2026 so far
Ten events, from a ten-game match against the world champion in January to the first stage of China's top league in September. I ran all 75 games through the same engine analysis Mistboard gives your own games.
| Event | Dates | W | D | L |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Match vs Lại | Jan 3–5 | 3 | 6 | 1 |
| Baizuishan Cup | Jan 6–7 | 7 | 3 | 0 |
| Team championship | Mar 28–Apr 2 | 5 | 4 | 0 |
| Chunqiu Daye arena | Apr 4–6 | 3 | 9 | 4 |
| Xintai Cup | May 14 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Gaogang Cup | Jun 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Shanghai qualifying | Aug 9 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| League qualifier | Aug 17–19 | 4 | 1 | 0 |
| Gulin open | Aug 23 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| League, stage one | Sep 14–18 | 4 | 11 | 1 |
How he plays
He fights. Watching him win the Wuyang Cup last year, the veteran Lü Qin told 羊城晚报 that Cao's style is combative and he never picks the safe line. Cao said much the same: he likes to attack, and to keep varying his play.
He plays for the win with red. Most of his wins come with the red pieces, and he opens with the central cannon, the most direct move in the game, almost as often as with the quiet soldier push. Yin Sheng did not play the central cannon once in his unbeaten month. With black he is happy to draw.
Zhao Panwei is his hardest opponent. They met sixteen times this year, most of them in the April arena, and Cao's win is below. Against everyone else he loses about one game in twelve.
The sacrifices are real. The engine confirms six this year, each a piece offered and never won back. Two are on the boards below: a cannon left hanging on move 16 in the long match win with black, and a horse against He Wenzhe in April.
The ten-game match
The two had met before. In November 2016, at the Han Xin Cup in Sydney, Cao, playing for Macau, beat Lại Lý Huynh of Vietnam in the final, the first final of that event without a mainland Chinese player in it. Nine years later Lại became the first world champion from outside China, beating Yin Sheng in the final in Shanghai. So when a tea company booked the two of them into a room in Zhengzhou this January for ten rapid games over three evenings, Tuổi Trẻ in Vietnam billed it as China's revenge.
The first evening was three draws. On the second Cao won twice, and this is the longer of the two, his only win of the match with black. Lại's soldier push on move 25 is the loose move, and Cao takes almost sixty more to collect.
Lại hit back with a quick win on the last evening, which left Cao needing a draw from the last game. He won it in 19 moves: Lại pushed his central soldier on move 12, and seven moves later he resigned.
The Baizuishan Cup
The next day he went straight into an open and won seven of his ten games without losing one. On the first day he beat Wang Yongqiang in the cleanest game of his year, with an accuracy of 99. Wang's cannon slid across on move 11, Cao's chariot swung across in reply, and after Wang's 22nd move the engine sees mate in nine. Wang resigned two moves later.
The Chunqiu Daye arena
King of the hill: three players, one holding the arena, and each challenge is a single 20-minute game, then five-minute games until somebody wins. Everyone has four lives. In April Cao beat Zhao Panwei once and He Wenzhe twice before Zhao knocked him out.
The win over Zhao came with black. The game was level until Zhao pulled his chariot back on move 18. Cao's edge soldier crossed the river on that same move and kept walking, one file across on move 21 and another on move 22, straight after Zhao's horse went wrong. Zhao resigned after move 30.
Against He Wenzhe the next day he offered a horse on move 15, one of the six sacrifices the engine confirms this year. The game stayed level until He's cannon slid to the edge on move 27. Two moves later Cao's cannon went deep, his chariot ran the length of the board on move 36, and He resigned after the next move.
The league
In August he topped the qualifier for China's top league, level with Hong Kong's Feng Jiajun, and took Shanghai Jiahong up with him. His one draw there was against Yin Sheng on the first day.
At stage one in September he was second in the individual table after nine rounds, behind Wang Yubo, and lost one game in sixteen. On the last day he beat Meng Chen, the man who knocked him out of the 2023 national championship in the quarter-final. Meng's cannon raid on move 12 gave the game away, though it took Cao until move 39 to finish it.
What's next
The league's second stage is in October, and the national championship runs from November 21 to 29 in Changchun. He reached the quarter-final in 2023 and went out in the last sixteen in December. The association's ranking at the end of last year had him third in China.
All 75 games
Every game of the year is in a Mistboard study, with the engine's judgments and lines on each one, and 71 of the 75 are in the broadcast archive with the site's analysis. Sources: game records from dpxq.com, which may not hold every game of an event; analysis by Pikafish through Mistboard's review pipeline, September 2026.