Shogi openings for beginners: Static Rook, Ranging Rook and the first lines to learn

Every shogi opening starts with one decision: does your rook stay where it started, or does it move across the board? Shogi players call the two answers Static Rook (居飛車, ibisha) and Ranging Rook (振り飛車, furibisha), and nearly every named opening belongs to one of them. Once you know which family you are in, you know roughly where your king will castle and which file your attack will come down.

Moves below are in English (Hodges) notation, so P-7f is a pawn moving to 7f and Bx8h+ is a bishop capturing on 8h and promoting. If that is new, the piece and notation guide explains it in five minutes. Black (sente) moves first.

Static Rook or Ranging Rook

Each player chooses separately, so there are three kinds of game: Double Static Rook, Static Rook against Ranging Rook, and Double Ranging Rook (Wikipedia’s overview of shogi openings traces how the balance between them has shifted since the Edo period). The rule underneath both families is the same: keep the king away from the rook, because the rook’s file is where the fighting starts.

The main openings at a glance

The Ranging Rook names count files from Gote’s side, which is why Black’s Fourth File Rook sits on the sixth file (Wikipedia’s Ranging Rook page has the full list). Two more names you will meet early are attacking methods rather than openings. Climbing Silver (棒銀, bōgin) walks the right silver up the rook’s file, S-3h, S-2g, S-2f, S-2e, to support a break on the second file. Right Fourth File Rook (右四間飛車) moves the rook to 4h to hit the opponent’s fourth file, and still counts as Static Rook.

Two lines, move by move

Fourth File Rook into a Mino castle

Black plays Ranging Rook from move one:

1. P-7f P-8d 2. P-6f P-8e 3. B-7g P-3d 4. R-6h S-6b 5. K-4h K-4b 6. K-3h K-3b 7. K-2h P-6d 8. S-3h G6a-5b 9. P-6e Px6e 10. Rx6e S-6c 11. G6i-5h

• 3. B-7g comes before the king walks. Gote’s rook pawn on 8e wants P-8f, and from 7g the bishop covers 8f, so that exchange never works. Walk the king first and P-8f opens the eighth file straight into your camp.
• 4. R-6h puts the rook behind the pawn on 6f. From here rook and pawn work as one unit: every quiet move that follows prepares P-6e.
• 5–8. The king walks to 2h and the right silver steps to 3h. King 2h, silver 3h, golds 4i and 5h is the Mino castle, and it is nearly finished before the first exchange.
• 9. P-6e is the break the setup was built for. If Gote does not take, Px6d wins a pawn; after Px6e Rx6e the rook stands on the fifth rank with a pawn in hand.
• 11. G6i-5h completes the Mino.

The plan fits in one sentence: castle on the right, then open the file your rook is standing on.

The Bishop Exchange

1. P-7f P-8d 2. G-7h P-3d 3. P-2f G-3b 4. P-2e Bx8h+ 5. Sx8h S-2b 6. S-3h S-7b 7. P-4f P-6d 8. K-6h K-4b

• 2. G-7h before anything else. The gold defends 8h, so the silver can recapture there.
• 4… Bx8h+ is the exchange. Gote takes first so that Black has to spend a move recapturing.
• 5. Sx8h recaptures with the silver, not the gold. Both sides now hold a bishop in hand, and a bishop dropped into a gap in your camp can fork two pieces at once.
• 6. S-3h is the silver every Bishop Exchange plan depends on. It climbs to 2f (Climbing Silver), rushes to 4f (Rushing Silver) or settles on 5f (Reclining Silver), as set out on Wikipedia’s Bishop Exchange page.
• 8. K-6h starts the king’s walk to safety, because with a bishop in each hand a king left in the open is the first target.

Which opening should you learn first?

Pick one family and stay with it until you know its castle and its main attack without thinking. Switching openings every game means you never get past move ten in any of them.

If you like to build first and hit back later, Fourth File Rook has one of the shortest plans to learn: the line above is the whole idea, and the Mino castle takes only a handful of moves. If you would rather attack, play Static Rook with Climbing Silver. One silver and one file give you a plan you can start on move one, and it teaches the pawn exchanges and drops on the second file that come up in most Static Rook openings.

Leave Side Pawn Capture and the deep Bishop Exchange lines for later. Both turn sharp early, with pieces in hand on both sides, so one missed drop can decide the game. That kind of mistake shows up clearly in an engine review, as the post on reading a shogi engine evaluation explains, but it is easier to avoid while you are still learning how a castle holds together.

How Shogiful teaches openings

Shogiful splits opening study into three parts.

The Openings lesson track has ten lessons. It starts with “Choosing your rook” and covers Static Rook basics, the Ranging Rook families, Fourth File, Central, Third File and Opposing Rook, Climbing Silver and the Bishop Exchange. It ends with “Choosing your opening”, which gives the same advice as above: one family, its castle and its main attack.

Joseki Lab has 55 opening lines in 11 families: Static Rook, Ranging Rook, Fourth File Rook, Third File Rook, Central Rook, Side Pawn Capture, Bishop Exchange, Yagura, Right Fourth File, Anaguma Openings and Double Static Rook. You play your own side’s moves and the opponent’s replies are played for you. Short notes appear at the moments that matter, under “What just happened”. If you play a known sideline, the drill explains how it is punished instead of just marking it wrong. Where the opponent has a second main defence, a card shows it to you. Lines you miss come back sooner through spaced repetition. The two lines above are Joseki Lab lines, and the move notes are condensed from their commentary.

The lines did not always go that far. Until early August, 38 of the 55 contained no capture at all. Each one built the formation and stopped exactly where the real game starts, so the Climbing Silver line ended the moment the silver reached 2f. A two-star App Store review pointed it out before any test did. Every line now plays through the first exchange of pieces, and each family shows two defences in full.

Castle Atelier drills twelve castles, from Mino and Yagura to both Anagumas. You build them, break into them, and repair them after an intrusion. After each analysed game, Game Review shows a badge naming the castle you actually built. YaneuraOu runs the analysis on your device, so there is no account and no server.

Shogiful is free to download, with Premium from $1.99 a month, $9.99 a year or $19.99 once. If you would rather try openings against people, the online platforms such as Lishogi and 81Dojo are built for that, and the guide to shogi apps for iPhone covers the rest of the field.