2.1 The rules of shogi

Shogi is a two-person abstract strategy board game with full information (i.e. all pieces and moves are visible to both players at all times). It is in the chess family, being descended from the same ancestral game as international chess: the Indian game of Chaturanga. The two players are referred to as "Black" and "White", with Black moving first (unlike in international chess, where White moves first), and with movement alternating between the two players. Note that "Black" and "White" are just names; the pieces are not colored. Instead, they are flat, wedge-shaped pieces which point towards the opponent. The identity of a given piece is indicated by two Japanese Kanji characters on each piece. In fact, only the top character is needed to identify the piece and thus only the top character is used in shogi diagrams. I will use alphabetical equivalents in the diagrams here; to see what the Kanji characters look like, start up xshogi (see section 4. xshogi) and compare the starting setup there with the starting setup in this file (see section 2.1.2 The opening setup).

The object of the game is to capture the opponent's King. The board is a grid of 9x9 uncolored squares, and pieces are placed on the squares. Each player begins with 20 pieces, described in the next section. Capture is by displacement, as in international chess.

2.1.1 The moves of the pieces
2.1.2 The opening setup
2.1.3 Promotion of pieces
2.1.4 Drops
2.1.5 Winning the game
2.1.6 Draws
2.1.7 Handicaps
2.1.8 Notes for chess players