Practical Tips for Using Shogi365 Every Day

Shogi365 is simple to operate: pick a difficulty, play checks until the king is mated. What decides whether it helps your shogi is how you spend the few minutes around each puzzle. These are the habits I would suggest to a friend. Treat them as suggestions, not rules.

Read the Whole Line Before the First Move

The board lets you play any check, and that is a temptation. It is easy to start tapping and let the defender show you what happens. You will learn something that way, but less than you think.

Try this instead. Before touching a piece, read the whole line in your head, including the defender’s best answers. Then play it. If the king escapes, you know exactly which step of your reading was wrong. On a mate in 3 this takes seconds. On a mate in 7 it is the whole exercise.

Count the King’s Escape Squares First

Before looking for a check, look at the king. Which squares can it reach, and which are already covered? This is the oldest advice in tsume shogi and it still works.

Every puzzle in Shogi365 uses every piece on the board and in hand. None of them is decoration. So if a piece seems to be doing nothing in your plan, your plan is probably not the right one. Asking what each piece is there for is often the fastest way to the first move.

Let the Failures Teach You

When a line runs out without mate, the puzzle fails and you can retry from the start, up to three times. I think of the failed attempt as the most useful part of the puzzle.

Watch where the king goes. The defender resists as long as your line still forces mate and escapes once it does not, so the moment of escape marks the move where your idea broke down. On the retry, start your thinking from that move, not from the beginning.

Spend Hints on First Moves

You start with ten hints, and you earn another each time you solve the daily challenge. That is a steady but modest supply, so it is worth thinking about where they go.

A hint blinks the piece and the square, and then you make the move yourself. On the first move of a longer puzzle, that one piece of information often opens the whole line, and you still have to find the rest. On the last move of a mate in 3, a hint mostly just finishes the puzzle for you. I would suggest using a hint only after a real failed attempt, and preferably early in the line.

Keep the Daily Puzzle Separate

The daily challenge is the same for everyone and resets at midnight UTC, which is 9 in the morning in Japan. Its difficulty is chosen for you from mate in 3, 5 and 7, never 9.

I would suggest doing the daily puzzle first, before any others, as a small fixed point in the day. It grows the streak, and it earns the hint that you may want later for a harder puzzle. If you solve other puzzles afterward, they are extra.

Two Characters or One

Piece faces can show two characters (歩兵) or one (歩). If you are still learning the pieces, two characters remove a source of mistakes. Once you know them, one character makes the board quieter and closer to how problems are printed in books and magazines. Switching is in Settings, and the change does not affect anything else.

Turn Off Legal Move Markers When You Are Ready

Show legal moves marks every square the selected piece can reach. It is kind to beginners. But part of solving tsume shogi is seeing those squares yourself, especially for dropped pieces and for knights. When mate in 3 starts to feel comfortable, try a week with the markers off.

Leave Ask before promoting on. When promoting and not promoting are both legal, the app asks you. With it off, the piece always promotes, and in tsume shogi a non-promotion is sometimes the key move.

Move Up When the Average Time Drops

The stats screen shows solved count, best time and average time for each difficulty. The average is the number I would watch. When your average on one difficulty falls and stays low, it is probably time for the next one.

Going from mate in 3 to mate in 5 is a bigger step than it sounds, because the defender has more room to resist. Expect the first few Medium puzzles to feel slow. That is normal, and the Easy puzzles will still be there when you want a lighter day.

Stop Before It Becomes Staring

Some puzzles do not open, however long you look. After a while, the looking stops being useful. An interrupted puzzle is saved, and CONTINUE brings you back to the same position later. Coming back after a meal or the next morning often works better than ten more minutes of staring.

Where to Go Next

If you are still setting up, start with our getting started guide. To see how the app compares with books, websites and other apps, read Shogi365 vs other options, or see who the app is for. All related posts are under the Shogi365 tag.

Pick one of these to try this week. Counting the king’s escape squares is a good place to start.