2.1.2 The opening setup

The opening setup for shogi is as follows:

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 +---------------------------------------------+
| wL | wN | wS | wG | wK | wG | wS | wN | wL | a
+---------------------------------------------+
| | wR | | | | | | wB | | b
+---------------------------------------------+
| wP | wP | wP | wP | wP | wP | wP | wP | wP | c
+---------------------------------------------+
| | | | | | | | | | d
+---------------------------------------------+
| | | | | | | | | | e
+---------------------------------------------+
| | | | | | | | | | f
+---------------------------------------------+
| bP | bP | bP | bP | bP | bP | bP | bP | bP | g
+---------------------------------------------+
| | bB | | | | | | bR | | h
+---------------------------------------------+
| bL | bN | bS | bG | bK | bG | bS | bN | bL | i
+---------------------------------------------+

Here, "b" stands for "black" and "w" stands for "white", so that, for instance, "bL" means "black lance". The numbers above the files and the letters to the right of the ranks represent the most common notation system used for shogi by westerners (the Japanese also use Arabic numerals for the files but use Japanese numerals for the ranks).