Hundred Devilish Moves

ONE HUNDRED DEVILISH MOVES

Zhu Jianqiu's hundred games of the uncanny stroke, the last work of a Shanghai master who did not live to see it printed. Fifty complete games, fifty positions, 1,049 annotated points in three languages, and an NNUE engine. Offline.

Open a Chinese dictionary at the word in this book's title and you find no chess entry: only a ghost's hand, and a grip from which there is no escape. There is one place in the literature of Xiangqi where somebody says what it means on a chessboard, and it is this book's preface: the devilish move takes in the brilliant move, the clever move, the ferocious stroke and the cold stroke; the devices differ, and each has a method of its own.

THE BOOK AND THE MAN

One Hundred Devilish Move Games of Xiangqi, by Zhu Jianqiu, People's Sports Publishing House, March 1999, reset and reissued in Shanghai in 2013 with no added games.

Zhu Jianqiu, 1909 to 1994, a schoolteacher ranked with Zhou Deyu and Dou Guozhu as the Three Swordsmen of Yangzhou. In September 1955 he won a three master round robin in a Shanghai teahouse against Yang Guanlin and Li Yiting, who became national champions of China within three years. Forty years later he put both his games from it into this book, including the one he lost. In 1960, aged fifty one, he took board three for the Shanghai side that won China's first national team title, beside a fifteen year old named Hu Ronghua.

He began this book in 1985, past seventy, and worked at it eight years, sifting thousands of games for the ones that carried the mark of a devilish move. Partway through he broke his upper arm and went on writing. He died on 27 May 1994 without seeing it printed, and it waited five more years. While it waited, the novelist Wang Xiaoyu, who had grown up next door and called him Uncle Zhu, wrote an elegy for it called Hundred Devilish Moves, Where Are You?

THREE CLASSES: FIFTY, FORTY, TEN

• Conception in the Opening, 1 to 50. Fifty complete games from move one. The author explains why: the lines he chose were too complex to judge from the opening alone, so he gives you the argument rather than the answer.


• Choice Selections from the Middlegame, 51 to 90. Forty positions, taken up at the move that matters.


• Deciding It in the Endgame, 91 to 100. Ten more, and not thin material studies: every diagram carries 22 to 32 pieces, averaging 28.5.

THE NOTES ARGUE WITH YOU

The very first annotation quotes the reigning world champion criticising his own move, then disagrees with where he goes next. Across all 1,049 notes: 273 propose an improvement in so many words, 84 lay out numbered alternatives, and sixteen entries stop to say what two other masters did differently from this very position. Fifty one entries name the year and the tournament, from the first national championship of 1956 to the early 1990s, with Hu Ronghua, Yang Guanlin, Li Yiting, Liu Dahua, Lu Qin, Xu Yinchuan and three dozen more.

Forty nine titles name a sacrifice, and in 69 of the 91 decided games the winner was at some point a whole piece or more behind. In entry 96 he is a piece down for twenty one full moves and wins.

INSIDE

• 100 entries in the compiler's own order. 6,120 half moves plus 120 in 20 side branches.


• 1,049 annotated points, each in the original Chinese with English and Vietnamese alongside, plus 4,112 further moves written out inside the notes.


• Replay any entry a move at a time and walk into any branch.


• Learn on a board where nothing moves by itself: both sides by hand, arrows you can switch off.


• Go off book and jump back to where you left the line.


• Ask the engine. A full strength NNUE neural network on your device. Nothing is sent anywhere.


• Three languages, 13 board sizes, 35 replay themes, 5 fonts, light or dark.

Offline. No ads, no tracking.