Games - Shogi

	Games - Shogi

Shogi (将棋 shōgi), or Japanese chess, is the most popular of a family of chess variants native to Japan.

Rules of the game

Objective

Technically the game is won when a king is captured, though in practice defeat is conceded at checkmate or when checkmate becomes inevitable.

Game equipment

Two players, Black and White (or sente 先手 and gote 後手), play on a board composed of squares (actually rectangles) in a grid of 9 ranks (rows) by 9 files (columns). The squares are undifferentiated by marking or colour.

Each player has a set of 20 wedge-shaped pieces of slightly different sizes. Except for the kings, opposing pieces are differentiated only by orientation, not by marking or colour. From largest to smallest (most to least powerful), the pieces are:

1 king
1 rook
1 bishop
2 gold generals
2 silver generals
2 knights
2 lances
9 pawns

Several of these names were chosen to correspond to their rough equivalents in international chess and not as literal translations of the Japanese names.

Each piece has its name written on its surface in the form of two Chinese characters (kanji), usually in black ink. On the reverse side of each piece, other than the king and gold general, are one or two other characters, in amateur sets often in a different colour (usually red); this side is turned face up during play to indicate that the piece has been promoted. The pieces of the two players do not differ in colour, but instead each faces forward, toward the opposing side. This shows who controls the piece during play.

The Chinese characters have deterred many people from learning shogi. This has led to "Westernized" or "international" pieces, which replace the characters with iconic symbols. However, partially because the traditional pieces are already iconic by size, with more powerful pieces being larger, most Western players soon learn to recognize them, and Westernized pieces have never become popular.

Following is a table of the pieces with their Japanese representations and English equivalents. The abbreviations are used for game notation and often to refer to the pieces in speech in Japanese.

* The kanji 竜 is a simplified form of 龍.

English speakers sometimes refer to promoted bishops as horses and promoted rooks as dragons, after their Japanese names, and generally use the Japanese term tokin for promoted pawns. Silver generals and gold generals are commonly referred to simply as silvers and golds.

The characters inscribed on the reverse sides of the pieces to indicate promoted rank may be in red ink, and are usually cursive. The characters on the backs of the pieces that promote to gold generals are cursive variants of 金 'gold', becoming more cursive (more abbreviated) as the value of the original piece decreases. These cursive forms have these equivalents in print: 全 for promoted silver, 今 for promoted knight, 仝 for promoted lance, and 个 for promoted pawn (tokin). Another typographic convention has abbreviated versions of the unpromoted ranks, with a reduced number of strokes: 圭 for a promoted knight (桂), 杏 for a promoted lance (香), and the 全 as above for a promoted silver, but と for tokin.

Player ranking

Players are ranked from 15 kyū to 1 kyū and then from 1 dan and upwards; this is the same terminology as in karate, as shogi is considered a martial art. Professional players operate with their own scale, from professional 4 dan and upwards to 9 dan for elite players. Amateur and professional ranks are offset, corresponding as .

Setup

Each player places his pieces in the positions shown below, facing the opponent.

In the rank nearest the player:
* The king is placed in the center file.
* The two gold generals are placed in the adjacent files to the king.
* The two silver generals are placed adjacent to each gold general.
* The two knights are placed adjacent to each silver general.
* The two lances are placed in the corners, adjacent to each knight.

That is, the first rank is .

In the second rank, each player places:
* The bishop in the same file as the left knight.
* The rook in the same file as the right knight.
In the third rank, the nine pawns are placed one to each file.

Traditionally, even the order of placing the pieces on the board is determined. There are two recognized orders, ohashi and ito. The Japanese-language page indicates the two orders; ohashi is depicted on the left and ito on the right.

Gameplay

The players alternate taking turns, with Black playing first. (The terms "Black" and "White" are used to differentiate the two sides, but there is no actual difference in the color of the pieces.) For each turn a player may either move a piece which is already on the board and potentially promote it, capture an opposing piece, or both; or to "drop" a piece that has already been captured onto an empty square of the board. These options are detailed below.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Shogi ]

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