Lesson 4 of 9
Promotion
Promoting means flipping the tile over for a better move. Almost every piece can do it, it is almost always optional, and knowing when to decline is already playing shogi.
Try it on the board
Where and when
The promotion zone is the three ranks on your opponent's side - a, b and c for the player moving up. You may promote when you enter the zone, when you move inside it, and also when you leave it.
The choice is made at the end of the move and applies to that move only. Decline now and you can still promote on the next move that touches the zone. On the board above the zone is marked for you.
What each piece becomes
Rook and bishop keep their old move and gain the king step: they become the Dragon King (龍) and the Dragon Horse (馬), the two strongest pieces in the game. The smaller pieces all converge on the gold general.
King and gold never promote - they are already what they are. And a promoted piece that gets captured returns to the hand unpromoted: a captured tokin is just a pawn again.
- Rook 飛 becomes Dragon King 龍: everything the rook did, plus one diagonal step.
- Bishop 角 becomes Dragon Horse 馬: everything the bishop did, plus one orthogonal step.
- Silver 銀, knight 桂, lance 香 and pawn 歩 all become gold generals.
- King 玉 and gold general 金 never promote.
When promotion is compulsory
Promotion is optional except where the piece would be left with no legal move for the rest of the game: pawn and lance on the last rank, knight on either of the last two. There it is compulsory, and the board promotes for you.
Declining has real uses. An unpromoted silver still moves on the backward diagonals, which a gold cannot; and an unpromoted knight is still the only piece that jumps.