Hand shogi

Hand shogi (手将棋 "te shōgi", hand chess) is a variant of shogi (Japanese chess), however it is not Japanese. It was invented in early 1997 by John William Brown of Lewisville, AR, USA. The name “hand” comes from the fact that each player starts the game with most of their pieces in hand and that each round of a match plays like the hand of a card game.

Rules of the game

Objective

The objective of the game is to win two consecutive hands. The objective of each hand is to capture your opponent's king.

Game equipment

Two players, Black and White (or 先手 "sente" and 後手 "gote"), play on a board ruled into a grid of 9 "ranks" (rows) by 9 "files" (columns). The squares are undifferentiated by marking or color.

Each player has a set of 19 wedge-shaped pieces, of slightly different sizes. From largest to smallest (most to least powerful) they are:

* 1 king
* 1 tycoon
* 1 shogun
* 2 gold generals
* 2 silver generals
* 1 pard
* 1 onager
* 1 hasty
* 2 knights
* 2 lances
* 5 solders

Each piece has its name in the form of two kanji written on its face. On the reverse side of each knight two other characters, often in a different color (commonly red instead of black); this reverse side is turned up to indicate that the piece has been promoted during play. The pieces of the two sides do not differ in color, but instead each piece is shaped like a wedge, and faces forward, toward the opposing side. This shows who controls the piece during play. The game is often played with "Westernized" (or "international") pieces, which replace the kanji with more intuitive symbols, such as pictorial icons.

Setup

Jump: The pard jumps to the second square in any direction, orthogonal or diagonal.|
-! colspan="2" bgcolor="#e0e0e0" width="50%" | Knight! colspan="2" bgcolor="#d0d0f0" width="50%" | Promoted Knight
-
Jump: The knight jumps at an angle intermediate between orthogonal and diagonal, amounting to one square forward plus one square diagonally forward, in a single motion, ignoring any intervening piece. That is, it has a choice of two forward destinations. "A knight that reaches one of the two furthest ranks must promote."
Limited range: The tycoon can move one to three squares along one of the four diagonal directions.|
-! colspan="2" bgcolor="#e0e0e0" width="50%" | Hasty! colspan="2" bgcolor="#e0e0e0" width="50%" | Soldier
-
Jump: The hasty can jump to the second square in one of the four diagonal directions.|

Drops

Captured pieces are truly "captured" in hand shogi. They are retained "in hand", and can be brought back into play under the capturing player's control. Add to this the fact that each player starts the game with ten pieces in hand. On any turn, instead of moving a piece across the board, a player can take a piece he has previously captured or has in hand and place it on any empty square, facing the opponent. The piece is now part of the forces controlled by that player. This is termed "dropping" the piece, or just a "drop".

A drop cannot capture a piece; that requires an additional move.

A knight cannot be dropped into the promotion zone.

A lance may not be dropped on the furthest rank, since it would have no legal move on subsequent turns.

A soldier cannot be dropped into the same file (vertical column) as another unpromoted soldier controlled by the same player. A player who has an unpromoted soldier on every file is therefore unable to drop a soldier anywhere.

A hasty or onager must be dropped so that it gives check (see below).

Check and mate

When a player makes a move such that the opponent's king could be captured on the following move, the move is said to "give check" to the king; the king is said to be "in check". If a player's king is in check and no legal move by that player will get the king out of check, the checking move is also "mate", and effectively wins the hand.

A player is not allowed to give perpetual check.

Game end

A player who captures the opponent's king wins the hand. In practice this rarely happens, as a player will resign when checkmated, as otherwise when loss is inevitable.

A player who makes an illegal move loses immediately. (This rule may be relaxed in casual games.)

There are two other possible (but fairly uncommon) ways for a hand to end: repetition and impasse.

If the same position occurs four times with the same player to play, then the hand is a draw. (Recall, however, the prohibition against perpetual check.) For two positions to be considered the same, the pieces in hand must be the same, as well as the position on the board.

The hand reaches an impasse if both kings have advanced into their respective promotion zones and neither player can hope to mate the other or to gain any further material. If this happens then the hand is a draw.

Game notation

The method used in English-language texts to express shogi moves was established by George Hodges in 1976. It is derived from the algebraic notation used for chess, but differs in several respects.

A typical example is S-8f.The first letter represents the piece moved: SO = soldier, L = lance, N = knight, S = silver, G = gold, PD = pard, O = onager, H = hasty, T = tycoon, SH = shogun, K = king.Promoted pieces have a + added in front of the letter. e.g., +N for a promoted knight.The designation of the piece is followed by a symbol indicating the type of move: - for an ordinary move, x for a capture, or * for a drop.Next is the designation for the square on which the piece lands.This consists of a number representing the file and a lowercase letter representing the rank, with 1a being the top right corner (as seen from Black's point of view) and 9i being the bottom left corner.(This method of designating squares is based on Japanese convention, which, however, uses Japanese numerals instead of letters. For example, the square 2c is denoted by 2三 in Japanese.)

If a move forces the player to promote the piece, then a + is added to the end to signify that the promotion was taken.For example, Nx7c+ indicates a knight capturing on 7c and promoting.

In cases where the above notation would be ambiguous, the designation of the start square is added after the designation for the piece in order to make clear which piece is meant.

Moves are commonly numbered as in chess.

See also

* Shogi variant
* Hasami shogi
* Annan shogi
* Whale shogi
* Unashogi
* Ko shogi

External links

* [http://www.chessvariants.com/shogivariants.dir/handshogi.html Chessvariants.com/hand shogi]