Kozeriai

• Kozeriai means "skirmish" in japanese and that is also the name of this variant of Shogi.

• It is a fast game, every decision and move immediately requires an answer from the enemy.

• To play Kozeriai you first have to know how to play Shogi, if you don´t there are excellent articles presented here at the chessvariant pages.

• Kozeriai is played on a smaller board and with fewer pieces than in Shogi, but important features from the original game are intact:
  1. All types off pieces from the original game are represented.
  2. The position of pieces in the beginning of the game follow the pattern of that in the original game.
  3. All rules of Shogi are followed except for those stipulated below.

• The game is played on a 5x7 shogi board. The 5-cell sides are turned to each player.

• The game begins with a deploy phase. Both player picks the following amount of pieces from the original Shogi game: One king (Gjoku), one gold (Kin), one silver (Gin), one knight (Kei), one lance (Kjoo), one rook (Hi), one bishop (Kaku) and five pawns (Fu).

• Each player then place the pieces on the board (one by one, alternating) according to following restrictions: On the row nearest one player the pieces king, gold, silver, knight and lance are freely distributed. On the second row the player choose freely where to put the rook and the bishop. The third row is filled up with the five pawns.

• The player who started to deploy pieces then starts the actual game by moving a piece according to the normal Shogi rules.

• The promotion zone in Kozeriai begins like in Shogi on the enemy pawn row and continues to the row nearest the enemy: In Kozeriai that means the fifth, sixth and seventh row seen from the player.

• The size of the board makes the game convenient for introductory games and/or to play when the time is limited. The size also reminds of when mating problems are presented in Shogi literature.

• There would be no surprise for me if this variant (or some very similar) already have been described somewhere else. If so: please let me know. Anyhow, this variant was ivented in March 2004 when I was introducing Shogi to my colleague Joakim Wigforss.