Promotion
Like other large board shogi variants, this game uses the promotion-by-capture rule. When a piece first makes a capture, it promotes. (If it can: a few important pieces do not promote.) Promotion has the effect of changing how a piece moves. See the table above for what each piece promotes to. Promotion is effected by turning the piece over after it moves, revealing the name of its promoted rank. Promotion is both compulsory and permanent.
This is all very different from smaller shogi variants, where pieces promote when they cross a promotion zone (the enemy camp), and where promotion is optional. The dots on the taikyoku shogi board that would represent promotion zones in other games are only there as placement guides for the initial setup of the two camps.
Some pieces promote, or demote, to a piece that exists in the initial setup of the board. However, such a piece cannot then promote a second time as its namesake does. For example, a bishop promotes to a dragon horse. However, while a ferocious leopard promotes to a bishop on its first capturing move, it does not promote to a dragon horse on its second. Rather, it remains a bishop for the rest of the game.
If a Lance, oxcart, savage tiger, side dragon, running wolf, knight, angry boar, evil wolf, flying cock, wood general, stone general, iron general, dog, pawn, running leopard, free wolf or raiding falcon reaches the furthest rank; it must remain there until it captures or is captured.
Read more about this topic: Taikyoku Shogi, Rules of The Game
Famous quotes containing the word promotion:
“I am asked if I would not be gratified if my friends would procure me promotion to a brigadier-generalship. My feeling is that I would rather be one of the good colonels than one of the poor generals. The colonel of a regiment has one of the most agreeable positions in the service, and one of the most useful. “A good colonel makes a good regiment,” is an axiom.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Parents can fail to cheer your successes as wildly as you expected, pointing out that you are sharing your Nobel Prize with a couple of other people, or that your Oscar was for supporting actress, not really for a starring role. More subtly, they can cheer your successes too wildly, forcing you into the awkward realization that your achievement of merely graduating or getting the promotion did not warrant the fireworks and brass band.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)