Welcome to ShogiShack!

Place to get a little knowledge about playing Shogi

Why would I want to visit this site?

If you want to get better at Shogi, learn more about it, or just simply enjoy taking a shot at new things, this is the site for you!!!

If you want to know the basic movement of each shogi pieces or learn the rules, you will not find them on this site. You can go to www.wikipedia.org and enter "Shogi" in the search box.

  1. Most people who start to play Shogi right after learning each piece's move seem to lack some fundamental philosophies on "what to do" and "what not to do." After reading this site, you will be able to judge most of these things by yourself.
  2. Most players lack knowledge of which piece to move first. I can somtimes get confused too. Do understand however,95% of the Shogi masters game start with only one of two moves. You better do the same. See here for those moves.
  3. There are "Shogi Checkmate Problems (Tsume Shogi)." These problems are similar to Chess Problems. Learning fairly short ones (usually about 3,5, or sometimes even 7 moves) will dramatically improve your closing moves. Have you ever missed a basic checkmate, and regretted it later? After doing these problems, that shouldn't be much of a problem to you anymore. See here for these moves
  4. Many of the articles on this site will use "Kifu for Flash" Shogi board applet. Please go here to learn how to navigate this applet. Pay particular attention to how to view alternative moves (if there are any), because many of play examples branches out to show variation of the moves.
  5. Since it will be impossible to explain everything on this site, I will make many references to the established shogi sites. Most of those sites are Japanese. Not Japanse? Don't dread. Even just a little bit of knowledge about Shogi could lead you to understanding the whole page. See here. A little practice and you will be amazed how much you can learn.

    Qinoa Syougi link added

    One of the link that was popular at the time was Ham Shogi where you could play shogi game with computer. No pressure, use as much time you want to make your moves and so on, and it was very friendly to novice shogi player. However, this application was based on Adobe flash player and […]

    Saturday, Jul 4 2020

    7th year update

    It has been 7 year since my last post.  My work life was getting crazy and I really did not have time to study Shogi for the longest time.  Now because of the COVID situation, I have some extra time but no money :).  So I try to tweak the site UI and the first […]

    Monday, Jun 29 2020

    The art of one minute Shogi Blitz

    I thought this kind of game play was only possible in Manga World (81 diver – There is an episode of main character playing one minute Shogi play). This maybe an old news for some of you, but I have just found in the video clip on Youtube where professional players were actually doing one […]

    Thursday, Aug 8 2013

    Shogi maze puzzles added

    Its been a long time since I started to receive weekly email newsletters  from the site owner of Shogitown.com.   This site was established for more than 10 years ago, and is run by a person who also runs real dojo or Shogi Salon in Saitama prefecture, Japan.   (when I first started this site, […]

    Wednesday, Dec 12 2012

Other Useful sites

The one site I wholeheartedly recommend is

This site introduces you to the variety of Shogi articles. In particular, You will want to take a look at "Basic Shogi information available in English on Internet (1)" for general Shogi information and "Basic Shogi information available in English on Internet (2)" for English literature on various Shogi techniques available on-line .

See here for more reference

Frequency of Updates
Updates to this site may not be as frequently as I would like to have. In the meantime, please refer to the site above. I am certain you will find values.
You have to get used to the Classic Kanji Pieces
Like symbols better than Kanji? Too bad. Your going to have to get used to the Classic Kanji Pieces. Sure, it is much easier to see symbolic pieces rather than pieces with Kanji characters on them. However, most of referencematerials that are available online are shown with Classic styles. If you don't get used toit, then you'll regret it later. It's better to learn now, than later. If you don't know what every piece stands for, then your opponent has a huge advantage over you, and your basically screwed. Trust me. Learning the Kanji on the pieces are easy.
By the way, you need to turn on Asian character support for Classic style layout. Otherwise the PlayOK/Kurnik site will not show what pieces you have on hand. Please refer to this for how to turn on Asian character support on your PC.