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Learning shogi

You can learn the moves of shogi in ten minutes. Learning what to do with them takes longer, because the drop rule quietly reverses several habits brought over from western chess.

Updated

A first opening, move by move

Here is an ordinary opening. Sente swings his rook away from his king, walks the king into a small castle on the other side, and only then thinks about attacking. Gote answers with the other main plan: he leaves his rook at home and pushes on the file in front of it.

Sente: ranging rook and a Mino castle. Gote: static rook.
  1. P-7fSente pushes the pawn in front of his bishop from 7g to 7f, opening the bishop’s diagonal. Almost every game starts with this move or with a push on the second file.
  2. P-3dGote does the same on his own side, opening his bishop. The two bishops now look at each other down a long diagonal, and both players have to keep an eye on the exchange.
  3. P-6fSente advances the sixth-file pawn. Quiet, but it is preparation: the rook is coming to this file, and a rook wants its own pawn pushed ahead of it so the file can be opened later by force.
  4. P-8dGote pushes the pawn in front of his own rook. This is the static rook plan — leave the rook at home and attack straight down the file it already occupies.
  5. R-6hThe ranging rook. Sente slides his rook across from 2h to 6h. He has given up any thought of attacking on the right, and in exchange he now has the whole right-hand side of the board free to hide his king in.
  6. P-8eGote pushes again. He is threatening to push once more, trade pawns, and bring his rook down the file with a threat against the bishop on 8h.
  7. B-7gSente steps the bishop off the eighth file. Now when gote trades pawns there, the rook that arrives hits nothing, and sente will have a pawn in hand to drop on 8g and shut the file again.
  8. S-6bGote develops a silver towards the centre. It supports the coming fight and it will help shelter his king.
  9. K-4hSente starts walking his king to the right — away from his own rook. This is the whole logic of the ranging rook: attack on one wing, live on the other.
  10. K-4bGote starts his own king walk, in his case towards his right and away from his attacking file.
  11. K-3hAnother step. Kings in shogi travel; a king left on its starting square is a king waiting to be mated.
  12. S-3bGote brings a silver across to sit beside where his king is going.
  13. K-2hThe king reaches his home. He now has a lance on 1i, a knight on 2i and a silver on 3i standing under him.
  14. G-3hThe right gold steps up from 4i to 3h, beside the king. That is the Mino castle finished — king on 2h, gold on 3h, silver on 3i — and it took four moves. Sente can now think about pushing P-6e and opening the file his rook is sitting on.

Opening principles

Shogi openings are not memorised move orders so much as a small set of jobs to be done in a sensible order. These are the ones worth knowing on day one.

  • Build the castle before you attack. Almost every opening spends its first ten to fifteen moves putting the king in a corner behind two or three generals. This is not timidity; it is arithmetic. Your opponent will eventually have men in hand, and a king in the open against a hand of pieces is dead. Attacking first and castling later is the single most reliable way to lose.
  • Attack away from your own king. If your rook is on the right, castle on the left, and the other way round. The rook’s file is where the position will be broken open, and you do not want to be standing there.
  • Get your rook’s own pawn moving. A rook does nothing behind its own pawn wall. Pushing the pawn in front of the rook, trading it off and opening the file is the standard way to make the rook count.
  • Value a pawn in hand far above a pawn on the board. A pawn on the board moves one square a turn. A pawn in hand can appear anywhere on the board this turn: in front of a charging rook, on the head of a defending gold, or on a square where it will promote in two moves. Trading pawns early to get one into hand is a real gain, not an even swap.
  • Do not trade into your opponent’s hand for nothing. In western chess an even exchange is a way of simplifying towards safety. Here it hands your opponent a live piece to drop wherever he likes. Trade when the piece you get is worth more than the piece he gets, or when the trade opens something specific — not to tidy up.
  • Generals defend, big men attack. Golds and silvers are the material a castle is made of, and they are dreadful at attacking on their own because they are so slow. The rook and the bishop are the men who break a position open. A common shape is two or three generals around the king and a rook, a bishop, a silver and a knight working together on the far side.
  • Watch the promotion zone in both directions. A rook that reaches the enemy back ranks and turns into a dragon is worth more than most attacks; a rook of yours that gets trapped there is a disaster, because your opponent will drop it back at your king.

Mistakes everyone makes at the start

  • Leaving the king in the centre. The king starts on the middle file, which is the worst square on the board for him. Move him, and put two generals next to him, before you start anything.
  • Giving away a gold. A gold in the opponent’s hand is the piece you least want him to have: it is the best attacking man against a castle and the best defender of a mating net. Losing a gold for a knight or a lance is a bad trade even though the count of men is even.
  • Dropping pawns carelessly. A pawn dropped for no reason is a pawn gone from your hand and a free tempo for the other side. Pawns in hand are the currency of the game; spend them on something.
  • Forgetting nifu. Before you drop a pawn, look up the file for one of your own unpromoted pawns. Under tournament rules this is not merely a mistake to be taken back — it is an illegal move and it loses the game. A tokin on the file does not count, so a file whose pawn has promoted is open to you again.
  • Forgetting that the knight cannot retreat. A shogi knight has two squares, both forward, and no way home. Jumping one out to attack something and then finding it has nothing to do and cannot come back is the classic beginner’s wasted piece.
  • Exchanging pieces that arm the opponent. Trading rooks or bishops when your king is the less well protected one is usually just handing him a big man to drop behind your castle. Ask what he will do with the piece before you offer the trade.
  • Chasing material instead of the king. Because captured men come back, being a piece ahead means very little if your opponent has an attack. The count of material matters far less here than the count of moves to mate.
  • Promoting on reflex. A silver that promotes becomes a gold and loses its diagonal retreat; a knight that promotes stops jumping. Promotion is optional for a reason — look before you turn the piece over.

Reading and writing moves

Two notations matter. Western shogi notation is what English-language books, this site’s move lists and most online play use. KIF is the Japanese file format that game records are actually stored and swapped in.

P-7f
Western notation. A letter for the man, a hyphen for a quiet move, then the destination square: file number first, rank letter second. So this is a pawn moving to 7f. The letters are P pawn, L lance, N knight, S silver, G gold, B bishop, R rook, K king, and the promoted men are +P, +L, +N, +S, +B (horse) and +R (dragon).
Bx2b+
The x means a capture, so the bishop takes whatever stood on 2b. The trailing + means the moving man promoted as part of that move.
S-3d=
The = means promotion was available and declined. Writing it is optional in casual notation but useful, because it tells the reader the choice was noticed rather than missed.
P*5e
The asterisk means a drop. This is a pawn taken from hand and placed on the empty square 5e. Drops never carry a + — a man always arrives from the hand unpromoted.
Disambiguation
When two men of the same kind could legally reach the square, the starting square is added in brackets after the destination, as in G-5h(4i). Some writers instead use direction words. This site writes the starting square, which is never ambiguous.
KIF
The standard Japanese game-record format: a plain text file with a header of key-value lines — the players’ names, the date, the handicap, the time control — followed by a numbered move list. Moves are written in Japanese: the destination as a full-width file number and a kanji rank numeral, then the piece character. A move that recaptures on the square just used is written with the character for "same" instead of repeating the coordinates.
KIF move examples
A first move of pawn to 7f is written 1 ７六歩(77) — the destination, the piece, and the origin square in brackets. A drop appends 打, as in ５五歩打 for a pawn dropped on 5e. A promotion appends 成 and a declined promotion appends 不成. The header line 手合割：平手 marks an even game; the handicap games name the handicap there instead.
Import and export on this site
Every game played here can be exported as KIF and any KIF file can be imported, including handicap games, which is why the header’s handicap line matters. If you keep records in a Japanese client or want to feed a game to an engine, KIF is the format to use.

The vocabulary

Sente 先手
The player who moves first in an even game; conventionally drawn at the bottom of the board.
Gote 後手
The player who moves second in an even game. In a handicap game on this site, gote is the stronger player and moves first.
Hirate 平手
An even game: both armies complete, no handicap, sente to move.
Uwate 上手
The stronger player in a handicap game — the one giving the odds, playing with men missing, and moving first.
Shitate 下手
The weaker player in a handicap game — the one receiving the odds, with a full army, moving second.
Koma 駒
A piece. The wooden tablets themselves, and the men on the board.
Komadai 駒台
The small stand at each player’s right where captured men are kept. A hand is always public: you may look at your opponent’s stand whenever you like.
Mochigoma 持ち駒
Pieces in hand — the men you have captured and may drop.
Nifu 二歩
Two pawns: the rule forbidding a second unpromoted pawn of your own on a file, and the illegal move of breaking it.
Uchifuzume 打ち歩詰め
Pawn-drop mate: delivering checkmate by dropping a pawn, which is forbidden. Check by a dropped pawn is fine.
Sennichite 千日手
Literally a thousand-day game: a position repeated four times with the same hands and the same side to move. Drawn, unless one side checked throughout, in which case that side loses.
Jishogi 持将棋
Impasse: both kings safely inside the enemy camp with no mate possible, settled by the twenty-four point count.
Tsumi 詰み
Checkmate — the finished thing, on the board.
Tsume 詰め
The mating problem as a genre and as a skill. Tsume shogi problems are forced mates in which the attacker checks on every move, and working through them is the standard way Japanese players train their endgame.
Kakoi 囲い
A castle: a named arrangement of the king and two or three generals. The Mino, the Yagura and the Anaguma are the ones you will meet first.
Ibisha 居飛車
Static rook: leaving the rook on its starting file and attacking there.
Furibisha 振り飛車
Ranging rook: swinging the rook across to another file, and castling on the side the rook has left.
Ryū 竜 (dragon)
A promoted rook: the rook’s lines plus one square in any diagonal direction. The strongest man in the game.
Uma 馬 (horse)
A promoted bishop: the bishop’s diagonals plus one square in any orthogonal direction. Unlike a plain bishop it can reach every square on the board.
Tokin と金
A promoted pawn, which moves as a gold. Cheap to make, painful to face, and worth only a pawn if you ever capture it.
Fundoshi ふんどし
A knight fork: the two squares a knight attacks catching two men at once. It is the commonest tactic in the game precisely because the knight is otherwise so clumsy.
Kifu 棋譜
A game record. KIF, the file format, takes its name from it.

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) tournament rules

    Used here for the points where practice and rule meet: that nifu is an illegal move and loses a tournament game, and for the standard handicap vocabulary of uwate and shitate.