Objective

The objective of the game is to either capture your opponent's king or all the other pieces.

Game equipment

Two players, Black and White (先手 sente and 後手 gote), play on a board ruled into a grid of 8 or 9 ranks (rows) by 8 or 9 files (columns). The squares are undifferentiated by marking or color.

Each player has a set of 16 or 18 wedge-shaped pieces, of slightly different sizes. From largest to smallest (most to least powerful) they are:

• 1 king
• 1 or 2 gold generals
• 2 silver generals
• 2 knights
• 2 lances
• 8 or 9 pawns

Most of the English names were chosen to correspond to rough equivalents in Western chess, rather than as translations of the Japanese names.

Each piece has its name in the form of two kanji written on its face. On the reverse side of some pieces are 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.

Setup

Below is the board setup for a 9x8 board. Different possible boards, of size 8x9 or 8x8, can be obtained from this size board by removing the e-row (五-row), the sixth column, or both.

Each side places his pieces in the positions shown below, pointing toward the opponent.

• In the rank nearest the player:
  • The king is placed in the center file or left of center.
  • The two gold generals are placed in the adjacent files to the king or one to its right.
  • The two silver generals are placed adjacent to each gold general or gold general and king.
  • The two knights are placed adjacent to each silver general.
  • The two lances are placed in the corners, adjacent to each knight.

That is, the first rank is |L|N|S|G|K|G|S|N|L| or |L|N|S|K|G|S|N|L|.

• In the third rank, the eight or nine pawns are placed one in each file.

Game play

The players alternate making a move, with Black moving first. (The traditional terms 'black' and 'white' are used to differentiate the sides during discussion of the game, but are no longer literally descriptive.) A move consists of moving a single piece on the board and potentially promoting that piece or displacing (capturing) an opposing piece.

Movement and capture

An opposing piece is captured by displacement: That is, if a piece moves to a square occupied by an opposing piece, the opposing piece is displaced and removed from the board. A piece cannot move to a square occupied by a friendly piece (meaning another piece controlled by the moving player).

Each piece on the game moves in a characteristic pattern. Pieces move either orthogonally (that is, forward, backward, left, or right, in the direction of one of the arms of a plus sign, +), or diagonally (in the direction of one of the arms of a multiplication sign, ×). The knight is an exception in that it does not move in a straight line.

If a lance or pawn, which cannot retreat or move aside, advances across the board until it can no longer move, it must be promoted upon reaching the farthest rank. This also applies to the knight upon reaching either of the two farthest ranks.

The movement categories are:

Promotion

A player's promotion zone consists of the three farthest ranks, at the original line of the opponent's pawns and beyond (that is, the opponent's territory at setup). If a piece crosses the board within the promotion zone, including moves into, out of, or wholly within the zone then that player may choose to promote the piece at the end of the turn. Promotion is effected by turning the piece over after it moves, revealing the name of its promoted rank.

Promoting a piece has the effect of changing how that piece moves until it is removed from the board. Each piece promotes as follows:

• A king or a gold general cannot promote, nor can pieces which are already promoted.
• A silver general, knight, lance or pawn, when promoted, loses its normal movement and gains the movement of a gold general.

If a pawn, knight or lance reaches the farthest rank, it must be promoted, since it would otherwise have no legal move on subsequent turns. For the same reason, a knight reaching the last-but-one rank must be promoted.

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 game.

A player is not allowed to give perpetual check.

Game end

A player who captures the opponent's king or all of the other pieces (bare king) wins the game. 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 game to end: repetition (千日手 sennichite) and impasse (持将棋 jishōgi).

If the same position occurs four times with the same player to play, then the game is no contest. (Recall, however, the prohibition against perpetual check.)

The game 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.