Xiangqi for chess players
You already know most of this game. Here is the part you don't.
Xiangqi and Western chess are cousins — both descend from Indian chaturanga, which is why so much of one transfers to the other. This page is not the rules; it is the diff. If you can play chess, you can play a real game of xiangqi in about ten minutes, and the four differences in the last section are what will cost you the first few.
The pieces, as a mapping
Four of the seven are a chess piece you already own. Two are a chess piece with the power turned down. One has no equivalent at all.
| Xiangqi | Closest chess piece | What's different |
|---|---|---|
| 車 Chariot | Rook | Nothing. It is a rook. |
| 馬 Horse | Knight | It can be blocked. See below — this is the big one. |
| 象 Elephant | Bishop | Moves exactly two points diagonally, can be blocked at the midpoint, and may never cross the river. It is a defender only, and it never sees more than seven squares. |
| 士 Advisor | Queen — and this is a lie | One point diagonally, never leaving the palace. It is the weakest piece on the board, not the strongest. |
| 將 General | King | Confined to the nine points of its palace, and it moves orthogonally only — no diagonals. Plus the flying-general rule below. |
| 兵 Soldier | Pawn | Captures straight ahead rather than diagonally. No double first step, no en passant, and no promotion — crossing the river just lets it also move sideways. |
| 炮 Cannon | Nothing | Moves like a rook. Captures only by jumping. Read the next section twice. |
If you use the chess-figure piece set in the app, those are the shapes you will see — with the advisor drawn as a queen, because there is nothing better to draw it as. The app says so in its own settings, and it is worth repeating here: the queen shape is the one mapping that lies.
The four things that will actually cost you games
1. The cannon has no analogue, and it is everywhere
A cannon moves like a rook along empty points. To capture, it must jump over exactly one piece — of either colour — and land on the first enemy piece beyond it. One piece in between: legal. Zero, or two: not legal.
This inverts the intuition a chess player has about open lines. An open file is where your rook is strong; it is where a cannon is harmless. Cannons want a piece in the way, and a defender that steps out of a cannon's line can be the move that loses, because it hands the cannon a screen.
Note which piece does the screening. In the Central Cannon — the most popular opening in the game — Red swings a cannon to the middle file, where it fires at Black's central soldier over Red's own. Your pieces are your ammunition as much as your opponent's are, which is why a cannon and the soldier in front of it are a unit, and why advancing that soldier can quietly switch your own cannon off.
2. The horse can be blocked (蹩馬腿)
A horse moves one point orthogonally, then one point diagonally outward. If the orthogonal point is occupied — by anything, yours or theirs — the move is illegal. A chess knight jumps and nothing can stop it. A xiangqi horse can be shut down by a single soldier standing next to it.
Everything you know about knights needs re-checking against this. Forks can be prevented by blocking rather than by moving. A horse on the rim is not just short of squares, it is one pawn away from having none. And a horse deep in enemy territory can be trapped in a way a knight never can.
3. Stalemate loses
A player with no legal move is defeated, in check or not. In chess you play for stalemate when you are lost; here it is another way to lose, and deliberately taking away every legal move is a normal winning method. It also means you can never save a bad ending by shedding material until you have nothing left to move.
4. The generals attack each other
The two generals may never face each other along a file with nothing in between. In practice they indirectly attack each other down an open file — so the piece standing between them is pinned there and cannot step aside, and clearing that file is a real mating pattern. It is the only rule on this page with no chess counterpart at all, and it decides a surprising number of endings.
What transfers unchanged
More than you would expect. Counting material, seizing open files with chariots, tempo, initiative, king safety, thinking in forcing moves, spotting a back-rank-style mate against a boxed-in general — all of it works. So does the habit of asking what your opponent's last move threatened.
Rough piece values, for the counting instinct you already have: chariot 9, cannon 4.5, horse 4, advisor and elephant 2 each, soldier 1 — rising to about 2 once it crosses the river. Cannons are worth slightly more than horses early, when the board is crowded enough to give them screens, and rather less in a bare endgame when there is nothing left to jump.
Three habits to unlearn
Board geography. Pieces sit on the intersections, not in the squares, and the board is 9 files by 10 ranks. There is no centre square — the middle file is the thing that matters, and it is where the cannons point.
No castling, no promotion. Your general starts safe and stays home; your soldiers never become chariots. Endgames are therefore about the pieces you still have, not about a passed pawn's race.
No king activity in the endgame. The general cannot leave the palace, so the chess habit of marching the king up the board in a simplified position has nowhere to go. Elephants and advisors never leave home either, which is why bare-piece endings feel very different.
That is the whole diff. Play a game against the computer — three strengths, chess-figure pieces if you want them, and a coach that names what you played. When something surprises you, it will be the cannon.