Essentials of Xiangqi

ESSENTIALS OF XIANGQI

The last book of the man China called the Chess King, written at ninety six to keep a promise made twenty six years earlier to a friend who did not live to see it. Ten complete games, 735 analysed side lines, in Chinese, English and Vietnamese, with a neural network engine built in. All offline.


SIGNED AT NINETY SIX

On 1 March 1983 an old man in Shanghai signed a preface and dated it by his own years: Xie Xiaxun, in his ninety sixth year. He opened the book: I have now a chess age of ninety years. It was the last he wrote, and he died four years later at a hundred.


THE PROMISE OF 1957

In the autumn of 1957 the second national championship was held in Shanghai, and on the referees' bench sat two old men from one corner of Zhejiang: Xie Xiaxun as chief referee, Lin Yixian as his deputy. The chess world called Lin the Invincible Central Cannon, and both halves of this book are built from his weapon system. Between rounds they agreed to write the Same Direction Cannons up properly. Then:

Several years slipped by and in the end it was shelved. I am 96 years old this year, and Yixian left this world long ago; thinking of my old friend, I cannot help feeling sad. So that this material should not be lost, it has come to five games.

Lin died in 1969. Xie finished alone, twenty six years late.


FIFTEEN MOVES, 351 YEARS

Play the first game of Part One against game six of the Secret Within the Orange, printed 1632, then against game four of chapter five of Wang Zaiyue's Plum Blossom Manual. For fifteen half moves all three are identical, move for move, then they part. Both older manuals are apps of their own here.

Part One, Same Direction Cannons (D04). Both players plant a Cannon in the centre and neither builds a defence; each builds a gun. Xie: both sides go hard against hard, interlocked like a dog's teeth, and the fighting quickly turns white hot. Five games, one position, taken apart five ways.

Part Two, the Overhead Horses (C03). You give away your own central Pawn to pull the enemy Pawn out of the Screen Horses, then march both Horses up the middle behind the Cannon. Xie's verdict: the most powerful line of play in the whole Central Cannon game. By the 1960s almost nobody played it, so these five are its last full treatment.

And the preface to a book half given to the game's most violent attack is a lecture against impatience: there is no game that must be won.


WHAT IS INSIDE

• 10 complete studies in two collections of five, and both prefaces in full.


• 462 main line half moves, plus 735 side lines carrying 8,890 more: 9,352 in all.


• 321 numbered variations; in the longest study the numbering runs to 74.


• 843 annotated points, each attached to the move it was written about.


• 9,800 characters of original Chinese, carried into English and Vietnamese in full.

This is the book's complete game volume; its endgames and anthology are not included.


HOW YOU STUDY IT

• Replay. Step a move at a time and walk into any of the 735 side lines.


• Learn. A board where nothing moves by itself. You take both sides by hand and must find the move the book plays, arrows optional.


• Go off book. Play the move Xie never considered, then return with one button.


• Ask the engine. A full strength NNUE neural network engine runs on your device. The surprise is how often the old man was already right.

THREE LANGUAGES, YOUR OWN BOARD

One setting chooses English, Vietnamese or Chinese across all 843 annotations, falling back to Xie's own 1983 wording rather than a blank. Thirteen board sizes, thirty five board themes, six study board themes with five hand set colours, five fonts, light or dark.

Genuinely offline: no account, no ads, no tracking.

Ten games. Start with the first one.