Shogi
Even game
The even game: both armies complete, nothing removed, sente to move first.
What is different here
Standard shogi — hirate, the level game — is the form everything else on this site is measured against. Twenty men a side on a nine-by-nine board, captured men returning to play from the hand, and the far three ranks as a promotion zone.
This site follows the tournament rules published by the Nihon Shogi Renmei, the Japan Shogi Association. That fixes the awkward cases: when promotion is compulsory, what a dropped pawn may and may not do, what happens when a position repeats, and how a game with two uncatchable kings is scored.
If you are new to shogi, start here. The handicap presets change nothing about the rules; they only take men off one side and hand that side the first move.
- Sente moves first; the two sides are otherwise identical.
- A captured man joins your hand and may be dropped back as your own.
- Promotion zone is the far three ranks, and promotion is almost always optional.
- No two of your own unpromoted pawns on a file, and no mate by dropping a pawn.
- Fourfold repetition is a draw — but a loss for a side that checked throughout.
- Two kings in each other’s camps are settled by the twenty-four point count.