Opposite-Direction Cannons

THE OPPOSITE-DIRECTION CANNONS OPENING

A Xiangqi opening condemned by the classics and rescued by the modern masters, in two parts: 72 annotated opening studies, and Huang Shaolong's 20-essay history of the opening told through the games that made it. 1,001 notes in Chinese, English and Vietnamese, a hands-on Learn mode, and a neural network engine. Offline.

AN OPENING ON TRIAL

The 1632 manual 橘中秘 gives the Opposite-Direction Cannons one instruction, and it is defensive:

列手炮，补士要牢。
In the Opposite-Direction Cannons, the advisors must be made firm.

The Plum Blossom Manual went further and left the opening out of its defences altogether, offering five games of the first player breaking it instead. Players drew the lesson for three centuries: the second player who answers the central cannon with a central cannon of his own loses out. In the 1950s, Yang Guanlin's proper horses and pinning cannon seemed to prove it, and the opening was, in Huang Shaolong's words, banished to the cold palace for nine years.

Then Black borrowed Red's own weapons. Develop first, pin the chariot with a cannon, bring the other cannon to the centre afterwards: the Halfway Opposite-Direction Cannons. At the 1974 national championship Zang Ruyi won with it in short order, "like a clap of spring thunder from a clear sky", and the opening came back to life.

事实给后手列炮局翻了案。
The facts overturned the verdict on the Opposite-Direction Cannons for the second player.

WHAT IS INSIDE

• Part One: the opening manual. 72 studies of the two modern systems: 45 on the Central Cannon against the Late Opposite-Direction Cannons, in five sections, and 27 on the Three-Step Tiger turning into the Opposite-Direction Cannons. Every study ends in a verdict.


• Part Two: 列炮纵横谈. Twenty essays by the Tianjin master Huang Shaolong, from the 1632 classics to the 1984 championships, naming close to a hundred players: Hu Ronghua, Yang Guanlin, Wang Jialiang, Liu Dahua, Lü Qin, Zhao Guorong, Li Laiqun and many more. He played in that history himself, and the last essay is a formation of his own design.

COUNTED FROM THE DATABASE

• 92 distinct records, all from the standard opening array.


• 6,108 half moves: 3,401 on main lines, 2,707 in 136 variation lines.


• 1,001 annotated points, every one and every title in Chinese, English and Vietnamese.


• Over 26,000 Chinese characters of the master's own prose in the essays.


• Honest verdicts: Red is better in 39 studies, Black in 15, level in 17.

WHY PLAY IT

Because it is a fight. In Huang's words, 斗列炮的原意是想搏杀: the whole point of the duel is to fight it out. And you no longer have to take any annotator's word for it. A full strength NNUE neural network runs entirely on your device, so when a note says Red is better and you cannot see why, one button gives you an evaluation and a best line.

HOW YOU STUDY IT

• Browse and replay. Four dropdowns, then step a half move at a time. Notes surface where they belong, variations at their branch points.


• Learn. Nothing moves by itself. You play both sides by hand, with optional arrows for the book moves. Step back, or jump to the previous branch point.


• Go off book. Play a move the book does not give, explore, then return.

SETTINGS

• English, Vietnamese or Chinese across titles and all 1,001 notes.


• Thirteen board sizes, 1.0x to 2.2x, and thirty five board themes.


• Six study-board themes, five highlight colours, five board fonts, light or dark.

后手布局的难题是寻求对攻性强的布局，列炮正是较合适的一种。
The hard problem for the second player is to find an opening with strong counterattacking power, and the Opposite-Direction Cannons are exactly a fitting one.

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