What Is Shogi?

What is Shogi?

Shogi is a very old predecessor of the modern chess we know today. Shogi comes from around the 6th century from Japan.

Even though Shogi is not that well known in the western countries, it is still the most popular chess variation to this day.

The size of the traditional shogi board is 9x9 tiles (the modern chess board is 8x8). The shogi board is very different from the modern chess board. First of all, the traditional shogi board doesn’t have a queen, the pawns capture only forward, the horse figure can only move to the forward tiles and can not move backwards (which makes you think more before making a move that you can’t take back), there is only one rook and one bishop, and there are numerous figures, that you don’t have in the modern chess. For example: silver general, gold general, lance (spearman).

There are also other variations of shogi that have different tile numbers and different pieces. For example: Dai shogi “great shogi”, which has a board of 15x15 tiles. There are many different shogi boards tile numbers starting from 3x4 and up to over 20x20. The number of tiles on the board can go even higher than that. For example, the biggest variation of shogi is called Taikyoku shogi “ultimate chess”, the board is 36x36 tiles wide and has many unheard figures like: Ferocious leopard, Rushing boar, Blind tiger, Dark spirit, Wood general, Donkey, Angry boar, Guardian of the gods, Fierce eagle, Flying ox and many more.