With fewer pieces than dai shogi, the game is considered more exciting, and was still commonly played in Japan in 1928–1939, especially in the Keihanshin region.

[2] It has gained some adherents in the West, having been praised as "the best of all large chess games" by David Pritchard,[3] and still maintains a society (the Chushogi Renmei, or Japanese Chu Shogi Association) and an online following in Japan.

The main reference work in English is the Middle Shogi Manual by George Hodges [ru].

Two players, Black and White (or 先手 sente and 後手 gote), play on a board ruled into a grid of 12 ranks (rows) and 12 files (columns), with a total of 144 squares.

In the past, the Japanese Chu Shogi Association used this rule, but later repealed it because the go-between can go backwards.

Some of the new rules given by Okazaki and not present in the Edo-period texts seem to be late innovations in the history of chu shogi from the Showa period.

The step movers are the king, prince, drunk elephant, blind tigers, ferocious leopards, the generals, go-betweens, and the 12 pawns of each side.

Many pieces can move any number of empty squares along a straight orthogonal or diagonal line, limited only by the edge of the board.

By default continuation legs can go into all directions, but can be restricted to a single line by a modifier 'v' ("vertical", interpreted relative to the piece's current position on its path).

It can step to an adjacent empty square and back without capturing anything; this leaves the board unchanged, effectively passing a turn (じっと jitto).

Jitto may prove useful in endgame situations; it is traditionally indicated by tapping the lion and leaving it in place.

In all examples below, the Black and White pieces are distinguished by colour, rather than their direction as they would be in a real game.

Black can play LnxLn, as the two lions are adjacent, and so the protection by White's gold general is irrelevant.

Black cannot play LnxPxLn, as this leaves the lion open to recapture by the White bishop and the intermediate piece was a pawn.

According to the Japanese Chu Shogi Association, the double-capture is not legal because the White lion is protected before the move.

If White plays RxLn, then by the Edo-era rules, Black cannot retaliate immediately with BxLn.

(The pin on the rook is irrelevant, as it is legal, though usually bad, to expose one's king to check in chu shogi.)

Instead, it would tend to favour a front-to-back application of the rules, in which any exposure of a lion to recapture is considered illegal and loses on the spot.

(This rule is usually relaxed without altering its effect, by only forbidding the 4th occurrence of any position, to allow for human error.

(The lion, horned falcon, and soaring eagle can also be blocked from passing by the edge of the board.)

The very artificial situation of a smothered stalemate, where no moves are possible (even those that would expose the king), is not covered in the historical sources.

A historic description of chu shogi mentions, "When pieces are gone, and there are only the 2 kings, one can mate only if he has a promoted gold".

In practice these winning conditions are rarely fulfilled, as a player will resign when checkmated, as otherwise when loss is inevitable.

(This rule may be relaxed in casual games, and Hodges writing for a Western audience encourages players to do so.)

Under the historical rules, this means that no legal series of moves can lead to all of one player's royal pieces being captured; under the Japanese Chu Shogi Association's rules, this additionally means that no legal series of moves can lead to one player being left with only a king, or with no royal pieces.

The first one or two letters represents the piece moved (see setup above, except that Ky "kylin" is used for Kirin and FK "free king" for Queen).

WinBoard/XBoard uses non-easternised algebraic notation for the moves, differing mainly from TSA notation by using single-letter piece abbreviations, labeling the board files with the letters a–l from left to right, the board ranks with the numbers 1–12 from bottom to top, and omitting the hyphen separator between piece name and square coordinates.

An even stronger castle results from leaving the Golds diagonally protecting the outer-most pieces of the wall, although this has the obvious disadvantage that these Golds then cannot be used for attacking, or protecting the wings of a player's camp from infestation by enemy promoting pieces.

There is no hurry in building the castle, as it will take a long time before the opponent can fight their way through all the material that is initially in front of a player's King.

So a majority here is more a tie breaker in case the main battle ends undecided than an immediate advantage.