Overview

Hasami Shogi is a two-player game where the player with one or fewer pieces remaining on the board at the end of the game wins. You try to win by sandwiching your opponent's pieces between your pieces to effect captures.

It is not entirely clear which Hasami Shogi rules are official. Some people play with different victory conditions and piece movement rules than those described here.

Board

The standard Hasami Shogi board size is 9x9.

Pieces

Each player starts with a number of pieces equal to the number of board columns (e.g., 9 pieces on a 9x9 board). This number changes throughout the game as a result of captures. A player's pieces start the game filling up the first board row on the player's side of the board.

Rules

1. Black moves first.
2. A piece may move as few or as many squares as desired along an unhindered straight line, either horizontally or vertically (i.e., as a rook in Chess).
3. At the end of a piece's move, all opposing pieces intervening between the moved piece and a bracketing friendly piece in the horizontal and vertical directions are captured and removed from the board.
4. The game ends when one player has one or less pieces left on the board. The player with more than one piece left wins.