Six-piece handicap (rokumai-ochi)

What changes

No rule is altered. Captured men still go to the hand and may be dropped; nifu, the dead-drop bar and uchifuzume all apply; promotion is offered in the far three ranks and forced only where the man would otherwise be stuck; a player with no legal move loses; sennichite on the fourth repetition is a draw unless one side checked throughout; impasse is settled by the twenty-four point count.

Six of gote’s men come off before play: the rook on 8b, the bishop on 2b, both lances from 9a and 1a, and both knights from 8a and 2a. Gote’s back rank therefore begins with silver, gold, king, gold, silver on 7a, 6a, 5a, 4a and 3a, and nothing else. Gote moves first, since uwate is seated as gote and shitate keeps the full army as sente.

Playing shitate

This handicap exists to teach one thing, so learn it here. Pick a file. Push the pawn in front of the rook until it can be traded. Trade it, so that you hold a pawn in hand. Bring a silver up the same file to stand beside the rook, and a knight behind it if there is time. Then drop the pawn on the head of whichever general is defending, and take the position apart on the file you have opened.

That sequence — advance, trade, build, drop, break — is the shape of nearly every shogi attack, and at six-piece odds you get to practise it against an opponent who cannot interrupt it from a distance. Castle first anyway. It takes four moves to build a Mino, and it makes the difference between a clean win and a scramble.

Playing uwate

You have four generals and a king. There is no plan that wins this by force, and pretending otherwise wastes the teaching. What you can do is make shitate earn it: build a solid shape, trade pawns to get something in hand, and take every piece that is offered carelessly.

The real winning chance is the drop rule. A shitate who attacks with three men, loses two of them and hands you a silver and a knight has given you exactly what you need: the pieces to build a counter-attack you could not build from your own army. Keep the king behind pawns, keep the golds together, and wait for that.

Sources

Everything on this page is written from scratch. These are the works it leans on, and what each one settles.

• Nihon Shogi Renmei (Japan Shogi Association) handicap ladder

  Fixes the six-piece handicap as uwate’s rook, bishop, both lances and both knights, and the convention — followed everywhere on this site — that the odds-giver moves first.