Sho shogi

Shō shōgi (小将棋 'small chess') is a 16th-century form of shogi (Japanese chess), and the immediate predecessor of the modern game. It was played on a 9×9 board with the same setup as in modern shogi, except that an extra piece stood in front of the king: A 'drunk elephant' that promoted into what was effectively a second king. (While 9×9 may not seem 'small', it was smaller than the other shogi variants prevalent at the time.) The drunk elephant was eliminated by the Emperor Go-Nara (reigned 1526–1557), and it is assumed that the drop rule was introduced at about the same time, giving rise to shogi as we know it today.

The objective of the game is to capture your opponent's king and crown prince (if present) or all other pieces.

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

Each player has a set of 21 wedge-shaped pieces, of slightly different sizes. From largest to smallest (most to least powerful) they are:

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.

Listed here are the pieces of the game with their Japanese representation:

English speakers sometimes refer to promoted bishops as horses and promoted rooks as dragons, after their Japanese names, and generally use the Japanese name tokin for promoted pawns. Silver generals and gold generals are commonly referred to simply as silvers and golds.

The characters inscribed on the backs of the pieces to indicate promoted rank may be in red ink, and are usually cursive. The characters on the backs of the pieces that promote to gold generals are cursive versions of 金 'gold', becoming more cursive (more abbreviated) as the value of the original piece decreases. These abbreviated characters have these equivalents in print: 全 for promoted silver, 今 for promoted knight, 仝 for promoted lance, and 个 for promoted pawn (tokin). Another convention has abbreviated versions of the original characters, with a reduced number of strokes: 圭 for promoted knight, 杏 for promoted lance, with promoted silver the same 全 as above, and と for tokin.

...
Wikipedia