Amateur players are ranked from 15 ky? to 1 ky? and then from 1 dan and upwards; this is the same terminology as many other arts in Japan. Professional players operate with their own scale, from professional 4 dan and upwards to 9 dan for elite players. Amateur and professional ranks are offset.

Games between players of disparate strengths are often played with handicaps. In a handicap game, one or more of White's pieces are removed from the setup, and in exchange White plays first. Note that the missing pieces are not available for drops and play no further part in the game. The imbalance created by this method of handicapping is not as strong as it is in international chess because material advantage is not as powerful in shogi.

Common handicaps, in increasing order of severity, include:

Left lance
Bishop
Rook
Rook and left lance
Two pieces: Rook and bishop
Four pieces: Rook, bishop, and both lances
Six pieces: Rook, bishop, both lances and both knights
Other handicaps are also occasionally used. The relationship between handicaps and differences in rank is not universally agreed upon, with several systems in use.

If a jish?gi occurs in a handicap game, the removed pieces are counted as if White had them in play, or available for drops.

[edit] Game notation
The method used in English-language texts to express shogi moves was established by George Hodges in 1976. It is derived from the algebraic notation used for chess, but differs in several respects. It is not used in Japanese-language texts, as it is no more concise than kanji.

A typical move might be notated P-8f. The first letter represents the piece moved: P for Pawn. (There is also L lance, N knight, S silver, G gold, B bishop, R rook, K king, as above.) Promoted pieces are indicated by a + in front of the letter: +P is a tokin (promoted pawn).

Following the abbreviation for the piece is a symbol for the type of move: ? for a simple move, x for a capture, or * for a drop. Next is the square on which the piece lands. This is indicated by a numeral for the file and a lowercase letter for the rank, with 1a being the top right corner (as seen by Black) and 9i being the bottom left corner. This is based on Japanese convention, which, however, uses Japanese numerals instead of letters. For example, square 2c is "2?" in Japanese.

If a move entitles the player to promote, then a + is added to the end if the promotion was taken, or an = if it was declined. For example, Nx7c= indicates a knight capturing on 7c without promoting.

In cases where the piece is ambiguous, the starting square is added to the letter for the piece. For example, at setup Black has two golds which can move to square 5h (in front of the king). These are distinguished as G6i-5h (from the left) and G4i-5h (from the right).

Moves are numbered per player's move, unlike chess which counts each pair of moves as one move. For example, the start of a game might look like this:

??? 1. P-7f?? 2. P-3d
??? 3. P-2f?? 4. G-3b
??? 5. P-2e?? 6. Bx8h+
??? 7. Sx8h?? 8. S-2b

In handicap games White plays first, so Black's move 1 is replaced by an ellipsis.

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