
An Introduction to Xiangqi for Chess Players - shawndumas
http://www.crockford.com/chess/xiangqi.html
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xiaoma
Living in Taiwan for most my adult life, and now Beijing, I've seen countless
people play, but this is the first attempt to force it onto a western chess
board I've come across. To be honest the degree of bastarization was a bit
painful. Calling the horses knights is one thing since they're very similar in
movement, but calling elephants "bishops"!? That's just crazy.

Also, the only time I've seen the game with no river is when Koreans play, and
they have a number of different rules (elephant movement, naked kings, cannon
vs. cannon, etc...)

If you want to actually play the game, you really need to know what the real
pieces are. Just imagine how hard it would be for a Chinese player who learned
the rules of chess to get a game if he replaced all the pieces with Chinese
characters (as in xiangqi).

There are all kinds of free downloads for this kind of game. For English
speakers who want to learn, I recommend Qianhong. It's free, it's got all
kinds of tutorials and it's modular so you can replace it's weak built-in
engine with much stronger ones, like the elephant engine:

[http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-free-
computer-c...](http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-free-computer-
chinese-chess.htm#Qianhong)

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wsxiaoys
Great game, I enjoyed this game a lot with my dad when I was a child.

edited: a more common board for Xiangqi [http://ancientchess.com/graphics-
rules/xiangqi_chinese_chess...](http://ancientchess.com/graphics-
rules/xiangqi_chinese_chess_allset.jpg)

we placed pieces at the corner of the grid rather than the middle of it.

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samatman
Yes, that is the real board on which actual Xiangqi is played.

The OP is an attempt to translate the game mechanics of Xiangqi into a chess-
like design, to make it easier for chess aficionados to appreciate it.

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meric
A game of Xiangqi happens at a faster pace than a game of chess so more stuff
happens.

I think it's to do with more cannons and less pawns. Pawns in Xiangqi are
nerfed. (No diagonal move until pass the river, cannot turn into Queen.)

Read up on the cannon. :)

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Aqua_Geek
> Pawns in Xiangqi are nerfed. (No diagonal move until pass the river [...]

Pawns can't move diagonally. Once they cross the river, they can move
sideways.

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erez
I love Chinese chess, it has an aesthetic which is much closer to my heart
than chess. I like chess variants that still retain some the war-game feel,
and this variant satisfy that.

I think a much better description of the game, and other chess variants,
historical and modern can be found here: <http://www.chessvariants.com>

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r7000
I enjoy Xiangqi immensely. There's a great quote: Western Chess is a war,
Chinese Chess is a battle.

There is less messing around with openings as well. That appeals to me as I am
just a casual player. You get to the "fun part" much faster.

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Brashman
Does anyone know what is meant by "Stalemate is a win, not a draw." Who wins
on a stalemate?

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kmak
If you have no moves, you lose. (You only have a king left and can't move
anywhere with it) I actually learned this first, so imagine my confusion when
I played western Chess and someone told me now it's a tie!

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jcsalterego
The other big gotcha is kings cannot have a direct line of sight to each
other. Unfortunately, this is how I inadvertently lost a game of western Chess
because I had accidentally ported over this rule in my head.

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amelim
I've always been quite intrigued by the game of Rithmomachy. It was quite
popular and even rivaled chess in popularity during it's hayday. You begin to
understand it's complexity when you realize that "Proper Victories" are
achieved by creating arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic sequences with the
pieces.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rithmomachia>

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euccastro
You may be interested in Greg Costikyan's review:

<http://playthisthing.com/rithmomachy-or-philosphers-game>

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cageface
I see people playing this on the sidewalks all over Vietnam. Sometimes the
board is the back of a pizza box. Groups of four or more men seem happy to
huddle around a game for hours. I've never been much of a chess player so I
haven't had the courage to try a game myself yet.

