General
帥 (Red) / 將 (Black) · shuài / jiàng
Everything else on the board is a means to an end, and the General is the end. It is the weakest piece by movement and the most important by definition, locked inside a nine point palace that your opponent will spend the whole game trying to reach. Learn what it can do, and more importantly learn the one rule that makes it dangerous.
From its starting point the General has one legal move, straight up the middle file.
How it moves
- Moves one point at a time, straight up, down, left or right. Never diagonally.
- Never leaves the palace, the three by three square marked with a cross.
- Captures any enemy piece that steps onto a point it can reach.
- May never face the enemy General down a file with nothing in between.
- If it is attacked and cannot be saved, the game is over.
- Worth
- The game itself
- Also called
- King
The flying general rule
If the file between the two Generals is empty, the position is illegal, and the player whose move would create it simply cannot play it. In effect each General attacks the other along a clear file, which turns the middle of the board into a permanent tactical resource.
This is not a curiosity. Clearing the last piece off the middle file can be check. A piece standing alone between the Generals is pinned and cannot legally move. Plenty of games are decided by a player noticing this a move before their opponent does.
Your General in the endgame
In the opening and middlegame the General sits still and stays defended. Once the board empties, it becomes a working piece: stepping up the middle file to support a soldier or to take away squares is normal, strong technique rather than a risk.
Remember there is no stalemate draw in xiangqi. A player with no legal move loses, so a General with nowhere to go is not a rescue, it is a defeat.
Common questions
- Can the General leave the palace in Chinese chess?
- No. The General moves one orthogonal step at a time and must stay on the nine points of its own palace for the entire game.
- Why can't the two Generals face each other?
- The flying general rule forbids it. With an empty file between them they would be attacking each other, so any move creating that position is illegal.
- Is the General the same as a king in chess?
- Close but not identical. It cannot move diagonally, it cannot leave its palace, there is no castling, and there is no stalemate rule to save it.
Terms worth knowing
- General将 / 帅The piece you must protect and the piece your opponent must trap, confined to the nine points of its own palace.
- Palace九宫The three by three square marked with a cross at each end of the board, which the General and the two Advisors may never leave.
- Flying General白脸将The rule that the two Generals may never face each other down an open file with no piece in between, which makes an empty middle file a weapon.
- Checkmate将死A check the defender cannot answer, which ends the game immediately in the attacker's favour.