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Experience the Ancient Art of Xiangqi
Play Chinese chess online against a real opponent in seconds, or take on the computer. Learn the rules from scratch, sharpen your tactics on daily puzzles, and climb the ranks — free, right in your browser.
From one-minute bullet brawls to thoughtful classical battles — pick your pace and jump straight into a game.
Today's position is live on the board — one Red move delivers immediate checkmate. A fresh, engine-verified puzzle rotates in every day.
It's a forced mate in one — look for the single Red move the defence cannot answer. Checks first: which piece can reach the Black General?
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Xiangqi was old before chess reached Europe. The scroll below unrolls the game’s history the way a handscroll is meant to be read — a section at a time.
The earliest ancestors of Xiangqi appear in the Warring States period — a game of two armies on a board, played long before the pieces took the names they carry now. The word 象棋 itself is older than the modern game.
Under the Tang, 寶應象棋 is played on a board of squares. The chariot, horse and general are already recognisable; the river and the palace that define the modern game are still to come.
The Song dynasty gives Xiangqi its final form: pieces move on the intersections rather than in the squares, the river divides the board, and the cannon — a piece with no equivalent in any Western game — arrives with gunpowder itself.
Ming and Qing masters write the classics still studied today — 橘中秘 and 梅花譜 — recording openings, endgames and the fierce central-cannon attacks that remain main lines six centuries later.
Xiangqi becomes the most played board game in China. National championships begin in 1956, the rules are codified, and 楊官璘 and 胡榮華 turn opening theory into a discipline.
Engines calculate deeper than any master, and a board in Guangzhou meets one in Hanoi or Toronto in seconds. The pieces, and the river between the two palaces, are unchanged.
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From the Central Cannon to the Screen Horse Defense — the newsroom covers every major opening in depth.
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Xiangqi (象棋) is Chinese Chess — a two-player strategy game that's been played for well over a thousand years and remains one of the most popular board games on earth. You play across a 9×10 grid split by a river, each side commanding a General, Advisors, Elephants, Horses, Chariots, Cannons and Soldiers, and you win by trapping the enemy General with no way out. If you already know Western chess you'll pick it up quickly, but the cannon, the river and the palace give it a rhythm all its own.
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