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Xiangqi board, with pieces in their starting positions ^[1]

Chinese Chess, or Xiangqi 象棋 ^[2],
is a chess variant which is very popular in east Asia, specially in China and Vietnam. The Chinese Chess set includes a board and 32 pieces for two players. The board has ten horizontal lines called ranks and nine vertical lines called files. In the middle of the board the central seven files are interrupted by a horizontal space called the “River”, which splits the board into two parts. Each side of the board has a “Palace” a 3x3 area in the central base. The seven kind of pieces are placed on the intersections and move and capture according to their individual ability and restriction along the lines including the “River banks”. The two sides are usually distinguished by color, being red or black ^[3] .

Basically the rules are similar to chess. The object of the game is to checkmate or stalemate (is a win as well) the opponent King aka General. However, partly due to the freedom and power of the Rook over other pieces, and the limited freedom of the King, it is forbidden to repeat perpetually a direct thread (i.e. perpetual check 長將, perpetual thread of capture 長捉, a check and then a threat of mate 一將一殺, or a combination of these). This needs to be taken into account in the board representation.

Pieces

Pieces on the red side bear different characters than their counterparts on the black side. They are the same pieces, but names on the Red side are subtly more noble than those on the Black side ^[4].

Name		Notation ^[5]	Value ^[6]	Movement	Restriction
帥、將	King (General)	K		moves and captures one orthogonal step	may not leave the palace The two kings may not face each other along the same file with no intervening piece
仕, 士	Advisor (Guard)	A	2	moves and captures one diagonal step	may not leave the palace
相、象	Elephant	E	2	moves and captures two diagonal points	may not jump over intervening pieces,may not cross the river
傌, 馬	Horse	H	4	moves and captures one orthogonal step plus one diagonal step	blocked by orthogonal adjacent pieces
俥, 車	Rook (ChaRiot)	R	9	moves and captures any distance orthogonally	may not jump over intervening pieces
炮, 炮	Cannon	C	4½	moves any distance orthogonally - captures by jumping a single piece, friend or foe, in-between the orthogonal path of attack towards the captured piece
兵、卒	Pawn (Soldier)	P (S)	1 2	moves and captures one step forward - once crossed the river, also one point sideways

Xiangqi Variants

Banqi
Jeiqi

Xiangqi Engines

Xiangqi Engines

Computer Olympiads

Photos

Xiangqi winners in Graz 2003, Pascal Tang, Zhi-Jian Tu and Shun-Chin Hsu ^[7]

Xiangqi winners Taipei 2005 with TD Jaap van den Herik and representative of the sponsor Acer Inc.,
Mingyang Zhao (Gold), Ming-Cheng Cheng (Silver) and Jiao Wang (Bronze) ^[8]

Yokohama 2013, Wen-Jie Tseng, Shi-Jim Yen, Harm Geert Muller and Jaap van den Herik ^[9]

Publications

1981 ...

Y.T. Zhang (1981). Application of Artificial Intelligence in Computer Chinese Chess. M.Sc. thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University (Chinese)
Shun-Chin Hsu, D.H. Huang (1985). Design and Implementation of a Chinese Chess Knowledge Base. Proceedings of NCS, pp. 505-509. (Chinese)
Robert Nisonoff, M. Stephanie Ricks (1988). To Catch a King: East Meets West in the Game of Chess. PC Magazine, October 31, 1988, pp. 506 » EGA Chess, Xian
Nick Jacobs (1989). Xian, a Chinese Chess Program. Heuristic Programming in AI 1

1990 ...

Shun-Chin Hsu (1990). Introduction to Computer Chess and Computer Chinese Chess. Journal of Computer, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 1-8. (in Chinese)
Kuo-Ming Tsao, Jen-Hsuan Li, Shun-Chin Hsu (1991). Design and Implementation of a Chinese Chess Program. Heuristic Programming in AI 2
Shun-Chin Hsu, Kuo-Ming Tsao (1991). Design and Implementation of an Opening Game Knowledge-Base System for Computer Chinese Chess. Bulletin of the College of Engineering, N.T.U., No. 53, pp. 75-86. (in Chinese)
Chun Ye (1992). Experiments in Selective Search Extensions. MSc. thesis, Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, pdf
Chun Ye, Tony Marsland (1992). Experiments in Forward Pruning with Limited Extensions. ICCA Journal, Vol. 15, No. 2, pdf
Chun Ye, Tony Marsland (1992). Selective Extensions in Game-Tree Search. Heuristic Programming in AI 3, pdf
Yi-Fan Ke, Tai-Ming Parng (1993). The Guard Heuristic: Legal Move Ordering with Forward Game-Tree Pruning. ICCA Journal, Vol. 16, No. 2
Mei-En Chen, Yo-Ping Huang (1995). Guard heuristic by dynamic fuzzy reasoning model for Chinese chess. Proceedings of ISUMA-NAFIPS '95