run from about 15 kyu, someone who has just learned the moves, down to 1 kyu, one step below dan. The lower the number the stronger the player: 5 kyu beats 8 kyu. Dan (段) grades then run upward from 1 dan (初段, shodan), which is the traditional mark of a serious player, to 6 dan for the strongest amateurs; 7 and 8 dan are honorary. A club will call you shodan when you can beat most of its members; in a national online population perhaps one player in eight reaches it.

Grade	Roughly
15 to 10 kyu	Knows the rules, loses pieces to forks, castles sometimes.
9 to 6 kyu	Castles every game, knows one opening, mates in one when it is there.
5 to 3 kyu	Knows the standard shapes on both sides of the board, sees mates in three, plays a plan.
2 kyu to 1 kyu	Reads several moves ahead, knows the joseki of two or three openings, converts won endgames.
1 dan to 3 dan	A strong club player. Rarely loses to a tactic; loses to better plans.
4 dan to 6 dan	Tournament strength. Regional champions and the best of the online population.

Grades are awarded three ways. The Japan Shogi Association issues certificates, traditionally on a teacher’s recommendation or through its magazine’s grading problems. Clubs and dojos assign grades by results against their own members. And online, each service maps its rating onto the same words, so that a player’s “2 dan” on one app and “1 kyu” on another can be the same person.

Professional grades

The professionals, kishi (棋士), have a separate ladder. A player becomes a professional at 4 dan, after winning through the apprentice league (奨励会, shōreikai) usually in their teens, and rises to 9 dan by promotion points and title wins. Even a new professional 4 dan is usually stronger than the best amateurs, but not by a handicap’s worth: top amateurs play professionals on even terms in events such as the Asahi Cup, and sometimes win. The women’s professional organisation has its own grades, from 3 kyu upward. The two scales share words and nothing else.

Rating and rank

A rank is a label; a rating is a number that moves after every game, up when you beat a stronger player, down when you lose to a weaker one. Online shogi runs on ratings, and every service draws its own lines through the number to hand out ranks. The best-known systems each do it differently: one counts achievements and wins, one uses a rating with fixed dan thresholds, one shows the number alone. So compare grades across services with a little care, and compare ratings not at all.

In Shogi Castle

• Two ratings. Blitz and Standard are different games to a player, so each has its own number and its own rank. A quick game does not move your slow rating.
• Five placement games per speed before a rank is shown. Until then the profile says how many are left.
• Kyu and dan labels on our own scale. The thresholds are provisional: nothing has been tuned against real players yet, and they will move as the ladder fills. A new account starts in the middle of the kyu grades, where someone who knows the rules belongs, and the labels are meant to end up matching what a club would call you.
• Bots count for less. When nobody is waiting and a bot fills the seat in a ranked game, that game still moves your rating, but by less, and it can never carry you into the dan ranks. Practice games against the bot are kept but move nothing.
• Puzzle rating is separate again: an Elo-style number that moves with every real-game puzzle you attempt, starting at 1000. It follows your account, and it says nothing about your game rating except that the two tend to move together.