Piececlopedia: Silver General

Historical notes

The Silver General, or Ginsho (銀將) is a piece from Shogi, Japanese Chess. It also appears in many variants of Shogi. In Makruk (Thai Chess) it appears as the replacement of the Bishop, under the name Elephant.

Movement

The Silver General can move one space in any diagonal or forward direction. The forward directions are those that move away from the side of the board the player's pieces started on. In Shogi, the piece's orientation indicates which side it belongs to, and the pointed end of the piece points in the straight forward direction. When the spaces are squares, the Silver General has no more than five possible moves. When the spaces are hexagons, such as in Hex Shogi, it may have more than five possible moves.

In the diagram below, Black's Silver General can move to any square marked with a black circle, and White's Silver General can move to any square marked with a white circle.

Checkmating

Although mate positions are possible with a Silver General and its King, these cannot be forced, so that the Silver General should be considered a minor piece. It only needs very little assistence to force checkmate on a bare King, though; a Ferz is already enough. (Something very relevant for Makruk.) You can practice this here.

Graphics

The following images are used in different piece sets used on this site for Game Courier or Interactive Diagrams.

These feature both Kanji characters. The top one, 銀, means silver, and the bottom one, 將, means general:

These feature just the Kanji character for silver, in what is known as abbreviated Kanji:

These feature a cresent moon, which is the alchemical symbol for silver:

These feature a movement diagram. The first one also includes the crescent moon, and the second one designates the piece with a capital S for silver:

Credits

Originally written by Hans Bodlaender.

Checkmating section added by H.G.Muller.

Textual revisions made and graphics added by Fergus Duniho, who is personally responsible for the Motif, Symbolic, Japanese Shogi, Japanese Shogi Wood, Diagrammatic, and AI graphics. The Koma pieces were made by Koma-Shokunin 1, and they are used here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license. The Alfaerie image is by David Howe.