Releases, status updates, and announcements from Mistboard. Subscribe by RSS
Sixty-one games from the Division A qualifier.
China's top xiangqi league runs its qualifier in Hangzhou every August, and this year's three rounds are now here to replay in English, with the club names and the players romanized. Ten clubs, four boards a match, and an engine a click away on any position. The league itself starts in September. Open the qualifier
The Xiangqi World Championship, and why it is not the senior title.
Nineteen editions since 1990, eleven winners, and a title that stayed in China until last September. Every champion, an annotated game for ten of them, and the reason the Chinese national championship is the harder one to win. Read the article
Who Is the Greatest Xiangqi Player?
Nine hundred years of Chinese chess, and a championship only sixty-nine years old. Hu Ronghua, the men who came before the title existed, and the decade that was struck from the record. Read the article
Paste a game, get a board.
Import takes a xiangqi game in whatever notation you happen to have: PGN, coordinates, WXF, or Chinese move text. It works out which one you pasted by replaying it, then hands you a browsable board with engine analysis. Nothing is published, and the game travels in the link. Import a game
Brilliant moves are marked now.
Xiangqi review adds !! and ! beside the mistake glyphs it already showed. A move earns !! when you give material up and the engine agrees it does not come back. Blunders were never the only thing worth seeing in your own game. Find a game
A bigger video library, and one that reads Chinese.
The library is up to 61 hand-picked videos, ordered best first instead of by the date they were added, and it now opens in Chinese at its own address. Every entry has been checked against YouTube, so nothing on the shelf is a dead link. Browse the library
Set up any position, then share it.
A board editor for eight variants: place pieces by hand, set the side to move, and hand the position straight to the analysis board. The analysis board also takes a FEN directly, and every position you build has its own link. Open the editor
A head-to-head record on every finished game.
The review page gains a Crosstable with your record against that opponent in that variant, engines included, and Share and export hands you the game as PGN or JSON. Find a game
Chess titles count for verification now.
GM, IM, FM and the rest join the xiangqi titles. A verified title puts a badge beside your name wherever people are listed, and opens a coaching page students can find. Verification takes about two minutes. Read the article
Board coordinates, on every board that has them.
One switch in Display settings reaches the xiangqi family, the chess boards, jungle, and shogi. Xiangqi counts its files from each player’s own right, so the labels follow your move-notation setting and change sides when you flip the board. Open settings
Follow a forum thread without refreshing it.
Watch a topic and the bell counts its unread replies. Quoting someone now tells them, and every source the bell reports has its own switch. Join the forum
Studies read and write PGN.
Import a PGN to build a study, export one chapter or all of them, and add a finished game to a study from its link. The opening explorer sits beside the board while you work. Browse the studies
The Riverbank Cannon Problem.
Red’s opening cannon reaches the riverbank first, one move from firing down any of five files, and in fog you never see it coming. Whether that breaks the game came down to one elephant move, one poisoned defense, and a coin flip we priced with the engine. Read the article
Puzzles are rated by how hard they play.
A puzzle’s rating used to come from how many moves the mate took, which says little about how hard it is to find. It now comes from the position itself, so what you are served sits closer to your rating. Solve puzzles
Pick a flair for your name.
Choose a small icon that shows beside your handle across the site, from the variant markers and xiangqi characters the boards already use. The bell also reports new followers and incoming challenges now. Edit your profile
Both house bots play stronger.
Misty runs version 1.6 in fog chess, which closes a queen hang it used to walk into. Pikafish now searches jieqi to full depth; it had been stopping early, which made it easier to beat than it should have been. Find a game
Four times as many xiangqi puzzles.
The standard xiangqi set goes from 394 puzzles to 1,605, every one mined from a finished game and checked by the engine before it ships. Solve puzzles
Move badges and best lines on every reviewable variant.
The move-judgment badge now sits on the board for all six variants with analysis, not xiangqi alone, and a blunder names the move that refutes it. Jieqi reveal plies get the ranked candidates the engine scored instead of a line, since nothing past a flip is knowable. Open the board
Separating skill from luck in flip games.
Half the moves in banqi, jieqi, and flip jungle are dice rolls, so a chess-style review blames you for variance. Game review splits every flip into the decision you made and the tile you got, and the article runs that over 52 human-versus-engine games. Read the article
What Patron support will cost.
The Support page lists the monthly amounts, what they include (a profile badge, no gameplay advantage), and the billing and refund terms in full. Checkout is not open yet. See the amounts
A games database for xiangqi.
Search finished games from three sources in one place: the historical corpus, the tournament boards we broadcast, and games played here. Search the games
Perpetual check now loses in standard xiangqi.
Repeating a check forever used to draw. The checker has to vary or lose the game, which is how the published rulesets score it and how the course has always taught it. Study the rules
Mistboard works on a phone.
Every page was swept at phone width: a full-size live board, lobby rows that still name the variant, and real touch targets on the controls you tap. Find a game
Every composition has its own page.
Each endgame composition in the library is a page you can link to, and sharing one previews its own diagram rather than the site card. Browse the studies
Mistboard reads in Chinese.
Playing, watching, the forum, and the xiangqi rules pages are all available in Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Switch languages in the settings menu. Study the rules
Rated games at every time control.
Bullet, blitz, and rapid each keep their own rating now, instead of rated meaning 3+2 only. Correspondence stays casual on purpose. See the leaderboard
An opening explorer for xiangqi.
Open any position on the analysis board and see what has been played from it, with example games to study and the corpus it came from named on the panel. Open the board
Secret in the Tangerine, both game volumes.
Both volumes are playable move by move in English: 33 games with every printed variation. Open volume one
Rated xiangqi is live.
Choose Rated in the lobby. Your rating starts at 1500 and appears after it settles. See the leaderboard
Classical xiangqi, from the original woodblocks.
Read the earliest printings move by move, with every corrected misprint marked on the board. Browse the studies
Correspondence play has launched.
Post or accept a days-per-move seek, or send a friend a challenge link and play at your own pace. Find a game
An analysis board for every game.
Set up any position, import moves, run a local evaluation, or grade a finished game with server analysis. Open the board
Studies have launched.
Build shareable analysis boards: draw on the board, comment, branch variations, organize chapters, and publish interactive gamebook lessons. Browse studies
Mistboard TV is live.
Watch live games on the new Watch page, with a channel for every game and an Engines channel for bot-versus-bot matches. Watch now
Learn xiangqi from scratch.
A free interactive course: 20 stages and 111 hands-on levels take you from how each piece moves to the named checkmate patterns. Start the course
Xiangqi puzzles have launched.
Tactics mined from real games, with puzzle ratings, hints, and a daily puzzle on the homepage. Solve puzzles
Xiangqi has launched.
Standard Chinese chess on the full 9 by 10 board is now first-class on Mistboard: play the Pikafish engine at three strengths, or challenge a friend. Study the rules
Forum and global chat have launched.
The forum is open for game analysis, engine talk, and site feedback, with the homepage global chat available for quick table-talk during live sessions. Join the forum
Fortress has launched.
Xiangqi with a pocket: every piece moves as in Chinese chess, plus crazyhouse-style drops and the new Treasure. Play the bot or challenge a friend. Study the rules
Jungle Chess has launched.
Rank-based animal chess on a 7 by 9 board with rivers, dens, and traps is live. Challenge a friend or take on the Misty Jungle engine. Read rules
Flip Jungle has launched.
Every animal starts face-down on a 4 by 4 board and flips as you play. Challenge a friend or the engine. Read rules
Fog Xiangqi is open for alpha play.
Fog of War on the full 9 by 10 xiangqi board: each side sees only the points its pieces reach. Challenge a friend to a match. Read rules
Banqi is open for alpha play.
Banqi on an 8 by 4 board: all 32 pieces start face-down and flip as you play. Challenge a friend to a match. Read rules
Jieqi is open for alpha play.
Hidden-identity xiangqi: every non-general piece starts face-down and reveals as it moves. Take on PikaJieQi, our jieqi engine. Read rules
Misty 1.0 has launched.
Our Fog of War dark chess engine is now live to play. Play the engine
Fog Chess is open for alpha play.
Fog of War chess is live on Mistboard, with private vision, no check warnings, and king capture wins. Read rules
Mistboard is in alpha.
Casual dark chess is open. Rated beta is coming. Send feedback