No open correspondence games right now.
Correspondence games run on a days-per-move clock, so you and your opponent play whenever you have time.
Your correspondence games →Free in the browser·No download or sign-up·Eight computer levels·Play a friend
Guess the move where this year's professional games turned.
A new study of short lessons from the 2026 Chinese professional events. Each one opens on the move before the game turned, with both players named at the board: find a better move than the one played, and the reply is played for you. A wrong guess just takes another try, no button, and the hint names the piece to move.
Follow the Chinese professional events in English.
Broadcasts follows this year's Chinese professional xiangqi events round by round: event pages with standings (team leagues show their matches and table), a calendar of what is coming, and every finished game reviewed by the engine, with the advantage chart and the move marks. Games download as PGN, a link can open on a single move, and any game embeds on your own page. The Asian Individual Championship, October 2 to 8, already has its pages.
A page for every Chinese professional player.
Every player on the Chinese Xiangqi Association's lists now has a page: record by colour, head to head, openings named in English, and rating history since 2019. Titles (GM, IM, FM, NM) come from the CXA's grade lists and the WXF's international titles, each with its source. Pro teams rank by their top five players.
The xiangqi rules, rewritten for chess players.
The rules page now starts from what a chess player already knows: the six rules that catch you out, the setup, repetition as the site scores it (perpetual check loses), common mistakes, the three notations and a first opening. A famous game plays out in the page.
A Jungle board, and animal pieces without the disc.
Xiangqi has a new board under Board: the square grid on a green lawn, a cream rug in each palace and a painted river, made with children in mind. Jungle and Flip Jungle turn green with it. The Animal (no disc) piece set draws the animal pieces without their cream disc, a little larger.
The Bamboo Fragrance Studio Manual and the Hundred Games Manual are online.
The Bamboo Fragrance Studio Manual (1800, three collections) and the Hundred Games Manual (1801), the other two of the four great Qing manuals, join the shelf with the Hundred Variations Manual (1522) and its Tongzhi-era sequel, the Wondrous Variations Manual: the oldest surviving printed xiangqi composition books. Three hundred and ninety-two more problems, each on its own board with the book's line played out as the mainline and the original title kept beside the English one. Positions come from dpxq.com and are credited on every composition.
Pikafish is the strongest open-source xiangqi engine, and most people run it from a download and a separate interface. Here it runs in the page: play it as it comes or start lower on an eight-level ladder, play it at jieqi, or hand it a finished game to review. Free, no sign-up, nothing to install, and it works on a phone.
Pikafish now runs in your browser for xiangqi analysis.
Local analysis for xiangqi used Fairy-Stockfish with a small net. It now runs Pikafish itself, at full strength on its own net, the same one our server bots play with: on the analysis board and in game review, with the gear settings (best-move arrows, several lines, search effort) as before. The net is 51 MB and downloads once; after that nothing you analyze leaves your machine. Fortress, atomic and duck keep Fairy-Stockfish, and the dark variants keep Misty.
The Jungle tiger now jumps the river sideways.
Until today the tiger on Mistboard leapt a river lengthwise only and the lion both ways, the reading in English Wikipedia. The Chinese rule sets, and the digital versions most players come from, give both animals the same leap, so the tiger now has it too: on the board, in the bot and the analysis engine, on the rules page in three languages, and in the puzzles (one that the new jump refutes is withdrawn). Every earlier game stays legal as played; the change only adds moves.
Wanted: a neural network for Jieqi.
Our Jieqi bot is a hand-written classical engine, and a strong player beats it. Pikafish's jieqi branch has the search and a jieqi NNUE architecture but has never had weights to load; we trained ten nets on the classical engine's own evaluations and none beat it. If yours does over a 200-game match, it becomes the bot on this site, with your name on it. Banqi and Jungle are open on the same terms, and there is a best-of-eight against the Jieqi bot for players.
The Jieqi bot no longer knows which of your captures took its hidden pieces.
Jieqi reveals a captured face-down piece to the capturer only. The bot was being told its own remaining hidden pieces from the true state, so every time you took one of its dark pieces it learned what it had lost and revalued the rest. It now reasons from what a player in its seat may know. Its opponents' captured pieces stay known to it, as the rule allows.
Chinese chess where every capture is an explosion: the piece that captures, the piece it takes and everything on the four points beside it are removed. Soldiers survive a blast; a general does not, so a capture next to the enemy general wins on the spot and you can never capture next to your own. The cannon is the one exception, its shot takes only its target. A threat to blow up the general counts as check for the repetition rule. Same set, same array, eight bot levels or a friend.
6 minMistboard
