Xiangqi Rules for Beginners

The board and the pieces

Xiangqi — Chinese chess — is played on a grid of 9 files and 10 ranks. That gives 90 points, or intersections, and here's the first thing that trips up chess players: pieces stand on those intersections, not inside the squares. A horizontal gap called the river splits the board between the fifth and sixth ranks. Each side also has a palace, a 3×3 block of points in the middle of its own back edge, marked with two diagonal lines drawn through it. The general and the two advisors never leave it.

Each player starts with 16 pieces: one general, two advisors, two elephants, two horses, two chariots, two cannons, and five soldiers. Red always moves first.

Setting up the board

Every game starts from the same position. Here's the board from Black's side at the top and Red at the bottom, with a letter standing in for each piece.

   a  b  c  d  e  f  g  h  i
10 R  H  E  A  G  A  E  H  R
 9 .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
 8 .  C  .  .  .  .  .  C  .
 7 S  .  S  .  S  .  S  .  S
 6 .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
   -------- river --------
 5 .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
 4 s  .  s  .  s  .  s  .  s
 3 .  c  .  .  .  .  .  c  .
 2 .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
 1 r  h  e  a  g  a  e  h  r
   a  b  c  d  e  f  g  h  i

Legend: G/g = general, A/a = advisor, E/e = elephant, H/h = horse, R/r = chariot, C/c = cannon, S/s = soldier. Uppercase is Black, lowercase is Red. Notice the symmetry: each side's setup mirrors the other's across the river, and the general sits on the middle file, boxed in by the two advisors.

How each piece moves

The shapes above are just the starting layout — the fun part is how each piece is allowed to travel. This is only the short version of each move; for the full picture, including why some pieces are stronger than others, see our piece-by-piece guide.

General

Moves one point at a time, straight up, down, left, or right, and can never step outside the palace. It is the piece you are trying to trap.

Advisor

Moves one point diagonally, but only along the two diagonal lines drawn inside the palace, which limits it to five possible points total.

Elephant

Moves exactly two points diagonally and can never cross the river, so it only ever defends its own half of the board. If the point in between its start and end point is occupied, the elephant is blocked and cannot make that move — a check worth knowing before you plan an attack.

Horse

Moves one point orthogonally, then one point diagonally outward, landing on the same kind of point a knight would reach in chess. Unlike a knight, though, a horse cannot jump: if the point right next to it in the direction it's moving is occupied, that whole direction is blocked. That single rule is the reason a horse can sometimes threaten a piece that cannot threaten it back.

Chariot

Travels any distance in a straight line, horizontally or vertically, as long as the path is clear — the same as a rook in chess. It's the strongest piece on the board and usually the first one players try to activate.

Cannon

Slides like a chariot when it isn't capturing. To capture, it must jump over exactly one piece of either colour — the "screen" — and land on the first enemy piece past it. No screen, or more than one piece in the way, and the capture isn't legal.

Soldier

Moves one point straight forward and never backward. Once it crosses the river, it also gains the ability to step one point sideways. Soldiers never get promoted, even on the far rank — a soldier that reaches the end simply keeps its forward move unusable and shuffles sideways instead.

Check, checkmate, and the flying generals rule

If your general is under attack, you're in check and you must respond — block the attack, capture the attacking piece, or move the general to safety. Against a cannon there is one more way out: if the screen is your own piece, move it off the line and the cannon has nothing to jump. If you have no way to do any of those, it's checkmate and the game is over.

Xiangqi adds a rule chess doesn't have: the two generals can never face each other directly on the same file with nothing standing between them. This is the "flying general" rule, and it means a move that would expose your general to a clear line of sight from the enemy general is illegal, even if no piece is technically attacking it. In practice this means a general can pin pieces or even threaten the enemy general simply by standing on the same open file.

Stalemate, repetition, and other rules to know

Here's a rule that surprises a lot of newcomers: if a player has no legal move at all, that's not a draw like it is in chess. It's a loss for the player who is stuck. In Fun Xiangqi, a stalemate is scored as a win for the side that caused it.

Repetition is a little more nuanced. In traditional, tournament-style rules, a player isn't allowed to repeat a perpetual check or a perpetual chase indefinitely — the side doing the repeating has to change its move or forfeit the game, while other kinds of repeated positions are typically ruled a draw. To keep things simple for everyone, Fun Xiangqi uses one clear rule instead: if the exact same position occurs for a third time, the game is a draw, no matter what caused the repetition.

A few other things worth knowing if you're coming from chess: there's no castling, no en passant, no two-step opening move, and no promotion. What you see on the board at move one, piece-wise, is what you're working with for the whole game — the fun is in how you use it.

Quick questions

Is xiangqi the same as Chinese chess? Yes, xiangqi is the Chinese name for the game Western players usually call Chinese chess.

Do I need to read Chinese characters to play? Not with Fun Xiangqi — every piece can show a plain symbol instead of its Chinese character, and you can switch back and forth mid-game.

Why does the general sit still while other pieces roam the board? It's confined to the palace by design, which is exactly what makes checkmating it a puzzle worth solving. Our piece guide goes deeper into why each piece is shaped the way it is.

How is xiangqi different from Western chess overall? More than just the pieces — the board, the win conditions, and even stalemate work differently. We cover it all in xiangqi vs chess.

Once the moves click, the rest is just practice. Fun Xiangqi is free, has no ads, and starts you off at an honestly labelled level 1, so you can try every rule in this article in your first real game.