100 Opening Traps

ONE HUNDRED OPENING TRAPS

100 complete Xiangqi games, every one from move one, in which somebody is being lied to. 225 notes in Chinese, English and Vietnamese, a Learn mode, and a neural network engine to settle the argument. Offline.

TWO HALVES, TWO LANGUAGES

Two examples, both numbered three. The third of the first half is titled 中炮过河车对屏风马局, Central Cannon with the chariot across the river against the Screen Horses. The third of the second half is titled 虎口逞强勇闯关, braving the tiger's jaws to force the pass.

The halves do not speak the same language. In the fifty titles of part one, 炮 cannon appears 66 times and 妙 brilliant, 杀 mate and 诱 lure do not appear once. In part two, 炮 appears twice, 妙 seven times, 杀 eight, 贪 greed four. One half catalogues the traps that exist. The other records grandmasters walking into them.

THE COLLECTION

象棋布局陷阱100局, credited in the records to Zheng Xinhai and Zheng Shuhai, in two parts of fifty: Selected Examples of Opening Traps, titled by opening, and Selected Typical Games by Famous Players, titled by what decided them.

THESE ARE COMPLETE GAMES

All 100 are full game scores from the standard opening array. Not diagrams. A trap is not a tactic you can be shown in a frame; a trap is a route. A diagram captioned Red to play and win has already removed the part that does the damage: that you did not know you were in one.

The Ming manual 橘中秘 priced it in two clauses: 弃子须要得先，捉子莫教落后, when you give up a piece you must gain the move; when you chase a piece, do not fall behind. The first is the trap, the second the victim.

WHAT IS INSIDE

• 100 complete games, 4,195 half moves, from 17 to 92 per game.


• 64 distinct opening classifications across all five volumes of the standard index. The largest group is ten games of Central Cannon against the Ranked Cannons, abandoned by professionals in 1956 and never dropped by anybody else.


• 72 recorded variation lines in 29 games: the defender's alternatives at the moment the bait goes down.


• 46 games recorded as Red wins, 51 as Black wins, 3 left unresolved. You are not always the one holding the trap, and the app will not tell you which you are.


• 225 annotated points, all of them and all 100 titles in three languages: the original Chinese with full English and Vietnamese.


• 15 games with named players: Yang Guanlin against Hu Ronghua in 1982, the year both were made the first Grandmasters of Xiangqi, plus Wang Jialiang, Liu Dahua, Li Laiqun, Xu Tianhong, and opponents from Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Thailand.

The annotation is terse by design, a reference work rather than a textbook: it marks where the trap is laid, where it springs, and the verdict. The engine closes the gap no book could.

HOW YOU STUDY IT

• Browse and replay. Four dropdowns put you on the board. Step a half move at a time; notes surface at the moves that carry them.


• Learn. A board where nothing moves by itself. Play both sides by hand and find each move yourself, with optional arrows for the book's move.


• Go off book. Take the bait. Play the capture the compilers did not print, explore, then return to the point of departure.


• Ask the engine. Full strength NNUE, on device, nothing sent anywhere, an answer in seconds.

SETTINGS

• Language: English, Vietnamese or Chinese, through titles and all 225 notes.


• Thirteen board sizes, 500 by 350 up to 1100 by 770.


• Thirty five board themes, bright to deeply dark.


• Six study board themes plus five highlight colours you set.


• Five board fonts. Light or dark interface.

If you have ever lost a game before move twenty and could not say where, this is a hundred worked examples of how that happens.

Genuinely offline. No account, no ads, no tracking. The released build requests no permissions.