Practical vs Composed Tsume Shogi: What the Two Labels Mean

Japanese tsume shogi books often carry the word 実戦型 (jissen-gata, “practical type”) in the title. Makoto Nakahara’s Jissen-gata Tsume Shogi: Mate in 3, 5 and 7 (2006) is one example (CiNii). Japanese Wikipedia’s entry on the term (in Japanese) describes these as problems based on positions likely to appear in a real game, and says there is no strict definition. English Wikipedia’s Tsume shogi makes a similar split: most problems present a situation that might occur in a game, though “unrealistic artistic tsume shogi exists”.

In this article, “composed” means a problem made to show a line or an arrangement of pieces, with no concern for whether it could come up in a game. Practical problems have composers too and can also be called works, so the difference here is in how the board is built.

If you are looking for a book, How to Choose Your First Tsume Shogi Book covers that. Here the two types are compared on the board. Both positions were made for this article, both are mate in 5, and every variation has been checked. If the move notation is new to you, see How to Read Tsume Shogi Solutions.

What a practical board looks like

The Japanese entry lists three features:

• The problem fits in the top right (or top left) quarter of the board.
• The defender has a lance on 1一 and a knight on 2一. They may have moved, and a silver on 3一 is common too.
• Several pawns sit on ranks 3 to 5.

That is the corner of a castled king after a game has been going for a while. Here is a position built to those features.

Position A: defender has king 1二, gold 2二, knight 2一, lance 1一, pawns 1三 and 3三. You have silver 2四 and knight 1四. In hand: a silver.

The answer is ▲2二桂成 △同玉 ▲2三銀打 △3一玉 ▲3二金, five moves.

The knight takes the gold and promotes. Nothing protects it, but 2三 is covered by the silver on 2四 and every other square around the king holds a defending piece, so the king has to capture. After ▲2三銀打, the only escape is 3一. Then the gold you took on the first move drops on 3二, protected by the silver on 2三, and that is mate. Without either silver or the knight, there is no mate in 5.

The pawns on 1三 and 3三 are different. Take both off the board and the same line still mates. In this line they are close to decoration.

Decoration pieces

Japanese Wikipedia’s Tsume shogi entry (in Japanese) calls a piece that changes nothing whether it is there or not a 飾り駒 (kazari-goma, a decoration piece). As a principle, these are not placed on the board, but the entry adds that practical problems sometimes include them on purpose.

The board in a real endgame is full of pieces that have nothing to do with the mate. Sorting out which pieces matter, as with the pawns in Position A, is part of the reading in a practical problem.

What a composed board looks like

Position B: defender has only the king on 5二. You have bishop 4四 and knight 3四. In hand: a gold.

Three pieces on the board, counting the king. No pawns and no castle. A game would almost never reach this shape.

The answer is ▲5三金 △5一玉 ▲4二桂成 △6一玉 ▲6二金, five moves.

The first move drops the gold right in front of the king, protected by the bishop, so the king has to run to the first rank. △4一玉 is met by ▲4二金 and △6一玉 by ▲6二金, each mate at once. △5一玉 lasts longest.

After △5一玉, ▲4二桂成 gives check. The gold on 5三 protects the promoted knight, so the king can only go to 6一. Then ▲6二金 moves the gold off 5三, which opens the bishop’s diagonal, and the bishop now protects the gold on 6二. The bishop never moves in the whole line and supports the gold twice, on the first move and the last.

Without the gold, the bishop or the knight, there is no mate in 5, and nothing is left over at the end. Because decoration pieces are not placed as a principle, you can start reading a composed board on the assumption that each piece has a job. In Position B, asking “why is the bishop on 4四?” and “why is the knight on 3四?” already gives you a lead.

Position B is a tiny example. Real works may build repeating patterns into the line, or run to an extraordinary length.

The world of composed problems

Composed tsume shogi has a long history. The publisher’s description of a Chikuma paperback anthology names two collections said to be the greatest ever made: Ito Kanju’s Shogi Zuko, with its 611-move mate, and the third Ito Sokan’s Shogi Muso (Chikuma Shobo, in Japanese). The All Japan Tsume Shogi Federation’s site says Kanju was the younger brother of the third Sokan, is said to have composed the 611-move problem as a boy, and presented Shogi Zuko in 1755 (in Japanese).

The same site’s history page records the first issue of the specialist magazine Tsume Shogi Paradise in April 1950. The Kanju Prize carries Kanju’s name, and the professional Kensuke Kitahama calls it the summit of the tsume shogi world. In the same article he describes a special prize work by Koji Tanigawa whose starting board holds only a king and pawns, with eight golds and silvers in hand (Bunshun Online, in Japanese).

Some works exist to show a condition. The best known is 煙詰 (kemuri-zume, smoke mate). Japanese Wikipedia’s entry defines it as a problem that starts with all the pieces on the board and ends with the minimum number needed for mate.

A confusing term

The word 実戦 (“actual game”) also turns up in something quite different. 玉方実戦初形 is a problem where the defender’s pieces on ranks 1 to 3 stand in their starting arrangement, according to the Japanese entry.

Kunio Naito published Zushiki Hyakuban in 2005, a collection that includes this type and its counterpart for the attacker. He set tsume shogi problems for the Kobe Shimbun newspaper for 55 years, 2,746 in all (Kobe Shimbun NEXT, in Japanese). These works take the opening arrangement as a condition, so they are not “practical” in the sense of resembling an endgame.

Which to solve

The Japanese Tsume shogi entry says the form probably began as practice for endgame strength in ordinary shogi, and is now an independent field as a puzzle. Those two sides give a way to choose.

One way to divide it: start with practical problems if you want to spot mates in your own endgames, and go to composed ones if you want to enjoy the mechanisms of a line and the arrangement of pieces. How tsume shogi carries over to games is in Does Tsume Shogi Make You Stronger?

The Japanese entry on practical problems adds a note about positions with a castled king. Those collected in books of tactics are meant for use in real games, so some leave pieces in hand or have more than one mating line. The conventions are in The Finer Rules of Tsume Shogi, and alternative mating lines are in What Is Yozume?

On difficulty, Naito said this in the same article: “Actually an easy, enjoyable work, a work with a good aftertaste, is the best, but making a hard one is the easier thing to do.” (My translation.)

Solving in Shogi365

Shogi365 contains tsume shogi from mate in 3 to mate in 9, with 1,000 problems for each length, 4,000 in total. You choose by length.

You don’t look up the answer. You solve by playing on the board yourself. Any check, right or wrong, can be played, and the defender replies with the defence that lasts longest. Each problem has one first move and no alternative mating line, and none of the attacking pieces is wasted. After solving, Review lets you step back and forward one move at a time, so you can see what each piece was doing.

All problems are free to solve. The app shows ads, and a one-time Remove Ads purchase turns them off. How to use the app is in Getting Started with Shogi365.