Chinese chess questions

Xiangqi is a board game for two players, also called Chinese chess. The name means elephant chess in Chinese. Players move pieces on a grid of 90 points and try to checkmate the opponent's general. The game is native to China.

Xiangqi and Chinese chess name the same game. Chinese chess is the common English name. Vietnamese players call it Cờ tướng, which means General's chess. All these names point to one set of rules.

Each side has 16 pieces in xiangqi. This includes 1 general, 2 advisors, 2 elephants, 2 horses, 2 chariots, 2 cannons, and 5 soldiers. Red and black start with the same set.

Red moves first in xiangqi. This site follows the same rule for every game against the computer or a friend. Black always waits for Red's first move before making its own.

The horse moves one point orthogonally, then one point diagonally outward. This path forms an L shape, like a knight in chess. A piece on that first orthogonal point blocks the move. Players call this block hobbling the horse's leg.

The cannon moves like a chariot when it is not capturing. To capture, it must jump exactly one piece of either colour. That piece is called the screen. Without a screen to jump, the cannon cannot capture at all.

The general cannot leave its own palace, a marked 3 by 3 area. The general moves one point orthogonally within those limits. The two generals also cannot face each other on an open file, under the flying general rule.

A player with no legal move loses the game in xiangqi. Chess treats the same position as a draw. This rule makes xiangqi endgames more dangerous for a passive player.

The two generals cannot face each other on an open file with nothing between them. In the classical rule, a general on an open file may cross the board and capture the enemy general. Opening the file is therefore a move into check, and the rules forbid it.

Xiangqi has a game-tree complexity of about 10^150, against about 10^123 for chess. A bigger search tree does not make a game harder to learn. Difficulty depends most on your own experience with each game's pieces and openings.

This site needs no account and no download. Open the page and start a game right away, against the computer or a friend. Your progress and settings save on your own device only.

This site runs its own xiangqi engine, written in TypeScript. The engine offers three levels: easy, medium, and hard. The hard level searches several moves ahead before it chooses a move. Pick easy while you learn, and hard when you want a real test.