Shogi Strategy: Bargain Gold Generals

Posted: March 14, 2008 | Author: Doug | Filed under: Shogi | Leave a comment »

When waging war, you must employ cunning tactics and multiple transformations in order to succeed.
– Sun-Zi, “Art of War”

A big part of playing Shogi as a game is learning to effectively promote pieces in the enemy camp. Of course, promoting a rook or bishop is a big win for you, but these pieces, if too isolated, can also become big targets if your enemy uses his defense well. Sometimes, it’s ironically better to promote the weakest pieces instead.

Here’s an example of a common strategy I use in defeating my opponents (or being defeated by them ). Here, I am attacking from above with a knight and pawn:

The silver general below is pound-for-pound stronger than either my knight or pawn, but if I move the pawn down, it promotes to a gold general:*

Now my opponent is in big trouble. If he captures the pawn/promoted-gold-general, he’ll get a pawn, but I will get a silver general, and my knight will also promote to gold. If he retreats, I have a gold-general deep in his ranks to act as a beachhead for pieces I drop. Let’s say my opponent takes the gold anyways, and my knight captures back, promoting to gold-general:

My opponent has a gold nearby, but he’s stuck. If he moves the gold to attack, or drops more pieces to defend, my knight/promoted-gold-general can be sacrificed for a trade-up. If the opponent does nothing, I will use the promoted-gold-general as a beachhead to drop/promote more pieces:

Now the opponent is really at a loss. I move the newly-dropped pawn down to become another promoted-gold-general:

If the opponent uses his real (not promoted) gold to capture, he’ll lose out in the trade. If he retreats, I can stack more and more pieces and overwhelm his defense. I like to call this the Termite Strategy: one termite can’t do much damage, but in a group, they can slowly but surely break down any structure. Even a very strong castle will get picked apart, and the opponent will lose out in each trade because he’ll sacrifice powerful pieces, while you give up cheap ones.

Small, weak pieces can band together to make a strong attack, where rooks and bishops might fail. Never underestimate the little guy.

P.S. Images were made by me using MacShogi. It’s a great program if you own a Mac. The saved games are worth it!

* – Technically, the knight could move down instead of the pawn for the same effect, though in the process, the enemy could get a captured knight rather than a pawn. Consider carefully if your enemy’s piece captures can be turned around to put you in trouble!

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