Shogi, or Japanese chess, lets you capture pieces, drop them back into play, and attack the opposing king. Play Shogi (Japanese Chess) free in your browser against adjustable AI. No download or account.
Play the computer in your browser at ten levels, from a first game up to YaneuraOu with Suisho 5, with all four drop restrictions live — nifu, dead pieces, uchifuzume and no drops out of double check. Hint covers moves and drops alike. Tsume puzzles daily.
How You WinCheckmate the opposing king (gyoku): leave it in check with no way to capture, block, or run. A player who has no legal move at all also loses. Shogi has no stalemate draw and no insufficient-material draw.
Hint marks the move or drop the engine recommends, and Undo takes back the last round. After the game, Review opens it from History move by move, and Analyze marks the moves that went wrong — a missed mate, a move that allows mate, a piece left to be taken — and shows a better one.
It is free, with no download and no account: the board opens in the browser on a computer or a phone. The shogi AI runs on your own device, and an unfinished game comes back when you return in the same browser.
Yes. Choose Sente or Gote under Side and the computer takes the other side. There are ten levels and a first visit starts at level 2; start at 1 or 2 if you are new, and move up when you win comfortably. You can swap sides in the middle of a game, or switch to 2 players and carry on from the same position.
Two open-source engines. Levels 1 to 8 use Fairy-Stockfish with its classical evaluation, held back by its skill setting, search depth and the number of candidate moves, so their strength does not depend on how fast your device is. Levels 9 and 10 use YaneuraOu with the Suisho 5 neural-network evaluation, downloaded (about 62 MB) the first time you pick one of them: level 9 caps the search depth, while level 10 has no cap and thinks for about 2 seconds a move. Both run locally in your browser.
Yes. Set Side to 2 players and take turns on the same phone or computer, Sente first. There are no online rooms, so you cannot play someone who is not with you.
A captured piece loses its promotion and joins your hand, and on any turn you may drop it on an empty square instead of moving. Dropped pieces always arrive unpromoted. The four limits are nifu (no two unpromoted pawns of yours on one file), dead pieces (no pawn or lance on the last rank, no knight on the last two), uchifuzume (no mate by a dropped pawn), and no drop while in double check.
Yes. Puzzles & practice has more than 900 tsume (mating) problems. Work through them as a level path of 60 stages, or solve the daily puzzle. They are free and need no account.
Yes. Review opens History, where every game played on this device can be replayed move by move, with your wins, draws and losses at each level. Analyze has the engine mark the moves that went wrong — a missed mate, a move that allows mate, a piece left to be taken — and show a better one. Games are stored only in your browser.
No. Hint can be used on any move: it runs the current level's engine at full strength and covers drops as well as moves. Undo takes back the last round and can be pressed again to go further back.
Checkmate the other king, or leave your opponent with no legal move. There is no stalemate and no draw for lack of material. The fourth repetition of the same position is a draw (sennichite) unless one side checked on every move, and that side loses. A king deep in the enemy camp can claim a win by the 27-point declaration, and a game that reaches 500 moves is a draw.
Shogi is also called Japanese chess. It is played on a 9 × 9 board, captured pieces come back as drops, and most pieces promote inside the last three ranks. Both sides use the same wedge-shaped pieces, told apart by which way they point. Having no legal move loses in shogi but draws in chess. Chess and Xiangqi (Chinese chess) each have their own page on this site.