Tsume Shogi for Kids: What Age, and How Many Moves to Start With

The Japan Shogi Association runs the TableMark Children’s Tournament (in Japanese), which is open to “elementary school children and younger, including preschoolers”. It is split into a lower-grade section (grade 3 and below) and an upper-grade section (grades 4 to 6), and the venue even has a “tsume shogi quiz corner”. In Japan, plenty of children play shogi before they start school, and tsume shogi, the mating problems, is one of the ways in.

So from what age should a child try tsume shogi? I don’t think age is what decides it. In this post I write about what to look for instead, how many moves to start with, and how a parent can help without knowing the answers.

What to look for before age

Before starting tsume shogi, I think it helps to check that a child can do three things.

Knows how the pieces move. Tsume shogi is a game of counting what each piece controls. While the difference between gold and silver, or the way the knight jumps, is still fuzzy, a child can see the right move and still not understand why it is mate. I wrote about an order for learning the pieces in How shogi pieces move. If a 9×9 board feels like too much, you can start with Dobutsu Shogi.

Can tell check from mate. Check means the king could be taken next move. Mate means there is no way at all to get out of check. The king moves away, the checking piece is captured, or something is placed in between. When none of the three is possible, it is mate. If your child can say these three in their own words, that is enough.

Knows that captured pieces can be dropped. Many tsume shogi problems end with a drop from hand. If a child has never dropped a piece in a game, show them the rule once first: a captured piece becomes yours, and you can put it on almost any empty square.

It is fine if your child cannot read square names like 5二 at first. In Japanese diagrams the ranks are written in kanji numerals (一, 二, 三), which small children find hard to read. At the start, a parent pointing and saying “here” is enough.

Start with 1-move tsume

If you are starting, I think 1-move tsume is the right place.

A 1-move tsume is solved when a single move gives mate. Here is an example. Squares are written the Japanese way: 5一 means file 5, rank 1, and rank 1 is the defender’s back rank.

Position: Defender’s king on 5一. Attacker’s pawn on 5三. In hand: a gold.

Dropping the gold on 5二 is mate. The gold covers the squares beside the king and diagonally in front of it, and the pawn on 5三 protects the gold, so the king cannot take it. The king is on the bottom rank, so it cannot step back either. This shape, a gold on the king’s head, is called 頭金 (atama-kin). I collected the basic mating shapes in Basic checkmate shapes in shogi.

The good thing about 1-move tsume is that you do not have to read the opponent’s reply. You only check, square by square around the king, whether it can escape after your move. That habit of checking is the most important part of thinking in tsume shogi. Books of 1-move tsume written for children are sold in Japan as well.

To be honest, Shogi365, the app I make, has no 1-move tsume. The easiest level is 3-move tsume. I left 1-move problems out as too easy, but for a child who has just learned shogi, I think 1-move problems first would be a gentler start. My suggestion is to begin 1-move tsume with a book, and move on to the app’s 3-move problems once that feels comfortable.

When to move on to 3-move tsume

When your child solves 1-move tsume smoothly and can explain why it is mate, I think it is time for 3-move tsume. A good sign is whether they can say on their own, “it can’t run anywhere, and it can’t take.”

A 3-move tsume is check, the defender’s reply, and mate. The difference from 1-move tsume is that you have to think about one move by the opponent. This is where many children get stuck. The correct first move often looks like giving a piece away for nothing, and adults do not see it at first either.

When your child is stuck, I think it is fine to set the pieces up on a real board and actually move them. Reading in your head can come later, once they are used to it. How to read a 3-move tsume is in Tsume shogi for beginners, and the common sacrifices are in Basic tsume shogi tesuji.

How to help without knowing the answer

A parent does not need to know much shogi to keep a child company with tsume. You do not have to give the answer. Being the one who asks questions is enough.

Ask them to name every check. In tsume shogi, every attacking move is a check. If you ask, “Tell me all the moves that give check,” your child will look for candidates in order. They go through the pieces they can drop and the pieces they can move, one by one, so there is less random guessing.

Ask them to count the king’s escapes. When your child has chosen a move, ask, “Then where can the king go?” If you watch them check the squares around the king one by one with a finger, you can see where they missed something even without knowing the answer.

Look at the answer together at the end. Only open the book’s solution after your child has decided, “This is mate.” If they were right, ask them to say once more why it is mate. If not, set up the correct move on the board and check together how the king loses its escapes.

Short sessions are fine. Even a few problems a day, kept up, help the shapes become visible. I wrote about how tsume helps in real games in Does tsume shogi make you stronger?.

If you use the app

Shogi365 is a tsume shogi app with 1,000 puzzles each of 3-, 5-, 7- and 9-move tsume. Here are the facts that seem relevant when a child uses it.

• Moves that are not checks cannot be played. If you try, the board flashes red and shows “That move is not a check.” It does not count as a failure.
• Any check can be played, right or wrong, and the defender replies automatically. If there is no mate within the move count, the app shows “No mate…”, and you can retry up to three times. Even if the parent does not know the answer, the board decides whether it is mate.
• A hint lights up the piece to move and the square it goes to. The player still makes the move.
• In Settings, “Show legal moves” marks the squares the selected piece can reach. Piece faces can be shown in two characters (歩兵) or one character (歩).
• The daily challenge comes from the 3-, 5- and 7-move levels. For children, I think starting from the Easy level (3-move tsume) suits them better.

The App Store age rating is 4+, and the app shows ads. The ads can be removed with a one-time purchase. On an iPad, Apple’s Ask to Buy and Screen Time settings can stop children from buying things without asking. I wrote about them in Preventing kids’ in-app purchases on iPad.