Play xiangqi online.
Chinese chess, rated and timed, worldwide.
Chinese chess with real competition: rated games with Elo and rank tiers, lessons you play rather than watch, a puzzle ladder, and a database of master games with engine analysis.
Master games from the database
How xiangqi is played
Before a first game, a new player needs to know how the board is laid out, what the pieces are and how a game is won.
The board
The board has 9 vertical lines, called files, and 10 horizontal lines, called ranks. The pieces stand on the points where the lines cross. A river divides the board into two halves, and each side has a palace of nine points marked by two diagonal lines.
The seven kinds of piece
Each side has sixteen pieces of seven kinds: one general, two advisors, two elephants, two horses, two chariots, two cannons and five soldiers. Red moves first, and the two players then take turns, moving one piece each time.
How a game is won
A player wins by checkmating the other general, which means attacking it so that no move can save it. A player who has no legal move on their turn also loses, even when their general is not in check.
Openings and skills
Red usually opens with one of four moves: a cannon to the centre, a soldier forward, an elephant to the centre or a horse forward. Each card plays the first moves of one of them, and its guide explains what happens next.
17,286 master games
The cannon moves to the central file and aims at the soldier in front of Black's general.
Black most often replies with the Screen Horses defence, which the master game database records in 10,148 games.
The Screen Horses →6,218 master games
Red moves a soldier one point forward. The move opens a road for a horse and lets Red wait for Black's reply before choosing a plan.
2,863 master games
The elephant moves to the central file, two points in front of the general, where it strengthens Red's defence. Red can then wait for Black's plan before choosing where to attack.
1,331 master games
Red brings out a horse first, and the horse also guards the central soldier. Red can still choose between a central cannon and quieter plans on a later move.
Skills
The masters and their games
Each master profile describes the player's career and has games that you can replay move by move, and many more master games wait in the master game database. Of the masters profiled here, these four have won the most national individual titles in China, counting both the men's and the women's championships.
- Hu Ronghua胡荣华
14 national individual titles, 1960 to 2000
- Tang Dan唐丹
10 national individual titles, 2007 to 2025
- Xu Yinchuan许银川
6 national individual titles, 1993 to 2009
- Hu Ming胡明
6 national individual titles, 1986 to 1994
What you can do on the site
You can play rated games against other people or practise against the computer, and you can study with lessons, puzzles and the master game database.
Rating tiers
Every player starts at 1200. Each rated game moves your rating up or down, and your rating places you in one of these tiers.
Play your first game
Creating an account is free. After that you can play a rated game, play the computer or start a lesson.