Double Wing Attack.

Static rook · no castle, the kings stay near the centre · 相掛かり aigakari

The idea

The one opening here whose second move decides whether it happens at all: push your rook’s pawn, and if the reply is the same move on the other wing you are in the Double Wing. If they push the third-file pawn instead, the game is something else entirely.

Both pawns run up the board, both golds come up to guard the bishops’ heads, then the pawns are exchanged and the rooks are suddenly the most active pieces on the board with both kings still at home. Little of this is memorised for long, because the position is open by move ten and what is left is calculation. Chess players tend to feel at home immediately.

How it goes together

Both sides’ moves are shown, because this opening is an agreement rather than a system: one player cannot reach it alone, so a one-sided list of moves would be a fiction.

The plan once you are set up

• Decide where the rook goes when it is kicked, and decide it before you push the pawn. 2f keeps it active, 2h keeps it safe, and the two lead to different games.
• Keep the bishop’s head defended. With no castle and an open file, that square is most of the defence.
• Get the king out of the centre whenever there is a spare move, even by one square. A loose formation is normal here; a king on 5i with three files open is not.
• Watch the pawn count. A pawn in hand is a real weapon in an open position, and both sides usually finish with one.

What to watch for

• Their rook, on the file yours just opened. Whatever you can do down a file, so can they.
• The bishops. They are still on the board, both diagonals are half open, and a bishop exchange in a position with no castles is rarely neutral.
• Move order. Almost every accident in this opening is a pawn exchange played one move before the piece that had to support it.

What it is played against

Another static rook, by agreement: the opening only exists if both players push the rook’s pawn. It is the sharpest opening a beginner can reasonably try, because there is very little to remember and a great deal to work out.

The Double Wing lines, and the Kusarigama Silver

The lines that grow out of this opening have pages of their own: Nakahara’s Rushing Silver and the Tsukada Special from the floating rook on 2f, the Twisting Rook, which floats the rook and then swings it across into an Ishida, and the UFO Silver, with the rook pulled back to 2h. The Side Pawn Capture starts the same way with both bishops’ diagonals open. One more line has no move order from move one in any source.

Kusarigama Silver (鎖鎌銀)

When one side in a Double Wing game heads for a Reclining Silver, the other can send its silver toward its own third file instead of the fifth: White’s silver to 7d, or Black’s to 3f. From there it aims at the opponent’s bishop head through 8e or 2e, or crosses toward the centre.

The name compares the rook and the silver to a kusarigama, a sickle on a chain: ja.wikipedia makes the rook on 8b the chain and the silver on 7d the weight. Katō Jirō named it, and Masuda Kōzō played the first known game, against Tsukada Masao, in 1956.

Against White’s version the classical answer is to race, both silvers heading for the other’s bishop: Black’s to 4e, White’s to 6e. The sources disagree on whose line it is: ja.wikipedia’s own article and Shogi Wars make it White’s, while ja.wikipedia’s Double Wing article and en.wikipedia, which also calls it the Reckless Silver, describe Black’s silver to 3f.

No source gives the classical order from move one, so the boards come from a modern game by Miyata Atsushi, as one amateur blog gives it from the start. There the silver comes by 8c rather than 6c, and the blog notes that this form also goes by other names, the UFO Silver among them.