Why Does Red Move First in Xiangqi?

What the rulebook says

The current Chinese rulebook, 象棋竞赛规则, was revised in 2020. Its first chapter covers the basics of play in a single sentence: the side holding the red pieces moves first, the two players then alternate one move at a time, and play continues until there is a win, a loss or a draw. A move by each player together counts as one round, which is what the move numbers in a game record are counting.

Chinese has a neat pair of words for the two roles. The first player has 先手 (xiān shǒu), literally the first hand, and the second player has 后手 (hòu shǒu), the later hand. Both words also carry a broader meaning. 先手 is the initiative, the power to make threats your opponent has to answer, so a commentator can say that Black holds the initiative halfway through a game even though Red moved first. The rule fixes who starts. It does not fix who ends up in control.

Red, Black and the pieces in between

The two armies are identical in number and power and stand as mirror images across the river. The difference is in the writing. On a traditional set, Red's pieces carry 帥, 仕, 相, 傌, 俥, 炮 and 兵, while Black's carry 將, 士, 象, 馬, 車, 砲 and 卒. Sets printed in simplified characters often use one character for both Horses and one for both Chariots, but the General, Advisor, Elephant and Soldier still look different on each side.

Black is not always black, either. Plenty of sets use green or blue for the second army, and some English books have called the sides north and south instead of naming colours. None of that changes the rule. Whatever the second colour, the side written in red opens the game in modern play.

It was not always Red

Which side moves first has shifted over the centuries and from one part of China to another. H. J. R. Murray, whose A History of Chess appeared in 1913, reported as an accepted maxim that the player who takes Red, the more popular colour, gives up the right to move first. In other words, the sources Murray relied on expected Black to open. Later writers for English readers, such as H. T. Lau, advised that Red usually makes the first move, which is the convention almost everyone uses now.

The old manuals show the same variety. One Hundred Variations of Xiangqi (百变象棋谱), a collection usually dated to the Ming dynasty, although some scholars suspect it was a later book sold under an older date, has Black moving first. It also writes the Cannon as 包 and describes moves in words rather than numbers. Another old encyclopedia numbered the files from left to right instead of right to left. Conventions that look fixed today were once local habits.

So if you open an old composition and the first move seems to belong to the wrong side, check the colour convention of that edition before you decide the book is wrong. Our guide Classic Xiangqi Books: The Great Manuals of Ming and Qing has more on reading old notation.

The Chu and Han story

Ask a club player in China why Red goes first and you may hear a story from the war between Chu and Han, the struggle that followed the fall of the Qin dynasty. In this telling Red stands for Liu Bang, who went on to found the Han dynasty. The Records of the Grand Historian tells how Liu Bang killed a great white serpent, after which an old woman lamented that her son, the son of the White Emperor, had been slain by the son of the Red Emperor. Black, in the same tradition, stands for his rival Xiang Yu of Chu.

The first move then becomes a piece of history. Liu Bang reached the Qin heartland of Guanzhong and its capital Xianyang before Xiang Yu did, so, the story goes, Red moves first. It is a satisfying explanation, and it fits the river on the board, which is often labelled with the words Chu River and Han Border. There is no evidence, though, that the rule was ever designed around these events, and the colour story is best enjoyed as folklore. Our article Chu River Han Border: The Story Behind the Xiangqi River looks at that inscription and why it says nothing about which army is which.

How events decide who gets Red

If Red always starts, the real question at a tournament is who takes Red. The 2020 Chinese rules answer it according to the format. In a round robin, a pairing table fixes the games for every round, and the player whose number is listed first takes Red. In team round robins, the first-listed team plays Red on the odd-numbered boards and Black on the even-numbered ones. Swiss-style events follow detailed pairing rules set out in an appendix, and in team versions the team due to move first again takes Red on the odd boards.

Two-game matches, in individual and team events alike, are settled by lot: a draw decides the colours for the first game, and the players swap for the second. That swap is the fairest answer to the first-move question, since each player gets one game with each colour.

Casual play has no rule at all. Friends usually alternate colours game by game, and a common courtesy is to let the weaker player have Red. Chinese players even have a name for always giving the opponent the first move over a series of games, 让一先, which counts as the gentlest form of handicap.

Is moving first an advantage?

Most players treat the first move as a modest edge, much as chess players value having White. Red chooses the battleground and asks the first question. The most popular first move shows how quickly that question arrives. After the central cannon, C2=5 or 炮二平五, Red's Cannon looks straight down the middle file at Black's central Soldier, and nothing in Black's starting setup protects that Soldier. If Black ignores it, the Cannon can jump over Red's own central Soldier and take Black's for free.

That is why so many of Black's named defences, the screen horse above all, are really answers to a problem Red posed on move one. The edge is small, though. Those defences have been tested for centuries and hold up well, and the initiative can change hands many times in a single game. We would rather not quote a winning percentage for Red, because published figures depend heavily on which games are counted and at what level.

Red first in records, puzzles and software

The convention runs through everything else in the game. Classical compositions are commonly labelled 红先胜, Red to move and win, or 红先和, Red to move and draw, so the solver almost always plays Red. Game records number each Red move and the Black reply together as one round.

Engines follow suit. In the FEN strings that programs such as Pikafish use to describe a position, the side to move is written as w for Red and b for Black, a habit borrowed from chess software. Our guide Xiangqi Notation: FEN, WXF and Coordinates Explained walks through that format if you want to set up positions for analysis.

Playing both colours

Because Red starts, it pays to prepare two ways of thinking. With Red you choose the opening and try to keep the initiative. With Black you need reliable answers to the main first moves, especially the central cannon, and the patience to wait for the right moment to take the initiative back. Players who only enjoy one colour tend to build a lopsided repertoire, and stronger opponents notice.

Every game on XiangqiPlay starts the way the rulebook says, with Red to move. Create a free account, take Black against the computer at any of its eight levels from Easy to God, and you will soon feel what that first move is worth.