Shogi Strategy: Drops, Castles and Beating the Computer

Updated October 2026

Shogi on this site is a full nine-by-nine game against a computer opponent, scored as a winning streak. If you know chess, the board will look familiar for about three moves, and then a captured piece reappears in the middle of your camp. This guide covers how the pieces and drops work in this version, how the computer chooses its moves, and a practical plan for building a streak without throwing games away to a single dropped piece.

Pieces at a glance

You play from the bottom of the board and move first. The computer's pieces are drawn upside down, pointing at you; promoted pieces are written in red.

• King: one step in any of the eight directions.
• Rook and bishop: slide any distance, straight lines for the rook and diagonals for the bishop, as in chess.
• Gold: one step forward, diagonally forward, sideways or straight back. It cannot step diagonally backward.
• Silver: one step forward or to any of the four diagonals. It cannot step sideways or straight back.
• Knight: jumps two squares forward and one to the side, and only forward. It is the only piece that can leap over others.
• Lance: slides straight forward any distance and never backward.
• Pawn: one step straight forward, and it also captures straight forward.

The far three rows are the promotion zone. A move that starts or ends there may promote a rook, bishop, silver, knight, lance or pawn, and the game asks you only when you genuinely have a choice. The rook becomes a dragon and the bishop a horse, each keeping its slide and gaining a one-step move in the directions it lacked. The other four all become pieces that move exactly like a gold. Promotion is automatic for a pawn or lance reaching the last row and a knight reaching either of the last two, since otherwise they could never move again.

Drops: the rule that changes everything

Anything you capture goes to your tray below the board, always in its unpromoted form. On any later turn you can spend your move placing one of those pieces on an empty square instead of moving. Tap the piece in the tray and every legal square lights up. A dropped piece always arrives unpromoted, even inside the promotion zone, and a few placements are not allowed: a pawn or lance on the last row, a knight on the last two rows, and a pawn on any column that already holds one of your own unpromoted pawns.

The game also applies the tournament rule against checkmate by pawn drop. You may drop a pawn directly in front of the enemy king to give check, but not if that leaves the king with no legal reply; such a square simply does not light up. The rule binds the computer in the same way. Checkmating by moving a pawn that is already on the board is allowed, as is a pawn-drop check the king can escape.

The practical effect of drops is that material never leaves the game. A piece you lose is not just gone; it is now in your opponent's hand, ready to appear wherever it hurts most. Before any exchange, ask what each side will be holding afterward and where those pieces could land.

How a game ends and how the streak counts

A game is won when the side to move has no legal move, which in practice means checkmate. Two rules stop endless shuffling. If the same position, including the pieces in hand and the side to move, appears for the third time, the game is drawn. It is also drawn after 60 consecutive moves without a capture, counting both players' moves, so roughly 30 each.

Your score is the number of games won in a row. A win adds one; a loss or a draw resets the streak to zero. Pressing New in the middle of a game also resets the streak, so you cannot escape a bad position by restarting. Starting the next game from the card after a win keeps your streak, and your best streak is saved on your device and can be sent to the Hall of Fame.

Understanding the computer opponent

The computer uses a short look-ahead search. While your streak is 0 or 1, it looks two moves deep: its own move and your best reply. From a streak of 2 onward it looks three moves deep. It examines captures first, and among moves that score almost exactly the same it picks one at random, so a game will not necessarily repeat move for move even if you play the same moves.

At the end of its search it judges positions by material alone, with these values: pawn 100, lance 300, knight 320, silver 500, gold 550, bishop 800, rook 950, any promoted minor piece 600, horse 1150 and dragon 1300. Pieces in hand count ten percent extra, and pieces get a tiny bonus for having advanced up the board. There is no separate term for king safety.

Three things follow for your play:

• It sees immediate tactics well. A piece left hanging will usually be taken, and a simple one-move fork will usually be answered by saving the more valuable piece.
• It misses slow plans. An attack that needs two quiet moves before it threatens anything sits beyond its view until it is too late, especially at the two-move depth of your first two games.
• It does not value shelter. Because the evaluation has no king-safety term, it will strip defenders from around its king if the material count says so, which leaves gaps for drops.

An opening plan that works

Do not race. Spend your first moves opening a line for your bishop and moving the king a couple of squares to one side, then tuck a gold and a silver in front of and beside it. A compact group of king, two golds and a silver is very hard to break with drops, because most squares next to the king are covered by more than one defender. Put your rook on the opposite side from your king so your attack and your defence do not get in each other's way.

Push the pawn in front of your rook early. If the computer trades pawns, you receive a pawn in hand, which is the most useful cheap drop in the game: it can block a file, attack a defender from directly in front, or pin a piece that would like to move.

Middle game and finishing technique

• Count hands before trading. An even trade on the board can still be bad if it gives the opponent a gold or silver to drop beside your king.
• Promote your major pieces. A dragon or horse inside the enemy camp attacks and defends at once, and losing one hands your opponent a rook or bishop to drop, so keep it supported rather than parking it alone.
• Attack with drops, not just moves. A gold dropped next to the enemy king, supported by another piece, is the classic finishing pattern. A silver dropped diagonally in front of the king covers escape squares that a gold cannot.
• Check that your king is safe first. Before each attacking move, look at what the computer holds in hand and every empty square around your king. One overlooked drop square is how most streaks end.

Take your time. There is no clock, the computer replies after a short pause, and nothing is lost by thinking. A careful game that wins in eighty moves is worth exactly as much as a brilliant one in thirty.