HELLO SHOGI
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01 — ABOUT

WHAT IS SHOGI

Japanese chess, where captured pieces change sides

Starting position · 9 × 9 squares, 20 pieces each 平手
Hover over or tap a piece to see how it moves.

Shogi (将棋) is a Japanese board game in which two players each move twenty pieces across a 9×9 board, aiming to capture the opposing king.

It shares its roots with Korean janggi and Western chess, but one rule changes everything: a piece you capture becomes yours, and you can drop it back onto the board. Pieces rarely leave the game, and the result can turn until the very last move.

SHOGI & JANGGI

Shogi and janggi: two games from one root.

Korean janggi and Japanese shogi branched from the same ancestor. Only a handful of rules set them apart.

JANGGI
SHOGI
Board
9 × 10 lines; pieces sit on intersections
9 × 9 squares; pieces sit inside squares
Pieces
16 per player
20 per player
Sides
Told apart by color (Cho and Han)
Same color; told apart by which way the point faces
Captures
Leave the game
Can be dropped back as your own
Promotion
None
Pieces flip over and grow stronger in the far three ranks
The king
Confined to the palace
Free to roam the whole board
FOULS · 反則

What you must never do — fouls in shogi

In professional play, a foul loses the game on the spot (hansoku-make). These are the fouls every beginner should know.

Red outline = the illegal move

Two pawns

二歩

Dropping a pawn on a file (here the fourth) that already holds one of your unpromoted pawns. It still happens even in professional games.

Pawn-drop mate

打ち歩詰め

Giving checkmate by dropping a pawn from hand on 12 is illegal, even though the king has nowhere to go. Mating by moving a pawn already on the board is fine.

Dead pieces

行き所のない駒

Placing a piece where it can never move again. An unpromoted pawn or lance cannot stand on the last rank, nor a knight on the last two; moving there requires promotion.

王手放置Ignoring check
Leaving your king in check, or moving it onto a square attacked by an enemy piece.
二手指しMoving twice
Making two moves or drops in a single turn.
駒の動きの反則Illegal movement
Moving a piece to a square it cannot reach, such as sliding a bishop sideways or jumping over a piece with anything but a knight.
成駒を打つDropping promoted
A piece in hand must be dropped unpromoted, face up. Dropping it flipped over is a foul.
連続王手の千日手Perpetual-check repetition
If the same position appears four times through continuous checks, the checking side loses instead of drawing.
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