The five pieces you already know

Try it on the board

Rook and bishop: no changes at all

The rook (飛 hisha) slides any distance along a rank or file. The bishop (角 kakugyo) slides any distance along a diagonal. Blocking, pins, skewers, batteries - every technique you have transfers untouched.

What changes is scarcity. Each side has one of each, they are the only long-range pieces in the position, and they are worth roughly what a queen is worth to you. Losing a rook for a silver is a disaster, not an exchange.

The king: same moves, no castling

One square in any of the eight directions, and losing it loses the game. The difference is that there is no castling move to tuck it away in: king safety is a construction project, covered in the last lesson.

One small thing: the two kings carry different kanji. The stronger player or Gote takes 玉 (gyoku) and the other 王 (ou). It is etiquette, not a rule - they are the same piece.

• Rook (飛): unchanged. Promotes to the Dragon King, which adds the king step on the diagonals.
• Bishop (角): unchanged. Promotes to the Dragon Horse, which adds the king step orthogonally.
• King (玉 / 王): unchanged, but there is no castling.
• Knight (桂): two jumps only, both forward. It can never retreat, and on the last two ranks it must promote or it would be stranded.
• Pawn (歩): one square forward, captures forward. No double step, no diagonal capture, no en passant, no pawn chains.

The knight and pawn are not your knight and pawn

Both have been cut down, and both are the pieces chess players misplay for their first dozen games. The knight (桂 keima) still jumps over pieces - it is the only piece that does - but only to two squares, both forward.

The pawn (歩 fuhyo) is the bigger adjustment: it captures straight ahead, on the same square it moves to. There is no diagonal capture, which means pawns do not defend each other and pawn chains do not exist. Nothing you know about pawn structure applies.