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Well, Xiangqi servers are infamous for poor implementation of the rules (not surprisingly, when these rules are next to infinitely complex). One of my points was that it is not just for moving back and forth, but for any repeat, no matter how far in the past. This in definite disagreement with what you said. But your idea of providing a warning is a good one, I think. Except that I think it would be better to give the warning already on the first repetition, and terminate the game (with unknown score) on the third repetition. Even if the moves were with a King or Pawn (because it is still a draw then, and only if the King or Pawn did not discover threats by other pieces, which is again complex to test.) The warning could be something like: WARNING! You are repeating a previous position. If both of you will keep this up, the game will be declared lost to the side which is forcing the other to repeat (by checking, or perpetually threatening a favorable capture of the same piece).
H.G., I think my summary is good enough, because it is only a matter of putting an end to the repetition process. Whether the third repetition should result in a draw or a win, needn't be evaluated by the preset. The preset merely prevents the third repetition, if it isn't made by a king, or a soldier. It's a clever solution. The players can decide to continue, or the losing player may give up instead of continuing the repetition, or the players could agree on a draw, depending on what the rules say. I have played on the Xiangqi sites, and they brutally prevent three-fold repetition, or judge it as a loss to the repeating party. /Mats
I don't think you give a correct summary of those Xiangi rules. At least, not for the rules I know ('Asia rules'). For one, the condition is for causing any repeated position, not just consecutive. (So just like in FIDE Chess.) The difference with FIDE rules is that a 3rd repeat is not automatically draw, but can also be judged as win or loss. A side that is somehow forcing the repetition will be ruled to lose, where forcing by checking is considered a worse offense than forcing by merely attacking a superior or unprotected non-royal piece ('chasing'). So that if both are continuously forcing each other, the checking side loses. To be counted as a perpetual check or chase, every move of the repeat loop must be a forcing move threatening the same piece; if there is only one 'quiet' move (even a mate-in-1 threat) in the loop, or a move that only threatens another piece, (even if that is a check amongst chases), it is not considered perpetual check or chase. The exact rules for which moves are to beconsidered forcing, and which not, are so complex that it requires a sizable AI to implement them. (See http://www.clubxiangqi.com/rules/asiarule.htm ) China mainland rules seem to be even more complex (even mate threats counting as forcing), and I have never been able to find an English description of them.
Fergus, one very important rule is not implemented in your Xiangqi preset. Players are not allowed to move back and forth so that the position is repeated three times (immediately after one another, not overall, as in Fide-chess). If there were no such prevention of repetition, then Xiangqi would be much more drawish. Would it be possible to implement this rule so that the player who tries to repeat the position for the third time is prevented from doing this move? Exceptions are if he makes the move with a soldier, or with the general, when he can continue play. There are cases when players are allowed to go back and forth, when they both go back and forth between different squares, but in this case the players can agree on a draw, so your prevention of the third move only serves as a reminder that it is a draw. /Mats
Here's my new video on how to play Chinese Chess:
'Junk Kay' Actually, it's pronounced without the 'k' sound in the first word. So you might want to revise the sentence to read 'Jun Kay' (although it sounds more correct pheonetically as 'Jerng Kay'.)
This is very good introduction to ÏóÆå¡£Thank you! I have one suggestion here about the meaning of ½«. it is not 'will' or 'going to' here, although it does have such meanings. The character by itself means something similar to 'to lead' as a verb, or it could mean 'leader/general' as an abbreviation for ½«Áì. It is also a military rank nowadays. ½« is pronounced with the fourth tone here whereas when it's used to express the meaning of 'will' or 'going to', it's pronounced with the third tone.
The defensive pieces required a new approach in material evaluation, in my Xiangqi engine HaQiKi D. Rather than having a fixed value, their value is strongly dependent on the attacking material the opponent has. To implement that I use a material table that is indexed by the number of attacking pieces of each type for one side, and the number of defensive pieces of the other side. In my simpler engine MaxQi (a dedicated version of Fairy-Max that can only play Xiangqi) I just use fixed piece values, and then itregularly happens that it converts its entire advantage to defensive pieces, thinking it is 800 centi-Pawn ahead, while in fact it has zero winning chance...
An aspect of Chinese Chess is that certain pieces are primarily defensive(Elephants and Ministers). Also that the both players need to maintain offensive pieces to prosecute the game. These values can tax a simple depth-search program. Demanding at least a few extra computational considerations.
GD, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)#Computers_and_Go Also check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_and_mathematics and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Go Go should really have a page here at TCVP. Particularly since there are several variants which are based upon this game and its equipment.
'Chess&X.player' cites the state-space complexity of 8x8 chess at around 10^50. Last year 'Singh' claims there are this following many states of the universe in its entirety: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=18994 http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=18940 http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=18943 The first comment says ''silly'' but the probably bleak future indicated in the other two of Singh is not so silly. 'Chess&X.player's computational complexity in the comment here 29.August.2009, actually allowing variantly larger boards etc., is open-ended and he does not try to give numbers. And he ends up in the comment, admitting he is excellent OrthoChess player, like some remaining couple of CVPage stand-patters, talking as if OrthoChess is some one given thing to stay unchanged forever more. Hey, thanks for neat statisitics and please consider becoming a member for something different to look at for a change. Now we know there's more to life than Knife-Knight, Fork-Bishop, and Spood-fed-Rook. 'Chess&X.player' concludes that Go outdoes them all, and haven't we heard that immortal truth before?! But never frequently enough.
I've been thinking about the question of whether Chess or Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) is strictly speaking the more complex game when viewed from the perspective of complexity theory. For more information on Chess and Xiangqi, see Chess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess http://www.chessvariants.org/d.chess/chess.html Xiangqi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_chess http://www.chessvariants.com/xiangqi.html Using the ideas of complexity theory, the complexity of Chess and Xiangqi can be estimated and calculated quantitatively. In general, there are 3 different kinds of complexity a deterministic board game like Chess or Xiangqi may have: 1 State-space Complexity: the maximum number of possible positions in the game. It is also possible to calculate an upper bound for state-space complexity which includes illegal positions as well. The upper bound is generally speaking much easier to calculate than the exact value, which is often only given as an accurate estimation. It is generally calculated that the state-space complexity of Chess is around 10^50 (10 to the power of 50, or 1 with 50 zeros after it, or one hundred trillion trillion trillion trillion different positions), while the state-space complexity of Xiangqi is around 10^48, 100 times less than that of Chess. This is because despite a larger board (9 times 10 vs. 8 times 8), Xiangqi pieces are generally speaking less powerful than their Chess equivalents and for many pieces the space over which it can potentially move is severely restricted. In Chess, the King, Queen, Rook and Knight can potentially move to every square on the board, the Pawn can potentially reach more than 6/8th of all the squares (though unlikely to move that much in a real game), and even the Bishop can reach half of all the squares. In Xiangqi the General can only stay inside the Palace and move to 9 different intersections, the Advisor can only move to 5 different intersections and the Elephant only to 7 different intersections. Another factor is that the Xiangqi board, having 9 files instead of Chess's 8, is symmetrical in the left-right direction. This means the left and right hand sides in Xiangqi are essentially the same, so different board positions may just be a trivial reflection of the other. This decreases the effective state-space complexity of Xiangqi by a factor of 2. In Chess on the other hand, the Kingside and the Queenside are not just a trivial reflection of each other since the distance the King has to the edge of the board is different for the left and right hand sides. Therefore despite having 90 intersections on the Xiangqi board vs. only 64 squares for Chess, the total number of possible positions is around 100 times more in Chess than Xiangqi, 10^50 vs. 10^48. 2 Game-tree Complexity: roughly speaking this is the total number of possible games one can potentially play with a particular version of board game. This is different from state-space complexity and the value is generally speaking far larger because state-space complexity only takes space and position into account, while game-tree complexity analyses the actual moves in a game and hence also puts time into account. Generally speaking, there are many different ways, in terms of playing the game, to reach a particular position on the board. For instance, the opening position on the chess board with Ng1-f3 and e2-e4 (moving the King's Knight and King's Pawn out) can be reached via two different 'game-trees': Nf3 first or e4 first, and the number of possible game-trees for a given board position increases dramatically as one progresses into the game and the position becomes much more complex. Generally it is estimated that the total number of possible games in Chess is around 10^123 (or 1 with 123 zeros after it), while for Xiangqi it is 10^150, which is 100 million billion times more than Chess. For comparison, consider that the total number of atoms in the observable universe is only around 10^80. There are far more possible games in Xiangqi since it is played on a larger board (90 instead of 64 spaces), and generally a game of Xiangqi lasts for more moves than a game of Chess. However, given that the Xiangqi board is left-right symmetrical and therefore left-hand side play is identical to right-hand side play, and that since Xiangqi pieces are generally less powerful and the General is restricted to within the Palace, the larger number of possible games in the purely technical sense becomes relatively trivial by the endgame stage, since real play is likely to be always focused around the General's Palace, and different moves elsewhere on the board essentially converges to the same kind of endgames. In other words, whereas in the earlier phase of the game the game-tree of possible moves branches out, by the endgame in Xiangqi they begin to converge into one-another, and Xiangqi games generally end in relatively similar positions (major pieces and pawns around the General's Palace and a relatively exposed General). In Chess game-trees also tend to converge more by the endgame but since the King can move to anywhere on the board and there is the possibility of pawn promotion, the game converges to a significantly smaller extent than Xiangqi. Also the approximate estimation for the game-tree complexity of Chess does not take into account the re-divergence of the game-tree if enough pawns are promoted into pieces in the endgame. Although in real play this tends to be an unlikely scenario, in technical calculations of game complexity this factor should be included. In addition, when the game-tree complexity of Chess is calculated, unlikely endgame scenarios, such as the game dragging on unnecessarily for dozens of extra moves that are in practice trivial, are also included. Therefore effectively speaking despite the technically higher game-tree complexity of Xiangqi, I think Chess is actually the more complex game of the two. 3 Computational Complexity: a third way to calculate game complexity is to consider how much computational steps are required to play a Chess or Xiangqi game by a Chess or Xiangqi engine/computer as the actual size of the game increases in space. E.g. if the Chess board size doubles, how much more computational power is required? In this both Chess and Xiangqi are very similar in that computational difficulty increases exponentially (in terms of the number of calculational steps required to play the game) with board size. Thus both games are said to be inside the complexity class called EXPTIME (stands for 'exponential time'). Personally despite being an ethnic Chinese and proud of Chinese culture in general, I think Chess is a better game than Xiangqi and I'm a better player in Chess than in Xiangqi. Though of course the Chinese game of Weiqi/Go is far more complex than either of these games mentioned here.
I just produced a special Xiangqi version of my general variant engine Fairy-Max. Xiangqi is sufficiently different, because of its subdivided board, deviating promotion, stalemate an repetition rules, to warrant a separate engine, rather a further generalization of Fairy-Max. The engine is called MaxQi, and is availabe as source code and Windows excutable from my website (download link http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/MaxQi.zip ). It uses WinBoard protocol to communicate its moves, and so can be run under WinBoard 4.3 ('WinBoard_F'). Other WB engines are HoiXinagqi and TJxiangqi. MaxQi is definitely a lot stronger than HoiXiangqi; I have not had it play many games against TJxiangqi yet, but I expect MaxQi to be weaker than that.
The illustrations of sets do a lot to put this game into its historic and geographic context. Has anyone else noticed that the Bare Facing rule is an example, many centuries before the rise of music downloads, of a restriction on file sharing?
I'm going to share my speculations on the origin of Chinese Chess here, and since it is speculation, I am adding it here instead of adding it as part of the page content. First, I'm certain that Chinese Chess is related to Chaturanga or Shatranj in some way. Their pieces and rules are too similar for me to buy into the idea that Chinese Chess arose completely independently of the Indo-European Chess tradition. Besides that, there was trade between India and China along the silk road. So it makes sense that word of a game that had become popular in one place would spread to the other. From my experience playing Chess, Chinese Chess, and Shatranj, it seems to me that both Chess and Chinese Chess are better games than Shatranj, and the idea arises that both may be improvements on Chaturanga or some game like it. The main problem with Chaturanga/Shatranj is that the pieces are too weak and slow, making the game long and tedious. Chess fixes this by replacing the weakest pieces with stronger pieces and by giving Pawns a double move. Chinese Chess fixes this by confining its royal piece to the palace, using the weakest pieces only for defense, and adding the Cannon, which is a fairly fast and powerful piece. The result is that Chinese Chess tends to be fast and decisive, much moreso than Chaturanga/Shatranj. Given this, it seems likely to me that Chaturanga is closer to the original game than Chinese Chess is. Besides this, it seems more likely to me that Chinese Chess was a transformation of Chaturanga than vice versa. Consider this. Chinese Chess could be described as being played on a board of 90 points, while Chaturanga could be described as being played on a board of 64 squares. If someone in India heard the 90 points description and tried to recreate the game, he wouldn't likely make the 64 square ashtapada, but if someone in China heard about a game played on a 64 square ashtapada, he may assume from his experience with Go that pieces go on the intersections instead of inside the squares. This might immediately lead him to thinking that the game has two Counselors instead of just the one in Chaturanga. If he also heard that the game had 16 pieces to each side, he might have thought that 7 Pawns didn't seem right, settle on 5 as the more natural number for a rank of 9 points, and then assuming that his information on Chaturanga had been garbled, set to work trying to think of what the two remaining pieces might be. Splitting the board in two, thereby adding an extra rank, and the other changes may have followed from attempts to improve the game. One last point concerns the names Chaturanga and Xiangqi. The former, meaning the four branches of the military, seems like a name the original creator might naturally give to a war game. The latter, meaning elephant strategy board game, seems to have been named for one feature that perhaps struck someone as unusual or significant. This example of synecdoche in naming is the sort of name I might expect from people who adopted a game from another culture. Even the English name of Chess is an example of synecdoche, for it goes back to the Persian Shah, meaning King. My speculations have been based on an analysis of the games and their names. If it were contradicted by historical or archaeological evidence, that evidence would be more relevant. Although there are those who would disagree with my conclusions, my conclusions are in line with the received opinion that the origins of Chess and Chinese Chess go back to Chaturanga.
I think you should add the rules about handicap game. Usually, the stronger player will play first and remove one or more of his pieces, but sometimes he can get something back to avoid a much too unfair game: 1.If a player removes a Knight, and move his Rook nearby to that place ('Rook out of the Forest'), it will be covered by an enemy Cannon, but the enemy Cannon cannot capture it. 2.If a player removes both Knights, his central Pawn ('Solid Pawn') cannot be captured before it makes at least one move, unless the capture is with a check. 3.If a player removes one Cannon, his other Cannon cannot be captured before it makes at least one move. 3.If a player removes a Rook, his Cannon and Knight cannot be captured before it makes at least one move.
My Zillions implementation of Chinese Chess plays a good game, it also has Western style pieces as an option: http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/chinesechess.htm Mats
Download a Free Xiangqi Book http://www.scribd.com [I have removed the link as it appears to be a copyrighted work. Please do not post such links on our site. Thanks. --Editors]
Play Xiangqi section misses http://www.kurnik.org (one of the few places where you can play this game against other people with non-Chinese user interface)
In reading the page on chinese chess which I delight in playing I observed that you attribute different two chinese language titles to the game. Actually there is only the one in so much as the Mandarin written title is the only chinese title and the Cantonese pronunciation (Cantonese is not a written language - except in bastardised script based on sound) the game is known as Jeung Kei (Jeunhg Kay, as you have it) which to put it another way is written by the Cantonese speaker in the same character form as that in Mandarin (the only true written language).
Hope this is of assistance should you consider any revision of text.
I enjoyed your site and the variant described.
One small suggestion would be a mention of Gabriel's totally different offering as Chinese Chess. As someone might pick it up in a thrift store, and find they'd made a mistake based on your excellent description, a warning seems considerate.
Mind you, Gabriel's version fascinates me as no one 'owns' pieces.
Compared with the Western chess, I find this game is a lot more exciting. Only 5 pawns with a distance between them make roads for pieces come to the enemy's territory and organize an attack. There are much less draws than in Western chess, and you cannot play passively hoping for a draw if you don't want to fight, the enemy's forces will overwhelm you soon. The battle here is more fiery than in its counterpart and draw is only achieved through a fight with a lot of exchanges. This game has less regard on material, you could be several pawns or one piece down but you have chances to attack the enemy's King, it is ok since the king is limited in His Royal Palace. Sacrifices of pieces are seen in almost every 3 games, and two rooks (the strongest offensive piece) sacrifice is seen in around, say, 5000 games.
Roberto, I'd like to point out that as of right now, when one Googles 'chessvariants,' the first related page that comes up under the main listing is this Xiang-Qi page. If that isn't a good indicator of this game's popularity variant-wise, if not game-wise in general, I don't know what is. (Incidentally, a search for 'xiangqi' gives this page second in the list, and a search for 'xiang-qi' or 'chinese chess' gives it first.)
From: chinese-chess-xiang-qi.dev.java.net : '...Because of the huge number of players in China and the rest of Asia, Chinese Chess is 'the' most popular game in the world...' There is not support for this statement, and, in my personal opinion, it is not true, even if you are only talking about board games, and even if you are only talking about Chess and variants.
I have found a 'Chinese chess board' with 'material pieces': http://www.mastersgames.com/cat/board/chinese-chess.htm But it's expensive.
one rule in Xiangqi is : Perpetual check is forbidden. You cannot check your opponent more than three times in a row with the same piece and same board positions. But the software do not understand it. The device check me no-limitted in a row wiht the same piece and same board positions. i have to give up.
What a site! For a lover of fairy chess etc. like me. Years ago I saw this beatiful chess set and wanted it, but could not afford to pay D. kr. 1.500 (appr. 300 dollars). This Christmas my girlfriend gave it to me! I never told her my wish, so it is simply the best Christmas present I have recived, ever. It is very beautiful, a smaller copy of the terracotta figures from the grave of Qin Shi Huang Di, first emperor of China - much more visual than Chinese characters. The ministers and guards are very alike, though (anyone else out there who has a set and knows which one has a split hair-do and which one does not?) She worried that it was not standard chess. I thought great that it is not, though rules did not follow (and I thought Chinese and Japanese chess were the same...), so we picked up some simple, and flawed rules on the Internet. I have played several games with my self or the kids. We have made three major mistakes: 1. The ministers (elephants) could leap (minor mistake actually). 2. I thought the way the horse moved was in a simple L-shape: One step orthogonally and two steps to the side - or two steps, then one step. This gives some other points where one cannot leap, including different opening options. 3. Great mistake: I thought the cannons could only capture a token directly behind another token (in stead of the great leap for cannon-kind of the real rules), which makes it a rather weak token in it self. Glad you set me straight on all points, though I will recommend my 'wrong variant', which gives a very complicated and defensive game (with some tendency to produce tied games). The 'wrong horse moves' I will recommend in general, for variation. Looking forward to testing out your variants and the Chorean chess on the board...
There wasn't any conclusions i could find for the game... but as a chinese, i admit that i like this game a lot even though i do not play it often...
XiangQi is a very good game, the more you play it, the more you find it clever and elegant. Not able to read the chinese language, I found 4 very good books on XiangQi, written by David H.Li. The titles are : 'First Syllabus on XiangQi - Chinese Chess 1', 'Syllabus on Cannon - Chinese Chess 2', 'Syllabus on Elephant - Chinese Chess 3' 'Syllabus on Pawn - Chinese Chess 4' These books use the notation given by the WXF and greatly improved my knowledge and game level.
Hi, all xiangqi friends, i would like to introduce the following free online chess, come and join, all xiangqi players over the world. http://www.clubxiangqi.com cychong [email protected] Malaysian
IS there a way for you to include link to the online multiplayer 3D Chinese chess game I created? http://chess.hanamifx.com/
It is a good start for beginners in understanding one of the greatest game, in my opinion, ever created. As to the question of Seongmo Yoon, the website with those free e-books on Chinese Chess requires a program called Adobe Acrobat to view. You can find the software free to download almost anywhere on the internet, just search for the program through google or you can probably find it on Download.com. It was a great site for would be chinese chess players...highly recommended: http://wxf.hypermart.net/eg/index.html Thanx Seongmo Yoon. hopes this comment helps.
www.aikidoaus.com.au by the way, this link leads me to an Aikido site. Aikido is a Japanese martial art. Interesting :) I practiced Aikikai aikido for a few months before. Aikikai aikido is the most smooth and soft type of Aikido. Do Aussy people practice Aikido?
Thanks, John! This is from another source I can use this and your reference to know of Chinese chess notation. >>From what I remember Lau just used a straightforward translation of >>the Chinese move notation which has been used for a long time. If you >>have in Chinese language books you can verify this. > > > I don't have Chinese books (as I unfortunately don't read Chinese); but > Lau used a pure algebraic notation. The standard notation uses a > system with the symbols +, -, = to denote moves forward, back, or side- > ward. Lau's notation is actually easier to follow but no one else uses it, > so the student has to discard it and learn the standard notation later. He simply uses english characters to represent the same thing. From what I could tell his notation is easily translatable into [WA]XF by replacing f,b,t with +,-,=. I may have the characters wrong, but in general he uses the Chinese notation with english characters just as [WA]XF uses chinese notation with mathematical symbols. You should learn the characters needed to read chinese notation. Its really only a few symbols more than the pieces. You have front, back, side, and the numbers 1-9.
Check out http://www.aikidoaus.com.au/dojo/docs/chinese_chess/notation.htm
http://wxf.hypermart.net/eg/index.html 'Deceptive Play in Xiangqi Openings And Countermeasures' I downloaded the free English e-book but do not know how to read its notation system Any helps?
can i copy the texts here to my homepage? i will claim the texts are copied from 'www.chessvariants.com' in my HP ng goi ar.....
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