Introduction
Shogi is Japanese chess, similar to Crazyhouse – every captured piece can be placed on the board as your own!
If you’re a beginner, check my step-by-step study plan!
Table of Contents
- Join the Shogi Harbour Discord.
- Join the weekly shogi ladder in the Discord, see #shogi-ladder-rules
- Join the next “Tourny To” series, see #tt-series-rules
Places to Play
Lishogi
- Lishogi is a clone of lichess, and has a modern interface. But as of 2022 there are not many humans playing there.
- Pick your favorite piece set style
- Click your username in the upper right, and Piece Set
- I recommend Engraved_cz because it has the traditional Kanji on top and shows how the piece moves on the bottom.
You will naturally start to recognize the Kanji alone (important for sites that only have the Kanji).
81dojo
- 81dojo is the largest English Shogi server.
- Register on 81dojo
- Set your rank to 9-kyu (beginner!)
- The kyu (beginner) ranks are backwards, starting at 9-kyu and working up to 1-kyu. Then dan (black belt) ranks start from 1-dan and go up.
- Play on 81dojo
- Recommended settings (gear icon on top):
- Board Size = Large
- Shogi.CZ set shows how the pieces move on the bottom half.
- Highlight movable squares
- On Communication tab, Notation-Style = Chess-order
Shogi Wars
- Shogi Wars has the most players
- You have to register first before changing language to English
- Gear icon (top row, 4th icon) for settings
- Third tab “その他” for other
- Change to English
- Click “設定を保存する” to save settings
- Use shogi extend to search your game records
- The third button (コピー) will copy the KIF (game record), and you can paste it into e.g. ShogiGUI or lishogi.
- Only has blitz games
- Only 3 free games per day, more games requires a subscription (~$5 USD per month)
- Phone app and webapp
Shogi Club 24
- Shogi Club 24 is second behind Shogi Wars in players
- Register (Japanese only, need to translate page)
- Add @+ for non-Japanese phone numbers e.g. @+15125551234
- Use https://www.shogidojo.net/shogi24kifu/?lang=en to search your game records.
- Very old site with old look
- Ratings are extremely strong, an 81dojo 1-dan may be 10-kyu on SC24!
Shogi Quest
- Shogi Quest
- Similar to Shogi Wars, but free (and also less polished)
- Phone app and webapp, but webapp is minimal
Ranks and Ratings
- Traditional ranks start at 9-kyu (or lower e.g. 15-kyu) and work up to 1-kyu. Then dan (black belt) ranks start from 1-dan and go up.
- Each site’s ranks/ratings will vary in how hard they are, see e.g. Lishogi vs 81dojo
- Professionals have a different system
- Apprentice professionals (shoreikai) go from 6-kyu up to 3-dan
- Professionals start from 4-dan and go up
- Women are allowed, but as of 2022 the top women made it to 3-dan, just short of regular professional status
- Women professionals have another system
- They start in the traning group (kenshukai)
- 3-kyu is provisional women’s professional
- 2-kyu and up is regular women’s professional
Shogi Engine
- Lishogi has a builtin engine using your webbrowser
- Or download ShogiGUI for offline use
- ShogiGUI tutorial - analyze games using this. The tutorial covers how to change from default Japanese to English, etc.
- Upgrade engine to Suisho vX + YaneuraOu
- Divide Shogi engine evals by ~5 to get similar range as chess
- Reversals in Shogi are way more common so even very large eval differences can be overcome
Playing IRL
- Aoyama ships Shogi (and Go/Baduk/Weiqi) Pieces and Boards internationally
- English pamphlet two page rules summary