Xiang Qi Notation

This explanation draws heavily on MindZine’s website (*), with some modifications which were made to match the notation used in David Li’s books.

Files are numbered from 1 to 9 starting from each player's right side. Red's 1st file is Black's 9th and vice versa.

Each move has a four-character notation.

The first character identifies the type of the moving piece: Chariot/Rook (R), Horse (H), Elephant (E), Advisor (A), King (K), Cannon (C) or Pawn (P).

The second character is the starting file number of the piece.

The third character identifies in which direction the piece is moving. It has three possible values:
+ if the piece moves upwards from player's viewpoint
- if the piece moves downwards from player's viewpoint
= if the piece moves sideways on the same rank

The meaning of the fourth character depends on the type of the move.

When a piece moves away from the file it stands on, the character identifies the destination file of the piece. Examples are possible moves in the starting position:
H2+3 horse on the 2nd file moves forwards to the 3rd file
E7+5 elephant on the 7th file moves forwards to the 5th file
A6+5 advisor on the 6th file moves forwards to the 5th file
C2=3 cannon on the 2nd file moves sideways to the 3rd file

When a piece moves along a file, the fourth character identifies how many points the piece moved. Examples:
C2+7 cannon on the second file moves forward 7 points
P7+1 pawn on the 7th file moves forwards one point
C2-1 cannon on the 2nd file moves backwards one point
K5+1 king on the 5th file moves forward one point

Doubled pieces - Whenever there are two pieces of the same type and color on the same line, the second character of the notation (the file number) is replaced by F for the front piece and by B for the back/rear piece. Some sources reverse the first and second characters in this case, so they write ‘FC+7’ rather than ‘CF+7’.

Ambiguous Positions - Note that it is possible to arrive at a position which cannot be handled by these rules without some ambiguity as to what move is meant, but these are generally very complex and unusual situations. My advice is to just improvise (e.g., by indicating the starting point and the ending point) on the very few occasions when this might occur rather than attempting to learn the full-blown notation capable of covering all cases.

(*) Copyright © 1999-2000 by Mind Sports Organisation Worldwide Ltd.

How to play Xiang Qi

I was planning to write up a short explanation of the movement of each piece. However, it occurred to me that this would be reinventing the wheel. There's a lot of good material already out there. (Do note that these sites vary somewhat in the English names they assign to the various pieces; the names I use on this blog are the ones used by David Li.)

http://www.chessvariants.com/xiangqi.html

http://www.jadedragon.com/archives/entertainment/chess1.html (7 pages of great stuff!)

If you find these pages interesting and want to learn more, David Li's book would be the next logical step.

"First Syllabus on Xiangqi" Errata

First Syllabus on Xiangqi (Chinese Chess 1) by David H. Li (Bethesda: Premier Publishing, 1996)

I think Li's book is absolutely the best one I've ever seen for learning to play this game. There are many things that the book does very well, and I'll let those speak for themselves. However, that doesn't mean that it's perfect. In an effort to make the book more useful, I would like to provide the following list of errata for the book.

P. 29 - 3. ... K4+1 is indicated to be stalemate. That is not correct; the stalemate does not occur until 4. K5+1.

P. 32 - The book does not indicate that 8. ... A6+5 is an error. Black loses after this move, but could draw after 8. ... K5=4.

P. 46 - There are a couple of errors in the explanation about linking horses.

P. 47 - In case 11 "a win will result" should read "a win can result".

P. 102 - "might be misconstrued as threatening to capture" should be removed

P. 112 - "FR=2" should be "BR=2"

P. 119/120 - The discussions starting with "The quiet opening began to receive attention, mainly among advanced players" and "This need to commit ourselves limits the appeal of this opening to advanced players" contradict each other as to whether or not the quiet opening is good or not. (I am not even remotely qualified to decide which paragraph is correct.)

P. 130-9 - There are several errors in the notation of the game.

Xiang Qi

Xiang Qi (pronounced "Shiang Chi") is Chinese Chess. Not to be confused with Shogi, which is Japanese Chess.

I have recently begun playing this game. I had learned the moves years ago but hadn't really played until very recently. A co-worker of mine is Chinese and has been willing to play with me, so I picked up the game again.

I was originally thinking about placing Xiang Qi related posts in the chess blog, but that blog is already my busiest and (a) I didn't want to clutter it up further and (b) I didn't think that most of the people visiting that blog will care about Xiang Qi. So I created this blog, where I plan to record my Xiang Qi games and provide links to other Chinese Chess content on the web.

An excellent book to learn to play this game is David Li's.