Japanese Chess – Shogi – 将棋
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  • Online Shogi Resources

    Shogi, aka Japanese Chess, is an extremely fun and challenging variant of Chess. Actually the two versions of chess are cousins. Shogi, pronounced SHOW-gee with a hard ‘G’, is the western version of a game that was created in India several centuries ago. Chess is the European version of the same game.

    Just as you have many variants on Western Chess, there are several variants of Shogi. The main version of shogi is played on an 9×9 square board (one bigger than chess). Japanese Chess tends to be a bit more challenging than Western Chess, but still very fun for beginners and masters alike.

    One of the most interesting Shogi rules is that tokens that are captured become the enemy’s pieces, and he can then drop them back on the board to strengthen his army. This adds a great deal of strategy to the game as pieces appear from seemingly nowhere to block checks or quickly promote.

    I have a very rough beta version of shogi for play online. You can play it by clicking the image below. It will take you to the page, and let you play against the computer. The AI is a bit weak, but I’m working on fixing that in future versions.

    Everyone’s introduction to shogi is unique. My introduction was from a friend that was Japanese. He was very tired of me beating him at Western chess, so one day he pulled out a Japanese chess board and said, Let’s try this for a while. He thoroughly beat me many times and then gave me the shogi board as a present.

    This was in the days before the Internet, so wrote down the rules for future reference and taught my own children how to play when they were old enough to learn the rules of shogi.

    I’m just getting started on this site, so keep checking back for updates.

  • Tsume: Japanese Chess Mating Puzzles

    Tsume shogi, or just tsume for short, are Japanese chess mating puzzles. I just created a browsable tsume shogi database, so I thought it might be a good idea to explain tsume rules, background, and their benefits.

    Imagine a situation where you are playing a much more skilled shogi player than yourself. You are losing. Your opponent will place you in checkmate in one move. You are desperate. Your only chance is to check your opponent, and keep him in check until you have a checkmate. Otherwise, you will lose the shogi game.

    Single Move Tsume
    This is a one-move tsume of my own creation. See if you can spot the checkmate.

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  • Shogi Game Notation

    It can be hard to remember how to record a game of shogi. I’ve created a quick cheat sheet below to make life easier.

    The starting player is called “Black”, and the other player is called “White” when playing in English. Black is sometimes called “Sente” and White is sometimes called “Gote”. Don’t let Sente and Gote confuse you. They’re as different as black and white. (No I couldn’t resist.)

    The top of the game record should state important information about the game such as who was Black and who played White. It should also state the date, the players’ rankings, if any, and also what handicap was used. For example: (more…)

  • Japanese Shogi Notation

    First off, this seems like a good place to mention the kanji for shogi. If you go looking up shogi in a japanese dictionary, remember that in Japanese, the pronunciation is actually “shougi” not “shogi”. Shogi has been in English long enough that the “u” was dropped from the name.

    Now for the Japanese notation.

    Don’t let it scare you, but Japanese use kanji. This puts off westerners who get really scared by all those lines. (I wonder, is there a phobia name for this?) Notation for Japanese shogi game records is very similar to western game notations.

    First remember Japanese write two directions. Sometimes they write like in English, that would be from left to right and from top to bottom. Traditionally they write like Chinese, that would be from top to bottom and from right to left. Shogi game records usually are in the traditional top to bottom and from right to left. (more…)

  • Tsume Database Instructions

    Shogi mating puzzles are called tsume. As is common knowledge, I wrote the first English tsume book ever published, just a few years ago. I thought about writing a second shogi mating puzzles book, but realized that not everyone has the money to buy a book. I opted instead to create an online collection of puzzles for everyone to study shogi for free.

    I like the “free” part best.

    I’ve been working on building my tsume database at http://japanesechess.net/tsume/. Now I have hundreds of vetted shogi mating problems of my own creation entered, and about 5,000,000 unvetted tsume from real games.

    A lot of people may not realize how many features the tsume database has. Not only are there hundreds of tsume puzzles to solve, but you can filter on search criteria, view them in random orders, and you can remove the label that tells you how many moves are required to mate the king.

    Tsume 17apr2015
    This is one of the hundreds of tsume found in my free online tsume collection.

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  • Teaching Shogi to Family

    I learned shogi a couple of years after finishing high school. I had just turned twenty, and a Japanese friend who was tired of losing chess games to me pulled out his shogi board and taught me Japanese Chess. Of course, he won all the shogi matches we played.

    When he and I were no longer living together, we never found time to play shogi. This was in the days before the Internet, so finding anyone new to play shogi with was nearly impossible. So few Americans even know what shogi is, that it is very difficult to meet new shogi players.

    Shogi Cat
    My cat prefers to play ranging rook. In fact, all the pieces tend to range very quickly with her paws on the board.

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  • Tsumeshogi (詰将棋)

    Tsumeshogi (詰将棋) is the shogi equivalent of chess puzzles. Chess puzzles and Japanese chess puzzles are both mentally stimulating, and just plain fun. Since I just finished creating my 200th tsume (詰) for my Japanese chess site, I figured this is a great time to share a few more of my thoughts on shogi (将棋) puzzles.

    If your’e reading this, you probably know about my book on Japanese chess puzzles. I sell it on amazon and basically every other outlet worldwide. Creating all those puzzles for the book was a real eye opener. I learned a lot more about the movement of knights (桂馬), silver generals (銀将), and capturing kings (王) than I every knew before. The most exciting thing was learning novel ways that the pieces work together. The game is a lot more intricate than the rules imply. (more…)

  • The Big Three Shogi Castles

    The Big Three Shogi Castles
    Shogi castling involves forming a stronghold to protect the king. Most shogi pieces don’t move very fast, but as soon as a pieces start getting captured, lightning fast plays involving drops change the pace of the game. Placing your king in a castle allows you to focus on attack.

    The most deadly location for a king in shogi is the square it starts on. Dead center means a dead king! Get the king off to a corner and protected, quickly.

    Shogi castles keep the rook and king apart. A common tactic of advanced shogi players is setting up a split with the king and rook so that a knight or other piece attacks both the rook and king. Of course, losing the rook in such a split makes winning more of a challenge.

    Mino Castle

    Mino Shogi Castle
    A properly formed mino castle is strong during creation
    and has several alternative forms available after creation.

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  • Sitting King

    As I’ve mentioned many times, shogi is an ancient game. Millions of people have played shogi over its 800 year history. Anything with that much history is bound to pick up some traditions. One of the greatly loved traditions are the shogi proverbs.

    Sitting King

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  • Shogi Links

    NOTE: This post is a snapshot of resources as they were in 2014. I expect many of the links no longer work. However, I chose to keep even the dead links for historical purposes.

    Play Shogi Online

    For a while it was hard to find sites to play shogi. There’s been an upswing in the number of sites for playing shogi and shogi variants in the last few years. Here is a list of some of the more popular shogi and shogi variant sites.

    PlayOK – Shogi
    Human vs Human play. The graphics aren’t great, but there’s usually a good crowd to play games against.

    81 Dojo
    Human vs Human play. Includes standard shogi, handicaps, and several variants. Also, game analysis tools are included. This is a very nice site for serious students of shogi. I highly recommend this site.

    Internet Shogi Dojo
    Many will argue this is the best shogi site on the web. Plan on learning some Japanese if you want to take full advantage of this site. (more…)

  • Shogi Arrives in America

    The first known game of shogi in America took place in June of 1860 at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia. Japan had recently ended its 250 years of isolation, and sent a mission to the USA to ratify the Treaty of Friendship.

    Japanese Delegation 1860
    The attire worn to the Athenaeum by the Japanese delegation likely looked similar to what is worn by these 1860 delegates. It is not known if any of these delegates where among those visiting the Athenaeum.

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