Micro shogi

Micro shogi is a compact modern variant of Japanese chess played on a small board of five ranks by four files, far smaller than the nine by nine board used in standard shogi. Each of the two players controls five wedge-shaped pieces of graduated size, a king, a bishop, a gold general, a silver general and a pawn, which move according to the same rules as their counterparts in standard shogi. The variant's defining feature is its promotion mechanic: rather than promoting only within a fixed zone of the board as in standard shogi, a piece in Micro shogi automatically flips to its reverse, promoted side whenever it captures an opposing piece, and promotion is mandatory rather than optional; a piece can flip back and forth between its two states repeatedly over the course of a game. The variant also relaxes standard shogi's drop restrictions, permitting two unpromoted pawns on the same file and allowing pieces to be dropped without the usual placement limits. The game's invention is often credited to the professional shogi player Oyama Yasuharu, though this attribution is not firmly confirmed, and it was given the English name Microshogi by Kerry Handscomb of the Nine Officers Society, who is known to have owned a custom-made set by the mid-1980s.