For a western chess player stalemate is a kind of curse or blessing depending on which side one is. If he’s losing the game, clearly a blessing, if he’s winning the game a curse. In XiangQi stalemate is ruled as a win. Yet for a western chess player who’s learning XiangQi, to see the “stalemate
This article doesn’t want to be a substitute for reading the entire book of the rules as published by the World XiangQi Federation and approved also by the Chinese XiangQi Association. The same for the booklet published by the Asian XiangQi federation. Both these works are more comprehensive and treat the rules in a more
Few years back Jan Timman, one of the top 10 chess players in that time, published a book entitled: “the art of analysis.” Today we believe to know the truth about a position thanks to engines. But if engines were switched off, how would we evaluate a position? In fact Caruana, another top 10 player,
Life like chess, or Chinese Chess, is always doing the opposite of what we hope, of what we wish in our hearts would happen. There is definitely no happy ending… generally the ending if one doesn’t have a massive stroke or heart attack, is in a diaper full of… well you can imagine… Today I
I’m trying to train for the 17th Chinese Chess World Championship, and since in chess we all know the saying: “Openings teach you openings, Endgames teach you chess” I began with very simple endgames, like King and Knight vs King and Elephant (in XiangQi the elephant is a kind of proto-bishop, like the queen today
In Chess, as well as in Chinese Chess, there are some positions which are difficult to conquer. As always they defy our visualization in many ways. Let’s take the following position found on a beginner’s book of over a quarter of a century ago! Here I spent a good amount of time analyzing the knight
In October there will be the 17th World XiangQi Championship, generally the true World Champion is the guy who wins the Chinese Championship, but also for this tournament, I don’t remember it to be won by a non-Chinese. Since it will be in Malaysia, a beautiful country, I’m thinking of participating… obviously some preparation is