How to play shogi

Shogi is played on a 9×9 board. Each player has 20 pieces, all pointing toward the opponent—that is how you tell them apart. Black (sente) moves first. You win by checkmating the enemy king.

The king moves one square in any direction. It is the one piece you can never lose, so keep it safe behind other pieces.

The rook moves any distance forward, backward or sideways. The bishop moves any distance diagonally. Neither can jump over pieces. These two are your strongest attackers.

The gold moves one square forward, diagonally forward, sideways, or straight back—six directions. The silver moves one square forward or diagonally in any of four directions, but not sideways or straight back.

The knight jumps two squares forward and one to the side, leaping over anything in between. It can only go forward. The lance moves any distance straight forward. The pawn moves one square forward.

You capture by moving onto a square occupied by an enemy piece. Every piece captures the same way it moves—including the pawn, which captures straight ahead. Captured pieces become yours, as you will see in the next lesson.

When you capture a piece, it goes into your hand. It now belongs to you and keeps its basic, unpromoted form.

On your turn you may drop a piece from your hand onto any empty square instead of moving. A drop is your whole move.

A dropped piece always lands unpromoted, even inside the promotion zone. It may promote on a later move.

You may not drop a piece where it could never move: no pawn or lance on the last rank, and no knight on the last two ranks.

Drops make shogi different from chess: a piece in hand can appear anywhere, so attacks come fast. Two more pawn rules follow in Lesson 4.

The three ranks farthest from you are the promotion zone. When a piece moves into, inside, or out of that zone, you may promote it by turning it over.

Pawn, lance, knight and silver all promote to pieces that move like a gold. A promoted pawn is called a tokin—cheap to lose, strong to have.

The rook promotes to a dragon: a rook that can also step one square diagonally. The bishop promotes to a horse: a bishop that can also step one square straight.

Kings and golds never promote. Promotion is optional, except when an unpromoted piece could never move again: pawns and lances on the last rank, knights on the last two ranks.

A captured promoted piece goes back to its original form in the captor's hand. Usually you should promote; keep a silver or knight unpromoted only when its original move is more useful.

A check attacks the king. The player in check must deal with it at once: move the king, capture the checking piece, or block the line with a piece or a drop.

Checkmate means the king is in check and no answer works. The game ends there. You may never make a move that leaves your own king in check.

Nifu (two pawns): you may not have two unpromoted pawns of your own on the same file. Dropping a pawn onto such a file is illegal. A tokin does not count.

Pawn-drop mate (uchifuzume): dropping a pawn to give immediate checkmate is illegal. Mating by moving a pawn already on the board is fine, and a pawn drop that checks without mating is fine too.

If the same position occurs four times, the game is a draw (sennichite)—unless one side gave check on every move, in which case that side loses. In practice most games end by resignation.