Chinese Chess: The 32 Pieces, Their Names, and How Xiangqi Works

Chinese chess, called xiangqi, is a two-player strategy game played on a grid of 90 intersections with 32 pieces, 16 per side. The board is nine files wide and ten ranks deep, the pieces sit on the crossing points instead of inside squares, and a river splits the two halves. If you already play Western chess, roughly half of what you know carries over. The other half will lose you games inside twenty moves.

The board is a grid of points, not squares

No checkerboard here. A xiangqi board is printed with lines only, nine columns by ten rows, which gives you 90 places a piece can stand against 64 in the Western game. The pieces themselves are flat discs with a character on top, so they sit on the lines and slide between points. Each side gets a palace, a 3 by 3 box with diagonals drawn through it, nine points in total, where the general and his two advisors spend the entire game. A river runs between the fifth and sixth ranks; chariots and horses ignore it, elephants and soldiers do not. If the only board you've ever set up is a Western one, the routine for how to set up a chess board won't transfer. Start by putting pieces on intersections.

Seven piece types, sixteen pieces a side

Add those up and you get sixteen a side, thirty-two on the board.

The cannon is the piece that ruins Western players. It slides like a rook but cannot capture that way; it needs a screen, one piece of either color, sitting between it and the target. Beginners park a cannon on the central file, then wonder why it does nothing for fifteen moves. The horse is the other adjustment. Blocking it takes a single piece on the point directly beside it, so a packed board hobbles your horses in a way Western chess never does. The Western equivalents are close enough to be useful, which is why a page on chess pieces still reads like familiar ground.

What the pieces are called in Chinese, and why the English names vary

The two armies use diffrent characters for the same pieces, which is why you'll see the advisor spelled two ways in the same book. Translators disagree too. Xiangqi writing in English tends to keep chariot, horse and elephant; Western chess writers often swap in rook, knight and bishop for the reader's comfort. I prefer the xiangqi names, because calling an elephant a bishop makes people think it moves one point diagonally, and that's the fastest way to lose a piece on your first evening. The move notation is its own language as well, with files numbered 1 to 9 from each player's own right, and it's less forgiving than the chess notation you may already read.

Four rules that catch Western players out

Stalemate is a loss. In the Western game, a player with no legal move gets a draw; in xiangqi, that player gets a loss, which changes the math of every endgame. I think it's the better rule, honestly, because it stops a helpless position from being rewarded.

The two generals may never face each other along an open file. That sounds like a technicality and it isn't. A general can be frozen by the enemy general, and the flying general threat decides a lot of otherwise drawn endings.

There's no castling, no en passant and no promotion. A soldier that reaches the far rank stays a soldier and keeps shuffling sideways, which is why five soldiers a side stay relevant for forty moves.

Repetition gets messy, and it's the one area where 32 pieces can produce an argument longer than the game. Perpetual check is restricted, the wording varies between rule sets, and club players will burn ten minutes disagreeing about whether a chase counts. Learn the first two rules before anything else; they sit alongside the basics in chess rules for beginners.

Starting out when you already know Western chess

Red moves first, always, and the most common opening family is the Central Cannon, cannon to the central file, aimed at the enemy general through the middle. If you've ever thought about tempo and initiative in the Western game, who goes first in chess is where that conversation starts, and it matters more here because Red's first move is sharp.

Five soldiers a side makes the pawn structure dense and slow. You can't blow the center open the way a Western e4 push does. My advice is unglamorous: play ten games before you read any theory, and count material after every capture. Xiangqi rewards the same counting habit that club chess does, and it punishes guessing harder.

If you need a set to learn on

I'll be straight with you: none of the sets below are xiangqi sets, and I'd rather say that than dress up a Western board. They're Western chess sets, useful if you're learning both games at once, teaching a kid the international version first, or drilling piece names into your head before you buy a folding xiangqi board of your own.

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Spin Master Games Cardinal Classics Chess Teacher

by Spin Master Games

• Includes: Chessboard, 32 Chess Pieces, Instructions

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: The Cardinal Classics Chess Teacher prints each piece's name and the direction and number of spaces it can move right on the piece, which is the same crutch a beginner needs when memorizing names in either game.

HI

by Point Games

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: A folding cardboard board with standard flat-bottomed plastic pieces, listed for ages 6 and up, so there's nothing precious about it.

WE Games Value Tournament Chess Set

by WE Games

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: The listing says 34 pieces including two extra queens, a 3.75 inch king and 2.25 inch squares on a 19.75 inch roll-up vinyl board, and those numbers sit inside US Chess guidance for tournament play.

Next step: play ten games of xiangqi online with the red pieces, count material after every trade, and only then buy a board. If you're still hooked at game ten, get a folding set with pieces that stand on their own and learn the notation properly.