Four-piece handicap (yonmai-ochi)

What changes

The rules are unchanged from the even game in every respect: the hand and drops, the three drop restrictions, promotion in the far three ranks, the loss for a player with no legal move, sennichite on the fourth repetition with the perpetual-checker losing, and the twenty-four point impasse count.

Four of gote’s men are removed before play: the rook on 8b, the bishop on 2b, and the lances on 9a and 1a. Gote moves first, because uwate — the stronger player, giving the odds — is seated as gote here, and shitate as sente with a full army.

Playing shitate

With both lances gone, the two edge files are the weak points, and either will do. Choose one — usually the one furthest from wherever uwate puts his king — push the edge pawn, trade it off, and pour the rook, a silver and one of your own lances down the file. A lance behind a pawn on an open edge file, against a corner with no lance to answer it, is a very direct attack and it does not need much finesse.

Still castle first. It costs six or seven moves and it removes uwate’s only genuine winning method, which is a counter-attack against a king that never left the middle. And keep the rook out of trouble: uwate has generals, and generals catch rooks.

Playing uwate

You have four generals, two knights and nine pawns, and no man who can move more than one square except the knights, who cannot come back. Every plan you have has to be built from short steps, so start building on move one — which you have.

Put the king somewhere off the centre but not in a corner, since the corners are exactly where you have no lance. A shape with the king a file or two in from the edge, with two golds and a silver around him, is the practical choice. Then hold. Take everything shitate offers, keep a pawn in hand for the file he opens, and remember that any piece you capture is a piece you may drop — a single silver in your hand, dropped behind an over-extended attack, can turn the whole game.

Sources

Everything on this page is written from scratch. These are the works it leans on, and what each one settles.

• Nihon Shogi Renmei (Japan Shogi Association) handicap ladder

  Sets the four-piece handicap as uwate’s rook, bishop and both lances, and places it between two-piece and six-piece odds with uwate to move first.