HASAMI SHOGI

Probably the most famous Shogi variant in Japan. The word Hasami means sandwiching. The game is played on a Shogi board (9x9 squares). Each player has 18 stones as shown in the initial setup.

MOVE - All stones move as the chess Rook. CAPTURING - .When a player sandwiches opponent's piece(s) by two of his own pieces, he captures the sandwiched piece(s). A player can sandwich horizontally and vertically, but NOT diagonally. GOAL - A player wins when the opponent has just one stone left. EDGES - (optional rule) A stone at the edge of the board can be taken by two adjacent pieces; i.e., a stone at a1 can be captured by two stones at a2 and b1.

This type of capture is called custodian capture.

An example If it's Black turn, he may capture the white central stones by moving to [1]. The same happens to White, if he moves into [2].

A similar game is Mak-yek played in Siam (and Malaysia under the name Apit-sodok) with the same goal, on the same board, but the 18 stones of each player are placed on the first and third row. The moves are the same, but the capture is custodian and also by intervention. Intervention capture is the opposite of custodian. If a stone moves between two enemy stones, it captures both stones.

There is an hexagonal variant for Hasami Shogi, called Take (invented at 1984 by Mike Woods), which is probably a better game. Curiously, there is an old Roman game, called Latrunculi seemly very similar to Hasami Shogi, but the exact rules are not known.