Lesson 9 of 9
Your first game
You have all the rules now. What is left is what to do with them: where to put the king, which pieces attack, and how not to lose the game in the first twenty moves.
Try it on the board
King first, attack second
Nearly every player follows the same order: open the bishop's diagonal, decide which side the rook will play on, walk the king to the opposite corner, and build a castle around him with two or three generals.
Only then does the attack start. Attacking with the king still in the centre is the mistake that decides most beginner games, and the castle is cheap: three or four moves.
One plan beats ten
Pick one castle and one opening and play a dozen games without changing anything. Repeating the same structure is what makes the patterns show up: where it is strong, where it breaks, what your opponent tends to try against it.
The Mino is the usual castle for a swinging-rook player and the Yagura for a static-rook one. The castle and opening pages on the wiki show the move order for each.
The board above is yours
It starts from the initial position, takes moves for both sides, and enforces every rule you have learned: promotion, drops, check, mate, nifu and uchifuzume. Use it to test an idea before taking it into a real game.
When you want an opponent, the lobby has five levels of computer and real people playing - running the same rules engine you have here.