![]() Other than that, it’s just a bigger version of Chess! The steepest part of the learning curve after that is getting comfortable with the powerful impact of drops - this is especially strange for seasoned Chess players, who will be accustomed to captured pieces playing no further role in the game. Also, you only really need to recognise the top characters on each piece - that’s enough to distinguish all the pieces from each other. The kanji are effectively just symbols, just like the odd shapes of Chess pieces. Instead, just think of them the same way as you think of the shapes of Western Chess pieces - both are abstract shapes, and neither really relates to what the piece does or how it moves. I find it helps beginners to forget they are letters - this tends to prime us to try to divine their meaning, which makes them more intimidating. However, the best way to learn is to simply dive in - after a game or two, the kanji fade away and are easy enough to recognise. The different pieces have their names written on them in Japanese kanji characters, which are not so easy to learn for people who don’t speak Japanese. ![]() Not really! The biggest obstacle for most new players is learning the pieces - as you can see in the photo of my Shogi set above, all Shogi pieces are the same shape and colour, and the two players’ armies are distinguished by the pieces’ orientation (aim pointy bits at the enemy!). Thanks to drops, Shogi is also much more decisive than Chess - less than 2% of professional Shogi games end in a draw, a staggering difference from the ~60% draw rate of professional chess! Is Shogi hard to learn? The constant back-and-forth of captures and drops makes a Shogi game dynamic, aggressive and fierce - attacks are frequent, and giving up the initiative to play defensively is risky. Since captured pieces come back to life throughout the game, the number of pieces on the board stays roughly the same throughout - there are no endgame situations with near-empty boards, as in Chess. Two other key exceptions: Pawns cannot be dropped so that you have more than one of your pawns on a single vertical line and pieces cannot be dropped in a space where they have no legal moves.ĭrops make Shogi play and feel very different from Western Chess. Any dropped piece must be moved into the promotion zone again to be promoted. However, an important point to remember: promoted pieces, when captured, are demoted. At any point from then on, they may forgo a normal move and instead drop a captured piece to any empty square on the board! The capturer places the piece on a small side-board called a komadai (piece stand) and holds it in reserve. In Shogi, when a piece is captured, it is truly captured - it becomes the property of the capturing player. ![]() There’s one major rule change that was added to Shogi in the 16th century and has come to define the game ever since: drops. Promoted Bishops (Horses) and promoted Rooks (Dragons) are the most powerful pieces in the game. A promoted piece flips over, and the other side of the piece indicates their promoted form. In Shogi, any piece that reaches the enemy camp (the three rows where their pieces begin the game) can promote. Promoting Pieces: In Chess, pawns that reach the enemy’s back rank can promote to become a Knight, Bishop, Rook, or Queen.Some of the shared pieces move differently, too: Knights make the same L-shaped jump but only forward and Pawns move and capture only directly forward. Shogi has ten: Pawns, Knights, Silver Generals, Gold Generals, Lances, Rooks, Bishops, Dragons (Promoted Rooks), Horses (Promoted Bishops), and Kings. The Pieces: Chess has six types of pieces: Pawns, Knights, Bishops, Rooks, Queens, and Kings.The Board: a Shogi board is a 9×9 playing area of 81 squares, compared to the 64 squares of the chessboard.However, many of the fundamentals are quite different: Shogi does share the same goals as Chess - checkmating the enemy King - and shares some of the same pieces. My traditional Shogi set - a Shin-Kaya board, with hand-carved pieces made from Japanese maple, with the kanji (Japanese characters) carved in the Minase calligraphy style in lacquer How is Shogi different from Chess?
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