Ureshino.

Static rook, often filed as a surprise opening · no castle (the king steps once, to 6i) · 嬉野流 ureshino-ryū

The idea

The Ureshino starts with a silver move instead of a pawn. Once White opens the bishop’s diagonal, the pawn to 7f would lose Black’s bishop on 8h, because the silver no longer guards it, so the bishop goes back to 7i, and after the pawn to 5f it looks down the diagonal toward 2d. Then the left silver, which most openings keep at home to defend, climbs 6h, 5g, 4f, 3e.

This is the 斜め棒銀, the Diagonal Climbing Silver, with rook, bishop and silver all aimed at the same corner of White’s camp. Black barely castles. The king steps once to 6i or stays on 5i, and the attack has to arrive before the other king is safe. Against a static rook that trades rook pawns, Black drops the pawn back on 8h instead of 8g.

Japanese sources call it the 土下座の歩, roughly the kneeling pawn: with a pawn on 8g, White’s climbing silver can break in by pushing a pawn to 8f and taking back with the silver, while with the pawn on 8h the gold on 7h and the pawn both cover 8g.

The amateur Ureshino Hiroaki created the opening; Amano Takayuki’s 2015 book made it widely known, a professional first played it in 2017, and Ureshino won the 2023 Masuda Kōzō Award for it, the second amateur to do so.

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

• Silver to 6h, and after White opens the bishop, the bishop to 7i. Do not push the pawn to 7f: with the silver gone from 7i, White takes on 8h and wins the bishop.
• When White pushes the rook’s pawn, bring the gold to 7h and the right silver to 4h. If White exchanges pawns on the eighth file, drop the pawn on 8h.
• Push the rook’s pawn to 2e, then the pawn to 5f to open the bishop. The left silver goes to 5g and 4f, and the king steps once to 6i.
• Break with the pawn to 3e. After the exchange and White’s pawn dropped on 3d, leave the silver where it is and push to 2d. The aim is to trade your silver for White’s on 2d.
• Once the silvers are off, the rook can take the side pawn on 3d. How well you use the silver in hand decides the game from there.

What to watch for

• The bishop to 4d. The strongest known answer offers a rook trade with the bishop on 4d. The bots on Shogi Wars started it, and the original move order struggles against it. The New Ureshino order (新嬉野流), silver 6h, pawn 5f, silver 5g, puts the silver on 5g first to meet it.
• A Climbing Silver on your eighth file. Meet White’s silver rank for rank: when it reaches its fourth rank yours goes to 6f, when it reaches the fifth yours goes to 6e, and later yours drops back to 7f to hold 8g. A silver that comes before any pawn exchange needs a different answer, which starts with the pawn to 6f.
• Your own king. On 5i it stands on the diagonal through 4h, which opens as soon as that silver moves. That is why the line steps it to 6i.

What it is played against

A static rook opponent usually pushes the rook’s pawn and aims a Climbing Silver at your thin eighth file, and both books on the opening give that attack its own section. The answer rated highest is the bishop to 4d, offering the rook trade.

Against a ranging rook you keep the king on 5i and attack with the same diagonal silver; against a Fourth File Rook that becomes the old 鳥刺し (bird-catcher) attack.

A review of Amano’s book reports that a Third File Rook is the hard case, where the king has to castle first. Ureshino himself often answers a ranging rook by swinging his own rook, to the centre or the eighth file.