A Western Xiangqi Board

The above was authored by: Köksal Karakus. .
The above was edited/posted by: Hans L. Bodlaender
Created on: January 04, 2001. Last modified on: January 04, 2001.

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Date	Name	Rating	Comment
2005-03-12	Fergus Duniho	None	While I'm not usually a Platonist, I tend to think of Chess as a Platonic form of which Chess variants, including FIDE Chess, are just reflections or shadows. In this respect, FIDE Chess, Chinese Chess, Shogi, and the other games on this site are equally Chess variants. Plato's analogy of the cave conveys the difference between how I view Chess verses how most people view Chess. In this analogy, most people live in a cave watching shadows cast by fires, and they take this for reality. But one person escapes from the cave. During his escape, he sees the fires and what have been casting the shadows, and on leaving the cave, he sees the world illumined by sunlight and the sun itself. But on returning to the cave, he cannot adequately describe his experience to the others, because it is fully outside their frame of reference. Like the people in the cave, most people know a single game called Chess and consider this, in all its particularity, to be all that Chess is. When something differs from it in any respect, they consider it to not be Chess. But my experience of Chess has not been limited to this single game, and I know Chess to be something that transcends the particular rules and equipment of a single game. So, when I speak of Chess variants, I don't simply mean games derived from FIDE Chess, I mean different expressions of the form (or general concept) of Chess.
2005-03-11	Tony Quintanilla	None	Well, the meaning of 'variant' as used by the CVP is very broad. Truthfully, CVP could stand for 'Chaturanga Variant Pages'! 'Chess' is used in much the same sense as George uses it, meaning a kind of chess game. In this sense, all these chesses are chess-variants, including international chess. No one is suggesting that Xiangqi or Shogi are historical derivatives (variants) of international chess; although they are certainly derivatives of Chaturanga-Shatranj. Their unique features, as George points out, make them great. The fact they are derivatives does not decrease their uniqueness or worthiness. In fact, the intrinsic value of variants is one of the 'arguments' implicit in the CVP.
2005-03-11	George William Duke	Excellent	'WXYZ,LargeCV': Xiangqi and Shogi are not CVs because they have been played for about as long by the same order of magnitude of individuals as Western FIDE Chess. Yet CVPage will always have each as some exotic CV in its peculiar world-view, and this reminder of ordinary connectivity can help. Even when playing over the normal Chinese grid, players who first learned 64-square chess visualize square-wise best. Somehow this square-picture also shows Xiangqi for what it clearly possesses: low piece density; dominating features of Rook, Cannon, and palace; minimal rules making deep strategy. Imagine any change in structure: just one example, supposing King not confined to palace would make checkmate too elusive. The same total coherence would not apply to Shogi (having different merit) in its family of sets of rules. Comment continues at Xiangqi-thread pages.
2004-03-12	Mark Thompson	None	Playing on squares doesn't bother me, but I would suggest that -- since the player has to make his own 9 x 10 board anyway -- there is no good reason to make the squares checkered dark and light, because this game doesn't have diagonal sliders. I would probably shade the two fortresses, and maybe also mark the squares that constitute the Elephant's domain with a dot in the middle or something. But the idea of introducing Xiang Qi to westerners with a more western-appearing set sounds reasonable.
2004-03-12	Jean-Louis Cazaux	Poor	I disagree. Xiangqi should be played over a grid, not squares. That probably explains the Horse and the Elephant move. On squares, it's more natural to jump over an intermediate piece. On a grid, the intermediate piece blocks the way. Then, since there is no long diagonal moves, there is no need in checkering. However, I agree that replacing the XQ piece by figurative pieces (Staunton or other) could be useful for popularizing the game in the West. But this has nothing to do with the board.

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A Western Xiangqi Board

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