Xiangqi middlegame
What the pieces are worth, and how to go after a general
The opening is a formation you can learn by name. The endgame is a technique you can learn by rule. The middlegame is neither: it is where you decide what the game is about. What follows is the small number of things that decide it — what a piece is really worth, why that changes as the board empties, and the three shapes an attack on the general actually takes. New to xiangqi? Start with the rules.
What a piece is worth
Every plan in the middlegame eventually becomes a trade, so it helps to know the exchange rate. These are not invented numbers: they are what the engine on this site actually uses to choose its moves, so the opponent you play here agrees with the page.
| Piece | Worth | What the number hides |
|---|---|---|
| 車 Chariot | 9 | The best piece on the board and the least complicated. It wants open files. |
| 砲 Cannon | 4.5 | Worth most on a crowded board, because it needs something to jump over. |
| 馬 Horse | 4 | Worth more as the board empties, because nothing is left to block its leg. |
| 士 Advisor | 2 | Never leaves the palace. Half a general's shield, and worth far more than 2 when a chariot pair arrives. |
| 象 Elephant | 2 | Never crosses the river. The other half of the shield. |
| 兵 Soldier | 1 → 2 | Doubles the moment it crosses the river, and keeps climbing as it advances. |
Notice what that arithmetic says about the trade everyone gets wrong: a chariot is 9 and a cannon plus a horse is 8.5. The engine will take two pieces for a chariot and think it has gained almost nothing — which is the honest answer. That exchange is decided by the position, not by the count.
The cannon's clock is running
A cannon captures by jumping exactly one piece. Put one on an empty board and it cannot even give check — not "is weak", cannot. Its power is borrowed from the clutter around it, and every trade you make hands a little of it back.
The horse is the mirror image. It needs one square beside it to be empty, and an emptying board keeps giving it more of those. So the two pieces cross somewhere in the middlegame: the cannon is the piece to have at move ten, and the horse is the piece to keep at move fifty. If you are going to trade one for the other, that sentence is the whole guide.
Three ways an attack actually looks
Xiangqi attacking play is unusually pattern-based, and three shapes cover most of it. Each one below opens on the board with the position already set up — play the move yourself.
空頭炮 · The hollow cannon
A cannon on the general's own file with nothing between them. It gives no check at all while it sits there, which is exactly why it is so unpleasant: every piece you move onto that file becomes its screen, so the position is a loaded gun pointed at the palace and your opponent has to spend the game keeping the file stuffed.
Set it up — red to move, cannon on e5 staring at the general, horse on c5. Play the horse to e4 and watch a quiet position become check.
臥槽馬 · The horse at the trough
A horse one rank into the enemy camp and two files off centre checks a general on its home square. It is the most common attacking move in the game because the check has to be answered, and answering it usually means moving the general somewhere worse.
Its answer is worth knowing too: a horse is blocked by the square beside it, so putting any piece on the horse's leg turns the check off without touching the horse. Set it up — red to move, horse on d3. Play it to c1.
馬後炮 · Cannon behind horse
The classical mate, and the neatest idea in xiangqi: the horse stands in front of the general covering both squares beside it, and the cannon fires down the same file using the horse itself as its screen. One piece doing two jobs. Take the horse away and the cannon has nothing to jump; take the cannon away and the horse gives no check.
Set it up — red to move, horse on e2, cannon on d5. Swing the cannon to e5. That is mate, and every escape square is covered by something different.
Attack the shield, not the general
Advisors and elephants can never leave home — an advisor is stuck to the palace diagonals, an elephant can never cross the river. That makes them a permanent, immobile shield, and it makes them the real target of most middlegame attacks. You are rarely trying to mate a general with all four defenders intact; you are trying to remove one so that a mate becomes possible at all.
The two traditional sayings are worth memorising, because they tell you which defender to take: 缺士怕雙車 — a general missing an advisor fears a pair of chariots — and 缺象怕炮, a general missing an elephant fears cannons. Both are about holes, not material.
There is a twist that catches beginners: a cannon attacking a general will happily use the defender's own advisor as its screen. Defenders are not automatically defensive, and a well-placed enemy piece can be the thing that makes a check possible.
The soldier that crosses the river
Before the river a soldier has exactly one legal move: straight ahead. Cross it, and it can step sideways as well — three times the choices, and the engine roughly doubles what it thinks the soldier is worth on the spot.
But there is no promotion in xiangqi, ever. A soldier that reaches the last rank can only shuffle sideways along it for the rest of the game. A soldier's peak is a rank or two into enemy territory, near the palace, where it takes squares away from the general. Pushing one all the way to the back rank is not ambition; it is retirement.
How to practise this
- Solve the tactics, not just the mates. The puzzle set includes material-winning positions where the winning move is the only one, which is the middlegame skill this page is describing.
- Watch the coach's blunder calls. It names the better move and what your move cost, which turns a vague "that felt wrong" into a number.
- Count before every trade. Nine for a chariot, four and a half for a cannon, four for a horse. Say the numbers out loud until you stop needing to.
Start a game and try to reach one of the three shapes above. When you have the attack, the endgame guide is what happens if it does not land.