Chinese Chess Fan-Thread

Chinese Chess

Chinese Chess

... and here an introduction to The Game

Sorry Alain for deleting the thread, but I had to change the image I used before and then the whole thread was deleted... anyway thanks for the comment :)

Chinese Chess would be a nice compliment to Shogi at littlegolem....maybe Korean chess too? I have played Chinese Chess several times, never played Korean Chess, but it sounds interesting (kind of like Chinese Chess on steroids!)

I prefer xiangqi

I would love to play xiangqi if it were possible on little golem.

Chinese Chess is a wonderful game, more popular than Shogi and as good (or better?) than standard Chess. I hope it gets implemented at LG sometime!

Ray: Korean Chess (Jiangqi I think) is a nice game, but it doesn't add as much to Xiangqi as you might think. Of course, the bishops are more powerful and the rules for checkmate modified slightly, but its very closely related.

I guess the only problem with implementing properly chinese chess is the rather complex chasing rules...

Here I found another very nice website Xiangqi in English

It has daily puzzles, a lot on openings, famous games, history and much more... Read it, and if you are not a fan today, you are likely to become one very soon when starting to roam about there... ;)

@alain xiangqi may be played by more people but its hardly more popular then shogi, (you have to consider de size of chinese population nad japanese population), it's very hard to find a park in the japan withouth a couple of elders playing shogi, as far as I know this is not as common among chinese parks with xiangqi(It amazes me the ammount of Table Tennis players around there!). Even thought its a very interesting game itself :)

Well, I don't know if Shogi is more popular than Xiangqi, but I do know that Xiangqi is very, very popular in China and that you can see many people, both old and young playing Xiangqi in parks, tea-houses and on streets in China.

Another interesting question is the origins of Chess, which version is the oldest? Here is an interesting site on the history of Chess: The original Chess was invented in China

I'd love to see xiangqi on LG. It's a very good game on a similar level to chess, and it's a pity that it isn't more popular among non-chinese players.

I have never played it. But I like chess and shogi (which I am learning to play here at LG) so I would really like to learn xiangqi.

So, what could be the best first move? How about playing a game here together discussing each move?

What do you think is better to open with, the chariot, the cannon, a soldier or the elephant?

And now a WISH for the YEAR 2012: Chinese Chess / Xiangqi on Little Golem ;)

Happy New Year to all!

I second that wish

It's fun, it's deep, there's a lot of theory, loads of players and it completes the Classical Club. Without implying any value judgement, see first sentence, I feel it's also rather archaic. Whereas Shogi and Chess have evolved to more 'streamlined' sport weapons, Xiangqi has stayed put. Proponents would point to that as proof of quality, and maybe it is. I'm not an expert by any standard :)

There are two types of games that flow with my bloodstream inside my body: (a) Xiangqi and (b) Go.

Between ages of 6 and about 17, Xiangqi was my only recreation. I became so addicted to it that my mother had to use an axe to chop the woodboard into halves. I cried and cried, and was heart-broken. Had she not done that, however, today I might have become a professional Xiangqi player, making a very poor living, teaching folks in the park (as Ricardo mentioned about park). Thanks to her determination to discourage her son from playing too much. :)

Then, my interest switched to Go. It was like my new girlfriend. I completely forgot about my old one.

As christian freeling pointed out, Xiangqi is fun, and is deep. Specifically, it is fun because there are two cannons, which do not exist in Chess. Also, Kings (or generals) of two sides are prohibited from seeing each other at the same vertical line, adding more flavor near the end game. It is deep, partly because it has been played and studied since 2000 years ago. (In comparison, Hex has been played for less than 100 years)

If implemented at LG, Xiangqi will obviously attract many Chinese players. How many? There are approximately 70 million Xiangqi players in China (I just googled the information using a Chinese search engine)

Happy new year of dragon, folks.

Now I want it even more!

+1 from me, too.

There is no standard symbol set for Chinese chess and personally I object to games that use letterings and especially Chinese / Japanese letterings to denote the pieces. This is an extremely awkward method of denoting playing pieces (upside-down for my opponent!) and only people infatuated with Asian "mystique" fail to see this. There are so many excellent modern games deserving to be included in Little Golem. Dameo and Bushka are much, much more worthy of inclusion here. Working on Xiangqi would be just a waste of valuable programming resources of this site. As Christian Freeling pointed out it is almost impossible for a chess variant not to work as a game. If Xiangqi should be a good candidate then 1000+ other chess variants should be as well (and probably better in many cases as they tend to use symbolic setups). Enough is enough.

Thank you for mentioning Dameo and Bushka. If at all, then I would prefer to see Dameo because it is a fast, modern and sharp Draughts game. Yet many players here may not prefer a Draughts game at all.

I have another suggestion, Symple was invented by the Devil, and then he made us find it. Try it at your own risk.

As there are no Draughts related games here yet it would make sense to add a good one. I also vote for Dameo to be included first. Bushka second :)

For a chess related game your Caissa is certainly more worthy attention than most of other chess variants. Even though your site describes it in terms of vanishing playing squares, in actual play the vanishing squares can be marked in a similar manner as in Amazons. I played it in this manner and it felt like a cross between chess and Amazons with an added element of connectivity reminiscent of Go. All one needs to play is a standard chess set and a couple of stones to mark blocked squares. It seems to me a very underrated game. It is also probably much more complex than Amazons given that you have to work through chess-like manouvers to be able to drop a blocking stone (by forcing the king to move) rather than doing this automatically.

What Caissa an Symple have in common is that the first was used for the 2003 CodeCup Challenge and the second will be the featured game at the 2013 2013 CCC (yet to be announced).

Symple actually seems like a quite cool game (after watching just the example games) - I would love to see it here. However, I must disagree that it is a hard game because the searchspace is big. In sorting you also have n! size searchspace on n numbers but the problem is pretty easy.

Anyway, we may have gone overboard in this thread that is supposedly about chinese chess - maybe we start a new thread about Symple or simply about game wishes on LG?

I tried chinese chess at iggamecenter some time ago with elegant symbolic representation. It is not a bad game at all. But it seemed just too similar to chess to justify the effort of overcoming the differences. A palace and a river are interesting ideas if somewhat naive. But on the other hand there are 4 pieces per side that are so restricted in movement that they feel out of place. I would rather opt to include ChuShogi in Little Golem. ChuShogi almost feels like a battle simulation while still being an abstract game. Possibility of having two kings, pieces with multi-capture, tight four line formations etc. are all more interesting additions to chess than just a canon unit. Chushogi sets are difficult to buy and rules are rather complicated so a nice computer interface enforcing the rules would be the best way to try this game.

I'm sure there are a hundred nice, exciting and interesting good new games out there that would be nice to have included here at Little Golem for a try. I never heard about or tried the games you are mentioning, so I can't really comment them.

BUT

, when you compare all of these games with Xiangqi (Chinese Chess), I think you are doing a big mistake! It is just another type of league... Chinese Chess is a classical game of the same class as Go, International Chess and Shogi. Xiangqi is not a new experiment, it is a game that has survived over the times... it has been tested and played by thousands and thousands of people for many hundreds of years (if not thousands of years). It is also quite different from as well International Chess and Shogi and has a very different dynamic. By including Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) here at Little Golem, not only a great game is included, but also an important portion of history, culture, tradition and philosophy.

With Chinese Chess here at Little Golem, we would open up a totally new dimension, both in space and time, not to talk about in thought.

I can see your point. But on the other hand, if this game is as important as you say there surely must be some good stand-alone servers for playing Xiangqi? Personally I prefer OGS (online Go server) for playing standard Go and LSS for playing standard chess. Naturally having chess and Go here does not hurt, but what really sets Little Golem apart are all the special versions of Go, like toroidal Go. In general the strength of Little Golem lies in providing the possibility of playing modern games, modern versions of games or games that are difficult to play elsewhere in the framework of tournament / ranked play.

"We humbly acknowledge that old games are always better because inventing games is one of two human activities excluded from progress. The other one is the brain activity of people who hold that point of view.

mindsports

I think it would be a nice game to have here since it is primarily known in the east and this could help introducing it to players in the west. However, I agree that the force of this site is to help establish competitive communities around games that are new and/or not well known.

What about Chad)? There's two castles :) but it's modern, has a simple structure, is well tested, decisive and very deep.

Well, I guess the only requirement for a game here is that it doesn't contain an obvious winning strategy that is easy to follow for either player. Other than that, it is really a matter of taste - what we find fun seem to differ greatly.

I guess we should start a new thread: "Chess variants to include in Little Golem" to avoid hijacking this one from XiangQi fans.

"what we find fun seems to differ greatly"

Except that most seem to agree that Xiangqi is fun :)

Happy Chinese new year!

Happy Chinese New Year - The Year of the Dragon.

What a perfect year to introduce Chinese Chess / Xiangqi on Little Golem ;)

@Mirambel: I don't mind the discussion at all. It is fine :) When it comes to Little Golem, I think the very good thing is that you have a good mix of both very interesting new and modern games as well as nice "traditional" and "classical" games. This thread was started to gather fans of Chinese Chess (Xiangqi) and maybe finding some new waving fans. Of course, also the purpose of the tread is to promote the introduction of the game at Little Golem, since I think it is really missing when it comes to offer a complete set of classical games. I guess Chinese Chess is note very well known in the west, and so you could almost regard it as a new and modern game on this side of the world ;)

I played it first time yesterday with a new chinese friend of mine. We had so much fun. The game is really quick and action packed. To me it feel much more open than chess (where a lot of the peices are stuck in the beginning). Also, much quicker than shogi (which is a little grand to me - i prefer the mini version). However, you have to be careful since a lot of the pieces in the beginning have no defenders (unlike chess). This allows for some really successful aggresive play against newer players.

Regarding the fun of the game, I thought I was a strong and undefeated player during my young ages. But the fact was that I was like a frog in a well who could only see a tiny patch of the sky above it. One day a truly strong amateur player (or a weak professional player) taught me a game.

If my memory serves me well, he also gave me a knight (horse) for the handcap. (In Chinese chess, a horse can be crippled if there is a piece blocked adjacent to it. For example, if it desires to move to the northeast position closer to north, and if there is a piece sitting at its north grid node, it is crippled).

Let us not ask how badly I lost. I was not even able to move my rooks out. They were stuck miserably at their original positions in the early stage. When they were able to move out, the entire army of his were already approaching my king.

The iron-clad facts are:

1. Chinese chess is a game of long long history.

2. Chinese people are not dumb.

3. Many Chinese people played, and are playing, Chinese chess, hence have developed enormous literature of standard openings and exotic end-game tricks.

4. There are cannons that do not exist in European Chess.

fact #2 is especially interesting

Yes, you learn something new every day. What about the non-Chinese? I mean, considering the state of the world, and assuming it's not me, someone has to be dumb. ;-)

Very true. Adjectives do not mean much unless a reference is also mentioned. To say "She is a very beautiful lady" does not carry as much weight as to say "She is more beatiful than Marilyn Monroe" or "She was a cheerleader when she was in high school." (my 2-Euro-cent opinion)

The picture shown by Ricardo on the top of this thread may immediately discourage those who cannot understand what those Chinese characters mean. A possible remedy is to use graphic symbols, I guess.

Partly because of the existence of cannons (that must jump over a piece to capture opponent's pieces), Chinese chess in a sense does not duplicate European Chess. If we allow a few variants of Go, variants of Hex, and variants of 5 in a row to co-exist at LG, I think that it is not too much to ask for the inclusion of Chinese chess.

@ Tim Shih

" The picture shown by Ricardo on the top of this thread may immediately discourage those who cannot understand what those Chinese characters mean."

There are also those who'd condemn me for posting this ... ah, well, a condemnation more, a condemnation less, who really cares ;-)

Xiangqi European Style

This is really beautiful, christian. :) Elephants and cannons really look nice. Minor suggestions:

1. The size of pawns can be made slightly smaller. That of kings bigger.

2. The two pieces guarding the king are really not bishops. Shall we call it body guards or personal advisors? Remember: they are allowed to move diagonally only inside that tiny courtyard.

3. Say something in the space of the middle river, like: Silence is gold when watching games. :)

" The two pieces guarding the king are really not bishops"

No, but they have a familiar look in the exotic entourage. Making the king (it's really not a king ;-) bigger gives overlap problems. You can play Xiangqi at mindsports.nl but we've not implemented these graphics yet. Eventually we will.

bring on chinese chess asi m a good player at it

Is this going to be added in here asi love it

IS this going to be added in here

chill, bill. You seem to have enough games in progress as it is ;)

"Chill Bill" ... might have worked for Tarantino too :)

Here is another good website World Xiangqi Federation

and here the world champions so far