Shogi is played on a 9x9 square board. The squares on the Shogi board are not checkered. The pieces also have the same color, but they are pentagons with a clear point, and it is always pointing forwards for your pieces. Black starts the game, and the opponent is called White.
The big difference between Chess and Shogi, is that in Shogi the pieces are not out of play when captured. Anyone who captures a piece from their opponent, gets the piece in hand and can put it into play on his side. This is of course the reason why Shogi pieces have the same color.
Startposition in Shogi
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The King moves 1 square in any direction, and cannot be left in check. You lose if your King is in check and you can't avoid it, just like in Chess!
The King can not promote. |
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The Gold General moves one square in any direction, except diagonally backwards. The Gold cannot promote. | |
| The Silver General moves one square diagonally or one square straight forward. When promoted, it moves like a Gold General. On the left you see a Silver, on the right you see a promoted Silver. |
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| Just like in Chess, the Shogi Knight moves 2 steps forwards and 1 step to the side, and is the only piece that can jump over other pieces. But the similarities ends there, in Shogi the Knight can only move forwards. When promoted, it moves like a Gold. | 
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| The Lance can only move forwards, any number of steps. When promoted, it moves like a Gold. | 
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| The Pawn moves one step forwards. Unlike Chess, it also captures forwards. A promoted Pawn (called Tokin) moves like Gold. | 
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| The Bishop moves just like in Chess, diagonally any number of squares. When promoted, it moves like a combination of Bishop and King. | 
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| The Rook moves just as it's western cousin, vertically or horisontally any number of squares. A promoted Rook moves like a combination of Rook and King. | 
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When a piece moves into, within or out of the promotion zone (one of the last 3 rows), you can promote it. You promote by flipping the piece over. The piece will then get a partially or totally new way to move, see the table above. The promotion is forced if the piece cannot move in its next move.
Captured pieces
A captured piece is not taken out of play as in Chess. Instead the player who captures a piece gets it "in hand", and can instead of a normal move drop a piece in hand onto the board (on an unoccupied square of course). A captured piece always gets on your hand unpromoted, so if you capture a promoted Pawn, you will just get a normal Pawn in hand. There are 3 limitations to drops:
1) You can never drop a pawn on a line where you already have an unpromoted pawn.
2) You cannot drop a piece so it cannot move next turn (i.e. you cannot drop Pawn or Lance on the last row, or Knight on any of the 2 last rows).
3) You cannot drop a Pawn so it becomes checkmate.
Draws
A draw is very rare in Shogi, maybe 1% of the games ends in a draw. One of the reasons for that is that you cannot agree on a draw. If a game ends in a draw, you usually reverse colors and play a new game with the remaining time.
There are 2 ways in which a Shogi game can end in a draw:
Sennichite is when the same position (including pieces in hand) comes up 4 times. You can however not reach this by perpetual check (the one checking will lose due to illegal move).
Jishogi is a very unusual situation that occurs when both players move their King, and most of their pieces, into the promotion zone (or cannot be prevented from doing so), and cannot be checkmate. In that case the players can decide to count pieces (King doesn't count); Rook and Bishop are worth 5 points each, all others 1 point. In reality a judge must take this decision. If both players have at least 24 points, the game ends in a draw. If one of the players has less than 24 points, he loses. Jishogi can occur because the Shogi pieces generally are better at moving forwards than backwards.