Stone

Shogi Strategy: Bargain Gold Generals

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 strong 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:

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