Blindfold xiangqi (盲棋) means playing with no board in sight. Learn how moves are called, how blindfold simuls work, and a plan to build your board vision.
Blindfold xiangqi, 盲棋 (máng qí) in Chinese, is xiangqi played without looking at a board. Players announce their moves in notation and keep the position in their heads. Strong masters can do it against many opponents at once, yet club players can learn it too, and the training behind it is one of the best ways to sharpen calculation.
Nobody actually needs a blindfold. The player might sit with their back to the board, face a blank wall or simply close their eyes. What matters is that the position lives only in memory. In this guide we explain how moves are called, what a blindfold exhibition looks like, and how to build the skill yourself in four stages.
Calling the moves
With nothing to point at, every move has to be spoken in a notation both players understand. Chinese players use the traditional format of piece, file, direction and destination. Red's classic first move 炮二平五 is read aloud as pào èr píng wǔ, cannon two across to five, and a common reply, 马8进7, is mǎ bā jìn qī, horse eight forward to seven. English speakers usually say the same moves in WXF notation: C2=5 and H8+7.
The catch is that files are counted from each player's own right, so the same file has different numbers for Red and Black. Over the board that soon becomes second nature. In your head it adds a translation step, and it is a common source of blindfold errors. For training, many players prefer coordinate notation, in which every point has one fixed name: files a to i from Red's left, ranks 0 to 9 from Red's side. The central cannon becomes h2e2, and the point e2 means the same thing whichever side you are playing.
Good habits help. Announce checks clearly, repeat your opponent's move back before replying, and agree beforehand what happens if someone calls an illegal move. In casual play the simplest rule is to ask again and take the move back.
A warning about the other 盲棋
If you search in Chinese, be careful. In Guangdong and Hong Kong, 盲棋 is also a name for the face-down half-board game better known as Banqi or 暗棋, which is a completely different activity. Chinese writers sometimes add 闭目, eyes closed, to make it plain that they mean true blindfold play.
Blindfold exhibitions
The showpiece of blindfold play is the simultaneous exhibition. The master sits away from the boards while a row of opponents play on real sets. An assistant or arbiter reads each opponent's move aloud, the master replies from memory, and the assistant makes that move on the right board. The master has to keep every game separate, usually by board number, and remember whose turn it is on each one.
China's best-known blindfold specialist is grandmaster Liu Dahua (柳大华), nicknamed the Eastern Computer for his memory. According to Chinese sources, he broke Hu Ronghua's record of twelve boards, reached fifteen in 1988, and in 1995 played nineteen opponents at once without sight of the boards, a mark that stood until a twenty-board display in 2011. These feats rest on decades of play, so do not measure your own progress against them.
Why try it at all
You will probably never play blindfold in a tournament, but the training pays off in normal games. Calculation is really visualization. When you look three moves ahead, you are already playing blindfold on a small scale, holding a changed position in your mind while the real pieces stay put. Players who struggle to calculate usually know what they want to do; they lose track of where the pieces will be. Blindfold drills train exactly that.
Stage one: learn the board by name
Start with the points. Using coordinates, quiz yourself until the answers come instantly. Which point is the centre of Red's palace? It is e1. Where do Black's cannons start? On b7 and h7. Which points can a Red elephant ever reach? There are only seven: c0, g0, a2, e2, i2, c4 and g4. Red's advisors have just five: d0, f0, e1, d2 and f2. Knowing these small territories by heart makes a surprising amount of the board predictable.
Next, recite the starting position aloud, piece by piece, for both sides. Then try piece journeys. Take the horse on b0: where can it go on its first move, and which neighbouring points would block it? Five minutes a day of this is plenty at first.
Stage two: replay games in your head
Take a short, familiar opening line and play it through without a board. Here is a classic start: 1. C2=5 H8+7 2. H2+3 R9=8 3. R1=2 H2+3. Say each move, picture it, and after the sixth move answer a question before you check. Both chariots now stand on the h-file. Which piece stands between them? (Black's cannon on h7.) If you got it, add a few more moves next time. If not, set up a board, find where the picture went wrong, and try again tomorrow.
Then move on to whole short games. Pick games of twenty moves or fewer, read the moves once, and replay them with your eyes closed. The aim is not to memorize the game but to keep an accurate picture as it changes.
Stage three: solve puzzles without touching anything
Puzzles are the bridge between drills and real play. Look at a mate-in-two diagram for as long as you like, then look away and solve it completely before you check. Later, cut the look to thirty seconds, or have a friend read you the position in coordinates so you never see it at all. Start with positions of six or eight pieces. Chariots and horses are easier to track than cannons, because a cannon's power depends on counting the pieces between it and its target.
Stage four: play a full game
When the drills feel comfortable, play a real game blindfold against a friend of similar strength while someone keeps the true position on a board. Another option is to play the computer at its lowest level with a sheet of paper over the screen, peeking only when you are completely lost. Count every peek, and aim to bring the number down over a few weeks. Once one game feels manageable, you can experiment with two at once, though there is no rush.
Where it gets hard
Almost everyone hits the same problems. The most common is the ghost piece: a piece you captured ten moves ago that your memory keeps putting back on the board, or one of your own that you forgot was taken. A simple fix is to recite the material for both sides every few moves.
Long-range pieces are the next trouble. A chariot sweeping across the board changes lines far from where you were looking, and cannons are worse, since any move by any piece might create or remove a screen. Horses cause subtler errors, because a blocked leg is easy to forget. When in doubt, check each of your opponent's long-range pieces before you commit.
Finally, fatigue is real. The mental picture starts to blur before you notice, so keep early sessions to fifteen or twenty minutes and stop while it still feels good. Progress comes from regular small sessions, not heroic marathons.
For a steady supply of positions for stage three, XiangqiPlay's free puzzle library has 5,000 engine-proven mate puzzles. Try solving each one before your hand goes anywhere near a piece.
XiangqiPlay Team
XiangqiPlay newsroom
