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Dai shogi


Dai shōgi (大将棋, 'large chess') or Kamakura dai shōgi (鎌倉大将棋) is a board game native to Japan. It is similar to standard shogi (sometimes called Japanese chess) in its rules and game play. Dai shogi is only one of several large board shogi variants. Its name means large shogi, from a time when there were three sizes of shogi games. Early versions of dai shogi can be traced back to the Kamakura period, from about AD 1230. It was the historical basis for the later, much more popular variant chu shogi.

Other than the additional pieces (the iron and stone generals, knights, angry boars, cat swords, evil wolves, violent oxen, and flying dragons, which all promote to gold generals), the rules of dai shogi are thought to have corresponded very closely to those of chu shogi.

The objective of the game is to capture the opponent's king and, if present, the prince, which counts as a second king; or to capture all the other pieces leaving a bare king or bare prince. Unlike standard shogi, pieces may not be dropped back into play after capture.

Two players alternate, making a move with Black moving first. (The pieces are not differentiated by color; the traditional chess terms "Black" and "White" are only used to indicate who plays first, and to differentiate the sides during discussions of the game.) A move consists of moving a piece either to an empty square on the board or to a square occupied by an opposing piece, thus capturing that piece; and optionally of promoting the moving piece, if the move enters the promotion zone, or if it is a capture and any part of it is in the promotion zone.

Two players, Black and White (or 先手 sente and 後手 gote), play on a board ruled into a grid of 15 ranks (rows) and 15 files (columns) with a total of 225 squares. The squares are undifferentiated by marking or color, unlike a Western chess board.

Each player has a set of 65 pieces of 29 different types. In all, a player must remember 36 different moves. Each piece has its name written on it in Japanese kanji. The writing is typically in black. On the reverse side of most pieces there are characters to indicate the piece's promoted rank, typically written in red. The pieces are wedge-shaped and their orientation indicates which player they belong to, as they point toward the opposing side. The pieces are of slightly different sizes, from largest to smallest (most to least powerful) they are:


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