Rook handicap (hisha-ochi)

What changes

Nothing in the rules. Hand and drops, nifu, the dead-drop bar, uchifuzume, the far-three-ranks promotion zone with promotion optional except where the man would be stuck, sennichite at the fourth repetition, and the twenty-four point impasse count all apply exactly as in the even game.

Two things change on the set-up. Gote’s rook on 8b is removed before the first move, and gote moves first. This site seats uwate, the stronger player giving the odds, as gote; shitate keeps a full army as sente.

Playing shitate

You have the only rook. The plan follows from that: pick a file, push the pawn in front of your rook, trade it off, and use the open file. Every attack shitate wins at these odds looks roughly the same — rook on an open file, a silver and a knight brought up beside it, a pawn or two in hand to clear the last defender, and a break.

The two ways to lose are worth naming. The first is letting the rook be trapped. Uwate’s whole hope is to win the rook, because the moment he does he can drop it and the odds are gone. A rook that charges into the camp and finds a silver behind it is not an attack; it is a gift. The second is attacking before castling. Uwate will have men in hand, and a bare king facing generals in hand loses fast even with a rook.

Playing uwate

You cannot open a file. Accept it. Your game is the bishop, the generals and a castle so solid that shitate’s break simply fails, and your winning chance is the counter-attack after it fails, using whatever he handed you in the exchange.

Practically that means: castle early and thoroughly, keep a general in front of the file shitate has chosen, keep your bishop’s diagonal aimed somewhere useful, and do not initiate. Every pawn trade you allow puts a pawn in his hand, and pawns in hand are what break castles. The old advice for uwate at rook odds is to be patient to the point of dullness, because the position is not lost — it is just slow — and the player with a rook is the one under pressure to prove something.

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 rook handicap as the removal of uwate’s rook — 8b in this site’s seating — with uwate to move first, and places it above bishop odds and below rook-and-lance on the ladder.