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Shogi Strategy and Tips

Here is how to think about winning at Shogi, split into short lessons. Each one reads on its own, and each one comes with a real position: press Try it on the board and you play the move yourself.

See the openings

Mate with a gold in front

Lesson 1

You win at shogi by checkmate: the king is attacked and there is no way out. The first mating pattern to learn is the gold dropped directly in front of the king. A gold covers the three squares ahead of it and the two beside it, so a single piece can seal off the king's escape squares. The same idea beside the king, or behind it, works the same way.

The pattern needs two things. The gold must not be capturable, so something behind it — a rook, a lance, a bishop — has to defend it. And the king's remaining escape squares have to be blocked, either by your pieces or by its own. A king hemmed in by its own gold and knight is a gift to the attacker.

Here, dropping the gold in front of the king leaves White (the second player) without a single legal move. The back rank is blocked by its own lance, knight and gold, the squares to the side are covered by the gold you just dropped, and the rook on the eighth file defends it. Counting the king's escape squares is where every mating attack starts.

Count the exchange

Lesson 2

Shogi pieces have a rough pecking order. The pawn is lightest, then lance and knight, then silver and gold. Rook and bishop are far above the rest: if a pawn is one, a gold is about six and a rook more than ten. Pieces that promote to gold-like pieces gain value the moment they promote.

Before you capture, ask two questions: what am I taking, and what can take back? If something recaptures, count the difference. Take a pawn with a silver and let a silver take back, and you have swapped a silver for a pawn. That is a bad trade in anybody's book.

There are two captures on offer here. One is a pawn with an enemy silver defending it. The other is a bishop that nothing is defending at all. Taking the bishop costs you nothing — and once it is in your hand you can drop it anywhere later, which makes a captured piece worth even more than one sitting on the board.

Fork two pieces at once

Lesson 3

A move that attacks two enemy pieces at once is a fork. Only one of them can be saved, so the other is yours. The knight, which jumps two squares forward and one across and leaps over everything in between, is the easiest piece to fork with — a knight dropped between two pieces even has its own name in Japanese.

Bishops fork too, and so does a rook check that also hits a big piece. Look for squares from which one of your pieces touches the enemy king and a rook or bishop, or two big pieces together. A fork that includes check is the surest of all, because the king has to move first.

Here, dropping the knight from your hand attacks the rook and the gold together, and nothing can capture the knight where it lands. If the rook runs you take the gold; if the gold runs you take the rook. Forks usually vanish if you wait a move, so play it as soon as you see it.

Make a tokin with a dangling pawn

Lesson 4

The pawn is the cheapest piece on the board, but promote it inside the enemy camp — the far three ranks — and it becomes a tokin, moving exactly like a gold. Turning pawns into golds is the engine of almost every shogi attack.

The move that starts it is the dangling pawn: drop a pawn from hand one square short of the enemy camp. It takes nothing immediately, but it promotes next move, so it cannot be ignored. Removing it costs your opponent a gold or a silver, and their defence thins out by exactly that much.

Even if the tokin is captured, it was only a pawn. Losing one pawn to pull a defender out of place is a good trade. When your attack stalls, count the pawns in hand and look for a square to hang one on.

Mate with the dragon one square away

Lesson 5

After the gold in front, the next mating pattern to learn is the one-gap dragon, ikken-ryu. Place your dragon — a promoted rook — on the king's file or rank with exactly one empty square between them. The dragon covers every square along its lines plus the four squares diagonally next to it, so it controls the gap and the escape square beside it in one go.

Put the dragon right next to the king and, with nothing behind it, the king simply takes it. Leave one square between them and the king cannot reach it. The only defence is to drop a piece into the gap, and that piece is then pinned in place, so the attack keeps going. In this position Black has five different checks, but only moving the dragon to 3a is mate — White has nothing in hand to drop in the gap.

Short tsume problems, mate in one and mate in three, are the quickest way to learn these shapes. Once the common ones — the gold in front, beside or behind, and the one-gap dragon — are familiar, counting a king's escape squares in a real game shows you the one move that finishes it.

Try it on the board

Pick a lesson and the board starts from that position. Start over as often as you like.

Now put it to work

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Last updated 2026-09-13 · Run by Qdan, Inc.