Masuda’s Ishida.

Ranging rook, a Third File Rook · castles into Half Mino · 升田式石田流 Masuda-shiki Ishida-ryū

The idea

Masuda’s Ishida is the open-diagonal form of the Ishida. Black pushes the seventh-file pawn twice, to 7f and 7e, swings the rook to 7h and moves the king to 4h, leaving the rook file to fend for itself. Those seven moves are the Quick Ishida’s. If White exchanges rook pawns at once, Black has the bishop trade and a bishop dropped on 7g, forking rook and silver.

If White plays the silver to 6b instead, Black does not push 7d, because the gold to 7b holds that attack. The king goes on into a Mino and the rook lifts to 7f, from where it threatens to swing to 3f and take the pawn on 3d. White usually answers by trading bishops.

Black takes back with the silver and puts the left gold on 7h: after a bishop trade the lower left of Black’s camp is thin, and the gold there covers the squares a dropped bishop would use.

Masuda Kōzō built this out of what was then thought of as a trap and played it as Black in game 2 of the 1971 Meijin match against Ōyama Yasuharu; he won that game, and five of the match’s seven games were played with it. Amateurs took it up widely. Professionals played it less after Ōyama found solid defences in that match, and it came back in the 2000s.

Sources do not agree on where the name stops: some call the immediate 7d attack Masuda’s too.

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

• Push the pawn to 7e only after White has opened the bishop with 3d. Swing the rook to 7h, then move the king to 4h before you do anything else.
• Against the silver to 6b, keep castling: king to 3h, then lift the rook to 7f.
• Leave the 6g pawn where it is and let White decide about the bishop trade. Trading yourself costs a move. If White never trades, close the diagonal with 6f and build the full Ishida.
• After the trade, take back with the silver, finish the castle (king 2h, silver 3h) and bring the left gold to 7h.
• Then choose: the silver to 7g, aiming at a counter on the eighth file or at the centre by 6f and 5e, or the knight to 7g, aiming at the knight jump to 8e with the bishop dropped on 9f.

What to watch for

• An early 7d. After the king to 4h and White’s silver to 6b, it is the Quick Ishida attack, and the gold to 7b, with gold and silver both covering 7c, stops it.
• White’s silver heading for 3c. That is the answer to the rook swinging to 3f, so plan on something else once it arrives.
• Bishop drops into your left side after the trade. The gold on 7h is there for that; do not move it away lightly.
• A patient defender. Ōyama’s answers in games 6 and 7 of the 1971 match showed that a solid defence is hard to break through.

What it is played against

A static rook that opens its bishop with 3d and pushes its rook pawn to 8e. The usual reply in the sources is to trade bishops on 8h and prepare a silver on 3c against the rook swing. A White that will not trade lets Black switch to the full Ishida.

As White it is harder: the sources say a move’s difference makes the direct route risky, and players reach it by detours, such as swinging the rook to the fourth file first.