Xiangqi seems like a good casual chess game. The perks of a slower pace and limited movement make it a nice alternative to western chess while still being familiar enough (no capture mechanic like in shogi). I can see why experienced strategy players would prefer the other games though. It does come off as a sort of reigned-in western chess, even with the off-the-wall piece that is the cannon.

Seems the other way around ? Each of the 16 xiangqi pieces is free to move from the start,
unlike in chess where 6 pieces (of one color) are blocked.

Wikipedia says xiangqi is slightly more complex.

Amateurs and pros may have different perspectives on the casualness. moyoaji, how to type the chess characters ?

I think the fact that Elephants can't cross rivers, Horse can't leap over pieces and the Advisors (and General) having such limited movement options make the game quite a bit slower and less brutal than western chess. But again, it may be me speaking as a beginner in both games.

Hello Ed! It's been a while.

I went to a unicode character site that lists them all and searched for "chess." http://unicode-table.com is an example. Then it's just copy and paste: ♕


I've played some who are more experienced. It makes a world of difference. The game tends to be faster paced than Western chess once you know what you are doing. There isn't as much of a wind-up in the opening. Yes, pieces get positioned, but not to the extent that they do in Western chess. Without pawns in the way, pieces can quickly become powerful. The cannons can be surprisingly brutal if you aren't careful.

I'm surprised that Xiangqi would have a higher game complexity than Western chess, though, considering it has fewer pieces and the pieces do fewer things. Pawns can't promote to other pieces. Knights are more limited. As you said, there are pieces which cannot leave one half of the board. However, that really only increases the State-space Complexity, which is indeed higher for Western chess. The Xiangqi board is larger and it has some additional rules that make the stategy more involved (kings can never face across the board, for example).

Compared to go, however, all versions of chess are effectively the same. Go is so many orders of magnitude more complex that it only makes sense to compare it with chess games because those already are hard for us humans to wrap our heads around. From a distance, both look to be the same size, but chess is a big rock several meters away, while go is a mountain a kilometer off. And even those farthest up the mountain have hardly left its base...

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

Heard this so many times. Should have gotten used to it by now, but I never seem to. "Go is so much better, for it is so much more complex etc" Oh please.

Hi moyoaji, thanks.How do you mean ?
Both games have the same number of initial pieces per color: 16.
Chess has 6 different piece types, and xiangqi has 7.

I didn't say go was better, only that it is more complex, which is an objective fact. Being "better" is subjective. If, to you, more complexity is better, then you have drawn the conclusion yourself.

My use of metaphor to explain how much more complex go is does not imply that I am saying go is better. Plenty of people think mountain climbing is a frivolous pursuit not worth the risks. In that regard, perhaps I'm suggesting that go is a fool's errand? I'm not, but that interpretation makes just as much sense as yours.

Obviously, I really like chess, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to start this thread 3 years ago. But I do acknowledge the fact, and it is a fact, that go is more complex. Do you argue that draughts (English checkers) isn't simpler than chess? To say it is simpler doesn't make it a bad game. Simplicity can be an admirable quality along with complexity. Neither is objectively better.


I forgot that the back row has 9 pieces in xiangqi. I counted the 7 front pieces in my head and then just added 8 for the back rank. I should have looked at a board, or given is a few more seconds of thought. Given there is a king and pawn in the center, there has to be an odd number of points across the board.
I remembered it has more piece types, but I'm not sure how much that helps with the game complexity, considering that the advisors are restricted to 5 points each. The elephants are each restricted to 7 points. The king to 9. Even a chess A or H pawn can be on up to 21 squares. The attacking pieces, especially the cannons and chariots, likely add the most to the game's complexity. That, and the larger board size.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

Many Western chess and shogi players note that they do not understand the internal logic of xiangqi, they can not understand the criteria for choosing a move in this game. Xiangqi is the most mysterious game of all three versions. And one more obvious fact: Western chess players, trying to play xiangqi, note that xiangqi is much more interesting then chess.

I TRIED so hard to like Western/International chess. Couldn't do it. The game always seemed so stiff to me. I think part of it was how it was introduced to me as a kid in the U.S. Very dry, very little explanation, and a lack of friends to play with.

I've been curious about Xiangqi and Shogi ever since I learned about them a year ago. I was initially scared off because I was having a hard time remembering which pieces were which. Maybe I ought to give them another try.

I was also intrigued by a relative newcomer (2014) game called Onitama which seems like a simpler version of Chess that has an interesting move mechanic. Seems like it would prevent over-analysis and force the game into a much lighter, more reactionary game. Anyone here played this? Did you enjoy it, or was it too shallow?

I'll answer the question for you with a gravedig.

Xiangqi is to Go as Checkers is to Chess.

Xiangqi is actually a simpler game than International Chess, and that's the entirety of its appeal. It's chess without strong positional play and thus it's much simpler and easier to pick up, and at the same time much more oriented toward tactics than either Go or Chess, giving it a much different flavor.

Moreover, and the opposite is why Go is viewed as an aristocrat's game in China, Xiangqi is a very fast game to play. Games of Xiangqi can be resolved in half the time of International Chess. Go games often last way longer than Chess games, meaning they last way longer than Xiangqi through the transitive relation.

At the same time, just as Go is more complex than Chess, Xiangqi is more complex than Checkers and thus can actually sustain the interest of adults. At the same time, Chess grandmasters have remarked that Chess is too hard for ordinary intelligent people, but since Xiangqi is dumbed down relative to Chess, Xiangqi is at the right difficulty level for ordinary intelligent people and thus sees a massive playing pool as newbies get destroyed in Xiangqi as much as they do in Chess, but newbies usually have an idea of why they're getting destroyed while they get no traction in Chess.

For the niche it occupies, Xiangqi is an excellent game, being the type where you can play your plumber and not completely overrun him and give both players a somewhat challenging experience. At the same time, you can get good at beating your plumber at Xiangqi and go play tournaments with other people good at beating their plumbers at Xiangqi and have an interesting time, win or lose.

Here is a book: Chess Variations Ancient, Regional, and Modern, from Tuttle Publishing. It's from 1968, and no longer being printed. https://www.amazon.com/Chess-Variations ... 804800898/

By the way, I, too, read that Murray's A History of Chess was lousy. But, I forgot where I read that.

In his book, Chinese Chess, Sam Sloan claimed the rook and bishop were added to Shogi as a result of the influence of the Jesuits in the 16th century.

I still prefer classical chess. Of course, I am not a professional, but over the years playing with my father I learned a lot. And since childhood and adolescence, I read magazines dedicated to chess. Therefore, I have a good knowledge of this game.

Well, this is just a discussion of preferences, to a greater extent than the actual development of winning strategies in the game or the exchange of experience.

The only chess like game that I've enjoyed is Arimaa