The rules of shogi
Shogi is the Japanese member of the chess family. It is played on a nine-by-nine board with twenty men a side, and it has one rule that changes everything: a man you capture becomes yours, and you may put him back on the board as your own.
Updated
The board and the opening set-up
The board is a plain grid of nine files by nine ranks, eighty-one squares in all. The squares are not coloured light and dark, and nothing on the board tells you whose man is whose: both armies use identical five-sided tablets of wood. What identifies a man is which way he points. Your men point away from you; your opponent’s point back at you. Turn a piece round and it has changed sides — which is exactly what happens when it is captured.
The two players are called sente and gote. Sente is the side that moves first in an even game and sits at the bottom of the board as this site draws it. Gote is the side that answers. Files are numbered from 1 to 9 running right to left from sente’s chair, so file 1 is at sente’s right hand and file 9 at his left. Ranks are lettered a to i running away from sente, so rank a is gote’s back rank and rank i is sente’s. A square is named file first: 7g is the square on the seventh file, on sente’s third rank.
Each side starts with twenty men: one king, two gold generals, two silver generals, two knights, two lances, one rook, one bishop and nine pawns. Sente’s army fills the bottom three ranks in this pattern. The back rank, from file 9 across to file 1, runs lance, knight, silver, gold, king, gold, silver, knight, lance — that is L 9i, N 8i, S 7i, G 6i, K 5i, G 4i, S 3i, N 2i, L 1i. On the next rank up stand the two big men: the bishop on 8h and the rook on 2h. The whole of rank g is a wall of nine pawns. Gote’s army is the same shape rotated by half a turn: king on 5a, rook on 8b, bishop on 2b, pawns across rank c.
The eight kinds of man
There are eight kinds of man. Only two of them — the rook and the bishop — move as they do in western chess. The rest are short-range, and most of them can only go forward or sideways. An army of shogi men is slow, and that slowness is the reason the game turns on the drop rule rather than on raw speed.
- King (ō / gyoku)
- Moves one square in any of the eight directions. It never promotes, and losing it loses the game.
- Rook (hisha)
- Moves any distance along a rank or a file, through empty squares only, and stops on the first man it meets — capturing it if it belongs to the enemy. The strongest man on the board.
- Bishop (kaku)
- Moves any distance along a diagonal, through empty squares only. On an uncheckered board it is easy to forget that a bishop can never reach half the squares, but it cannot, and that limits it badly until it promotes.
- Gold general (kin)
- Moves one square in any of the four orthogonal directions — forward, back, left, right — and one square diagonally forward. It cannot step diagonally backwards. Six squares in all. The gold is the standard defender, and the shape it makes is the shape every promoted small man inherits.
- Silver general (gin)
- Moves one square straight forward, or one square diagonally in any of the four diagonal directions. Five squares in all. It can retreat, but only on the diagonals, so a silver that pushes up the board can come home while a gold cannot come home sideways-backwards. Silver and gold are the two attacking-and-defending workhorses, and they are deliberately not the same shape.
- Knight (keima)
- Leaps two squares forward and one to the side, to either of exactly two squares, jumping over whatever stands in between. It is the only man that jumps. It has no sideways move, no backward move and no way to turn round: a knight that has gone up the board can never come down it again.
- Lance (kyōsha)
- Moves any distance straight forward along its own file, through empty squares, stopping on the first man it meets. It cannot move sideways or backwards at all. A lance is a rook that has forgotten three quarters of its directions.
- Pawn (fu)
- Moves one square straight forward, and captures the same way — straight ahead, not diagonally. There is no double first step and no en passant. A shogi pawn is the weakest man on the board and, because of the drop rule, one of the most useful things to hold in your hand.
Note what is missing. Nothing moves like a queen, nothing but the knight jumps, and six of the eight kinds of man are short-range. An attack has to be built piece by piece over several moves — and a defence, once assembled, is very hard to shift without help from your hand.
Taking a turn
Sente moves first in an even game, then the players alternate. In a handicap game the stronger player moves first instead. There is no passing: you must make a move, and if you cannot, you have lost.
A turn is one of exactly two things.
- Move a man that is on the board, along one of the paths described above, and optionally promote him if the move touches the promotion zone.
- Drop a man from your hand onto an empty square.
Moving onto a square held by an enemy man captures him: he leaves the board and the moving man takes his place. There is no capture in passing, no castling move, and no way to capture your own man. You may never leave your own king attacked, and under the Japan Shogi Association’s tournament rules, playing an illegal move loses the game on the spot.
Promotion
The promotion zone is the far three ranks — the enemy’s home ranks, where his army began. For sente that is ranks a, b and c; for gote it is ranks g, h and i.
A move may promote if it enters the zone, if it starts and finishes inside the zone, or if it starts inside the zone and leaves it. All three count. A man who is dropped into the zone does not promote by being dropped: he arrives unpromoted and must make a move afterwards to earn it.
Promotion is your choice. You may decline it, and there are real positions where declining is right — a knight or a lance that promotes to a gold’s move loses its long jump or its long reach, and a silver that stays a silver keeps its diagonal retreat. Promotion becomes compulsory in one case only: when the man would otherwise have no legal move ever again from the square he lands on. A pawn or a lance arriving on the last rank, or a knight arriving on either of the last two ranks, must promote, because as they stand they could never move again.
| Man | Promotes to | How the promoted man moves |
|---|---|---|
| Pawn | Tokin | Exactly like a gold general |
| Lance | Promoted lance | Exactly like a gold general |
| Knight | Promoted knight | Exactly like a gold general |
| Silver | Promoted silver | Exactly like a gold general |
| Bishop | Horse (uma) | Bishop’s diagonals, plus one square orthogonally |
| Rook | Dragon (ryū) | Rook’s lines, plus one square diagonally |
| Gold | — | Golds do not promote |
| King | — | Kings do not promote |
A promoted man is turned over: the reverse face of the tablet carries the promoted name, usually in red. When a promoted man is captured he goes into the taker’s hand as his plain, unpromoted self. A dragon captured is a rook in hand. A tokin captured is a pawn in hand. Promotion is a state of a man on the board, never a permanent change to the man himself.
The hand, and dropping
This is the rule that makes shogi what it is. When you capture a man, he is not removed from the game. He goes into your hand — in play, onto the small wooden stand at your right, in full view of both players — and he is now yours. Instead of moving a man on the board, you may take a man from your hand and place him on any empty square. That is a drop, and it costs you your whole turn.
A dropped man always arrives unpromoted, facing your way, and he may be dropped anywhere on the board that is empty — including deep inside the enemy camp, including right next to the enemy king. He may not capture on the way in, and he does nothing on the turn he lands beyond standing where you put him. A drop can give check. A drop can defend. A drop can plug a hole in a wall that has just been broken open.
The consequences run through the whole game. Material never leaves the board for long, so trades do not simplify — they rearm your opponent. A piece you lose will come back at you, on the square of his choosing, at the moment of his choosing. Nobody here is ever safe from an attack because the attacker has run out of men. He has not run out. He is holding them.
There are exactly three restrictions on where you may drop, and every one of them concerns a pawn or a piece that would be stuck.
- Nifu — two pawns on a file
- You may not drop a pawn onto a file that already holds one of your own unpromoted pawns. A promoted pawn does not count: if your pawn on that file has turned into a tokin, the file is free again. Your opponent’s pawns on the file do not count either — the rule is about your own. This is the restriction beginners break most often, and in tournament play it is an illegal move and loses the game.
- The dead drop
- You may not drop a man onto a square from which he could never legally move again. A pawn or a lance may not be dropped on the furthest rank. A knight may not be dropped on either of the two furthest ranks. Note that these are drops only: a pawn that walks to the last rank simply promotes, because promotion is compulsory exactly when it would otherwise be stuck. A drop has no promotion to rescue it, so the drop is forbidden instead.
- Uchifuzume — the pawn-drop mate
- You may not deliver checkmate by dropping a pawn. The drop is legal if the mated king has any escape; it is only the mate itself that is barred. Notice the two things this rule does not say. A dropped pawn may give check — that is fine, so long as it is not mate. And a pawn that is already on the board may walk forward and deliver mate perfectly legally. The prohibition is narrow, and it is narrow on purpose: it stops the cheapest mate in the game while leaving every other pawn tactic alone.
How a game is won
Checkmate wins. If the king is attacked, and there is no move that gets him out of the attack — no escape square, no capture of the attacker, no man that can be moved or dropped in the way — then the game is over and the side giving mate has won.
A player who has no legal move at all also loses. There is no stalemate draw in shogi. This almost never happens in a real game, because between the board and the hand there is nearly always something you may legally do, but the rule is there and it is worth knowing that being frozen is a loss and not a rescue.
In practice almost every serious game ends in resignation. A lost position in shogi is genuinely lost — there is no drifting endgame in which the defender hopes the attacker runs out of material — so it is normal and polite to resign a mate that is a few forced moves away.
Repetition and impasse
Draws are rare. Two rules produce them, and one of the two is not really a draw at all.
Sennichite is repetition. If the same position occurs four times over — the same men on the same squares, the same men in both hands, and the same side to move — the game is drawn. There is one exception, and it is the important half of the rule: if one side gave check on every move of the repeating cycle, that side loses. Perpetual check is not a way out of a lost game in shogi. It is a way to lose one.
Jishogi is impasse. Occasionally both kings walk into the enemy camp, where the short-range men behind them cannot follow fast enough to catch them, and neither side can ever force mate. When both kings have entered the enemy camp the game is settled by counting. Each side counts a rook or a bishop, promoted or not, as five points, and every other man as one point, kings excluded, with pieces held in hand counted exactly as if they were on the board. A side with fewer than twenty-four points loses. If both sides reach twenty-four the game is drawn.
There is no fifty-move rule in shogi, and no draw by insufficient material — with the drop rule, material is never insufficient. A long game is simply a long game.
What is different here
Everything above is the game as most people play it. Each rule set below changes something — sometimes a single win condition, sometimes the whole character of the game. Follow any of them for its full rules.
The even game: both armies complete, nothing removed, sente to move first.
The stronger player gives up one lance — the one on 1a — and moves first.
The stronger player gives up the bishop on 2b — and moves first.
The stronger player gives up the rook on 8b — and moves first.
The stronger player gives up the rook on 8b and the lance on 1a — and moves first.
The stronger player gives up both big men — the rook on 8b and the bishop on 2b — and moves first.
The stronger player gives up rook, bishop and both lances — and moves first.
The stronger player gives up rook, bishop, both lances and both knights — and moves first.
The same game on a five-by-five board, with six men a side and a promotion zone one rank deep.
Common questions
- Can a dropped pawn give check?
- Yes. A dropped pawn may give check freely. The only thing it may not do is deliver checkmate — that is the uchifuzume rule, and it applies to the mate, not to the check.
- Do I have to promote when I reach the promotion zone?
- No. Promotion is offered on any move that enters, stays inside or leaves the far three ranks, and you may always decline. It is compulsory only when the man would otherwise have no legal move afterwards — a pawn or lance on the last rank, a knight on either of the last two.
- What happens to a promoted piece when it is captured?
- It goes into the capturer’s hand unpromoted. A captured dragon is a rook in hand; a captured tokin is a pawn in hand.
- Is stalemate a draw in shogi?
- No. A player with no legal move loses. In practice it almost never arises, because a player with men in hand nearly always has a drop available.
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
The governing body of professional shogi in Japan. Its published tournament rules are what this site follows on every point where a rule could reasonably be written more than one way: the exact scope of compulsory promotion, the three drop restrictions, the treatment of repetition with perpetual check, and the twenty-four point impasse count.