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
In China was possible to find Chinese chess players on the streets playing for little money, or showing a position, and one had to find the solution. Generally such positions were tricky to say the least. In 2007 there was a software which took this real life situation, and made it into a program everyone
What are the limits of our visualization? This is the first exercise my coach gave me, he showed me the board, asked me to memorize it, and then when I was ready he told me to walk with him. This is the position: Black move is probably not the best in this position, but it
The Houston XiangQi Association just published the most exciting news, they will organize the World XiangQi Championship in Houston this November!! Hence the need to begin to train seriously, since as shown in the title there are only 284 days to the event! As Capablanca told me long time ago, yeah I’m revealing my true
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,
Thanks to my new Youtube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV-4aAlTg-J2NTxEHzNWfNg) I’ve witnessed many interesting games between engines. The main problem is that while watching the game, I cannot stop and ask questions… So I created this article to share a position from the first game of a match between XieXiemaster running on an I7 12th generation and Chinese
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