Every Xiangqi Champion

One game for each national champion, from the first championship in 1956 to Shanghai in 2025, annotated by our own engine. Read in order it is one argument: for most of these seventy years the best xiangqi player alive came from Shanghai or from Guangdong, and the two cities took turns. Guangdong produced Yang Guanlin, then Lü Qin, then Xu Yinchuan. Shanghai produced Hu Ronghua, who held the rest of the country off by himself for twenty years. Almost every chapter here is one of them against another, which is the point: none of these men were champions of an empty room. Companion to /blog/xiangqi-champions.

16 chapters

1956 · The first national championship127 moves
The first national championship ever played, and the first great upset in it. Li Yiting, the teenager from Hubei they called 小神童, the little prodigy, beats the man who goes on to win the tournament. He takes the title himself two years later, at twenty. Li Yiting (Red) vs Yang G…
blunder: 18.7 win% given up, eval +3.49 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
1960 · Hu Ronghua, aged fifteen156 moves
Shanghai against Guangdong, and the handover between them. Round three: Hu is fifteen, in his first national tournament, with Black against the reigning champion, the man the sport called 第一国手, the first hand of the nation. He is a horse and an elephant ahead by move 43, Yang win…
inaccuracy: 7.2 win% given up, eval -0.74 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
1965 · The champion Hu could not shake183 moves
Guangdong answers. Five years after the handover the old champion is still beating the new one, and Hu will not have the country to himself for another decade. 183 plies, and the longest game of the pair. Yang Guanlin (Red) vs Hu Ronghua (Black) · 1965 National Individual Champi…
inaccuracy: 6.3 win% given up, eval -0.99 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
1980 · Liu Dahua opens the summer156 moves
The championship that ended Hu Ronghua’s run, and Liu Dahua’s first scalp in it: Li Laiqun, who would take the title off him two years later. Li Laiqun (Red) vs Liu Dahua (Black) · 1980 National Individual Championship · 1980-08-29 · Liu Dahua won. Engine notes are Pikafish at 1…
inaccuracy: 5.4 win% given up, eval -1.26 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
1980 · And then Yang Guanlin70 moves
Five days later in the same championship, Liu Dahua takes apart the man who won the very first one, in seventy plies. Yang Guanlin (Red) vs Liu Dahua (Black) · 1980 National Individual Championship · 1980-09-03 · Liu Dahua won. Engine notes are Pikafish at 1,000,000 nodes a posi…
inaccuracy: 5.3 win% given up, eval -0.53 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
1982 · Li Laiqun takes the title85 moves
Li Laiqun’s title year, and he takes it through Hu Ronghua directly. Our engine grades Li at 98.4 with a single inaccuracy. Li Laiqun (Red) vs Hu Ronghua (Black) · 1982 National Individual Championship · 1982-12-07 · Li Laiqun won. Engine notes are Pikafish at 1,000,000 nodes a…
blunder: 23.6 win% given up, eval +2.76 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
1986 · Lü Qin arrives175 moves
Guangdong’s third great player, in the year he won his first national title, against Yu Youhua, who would win one himself. Lü Qin went on to five national titles and five world titles, more of the latter than anyone before or since. Our engine grades him at 95.7 here. Lü Qin (Re…
inaccuracy: 7.9 win% given up, eval +1.11 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
1989 · Zhao Guorong before the titles73 moves
Heilongjiang against Shanghai: Zhao Guorong beats Hu Ronghua the year before the first of his four national titles. Zhao grades 97.7 across 73 plies, one of the cleanest games here and among the shortest. Zhao Guorong (Red) vs Hu Ronghua (Black) · 1989 National Individual Champi…
inaccuracy: 7.7 win% given up, eval +0.70 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
1990 · Xu Yinchuan, also aged fifteen101 moves
The defending national champion against a fifteen-year-old Xu Yinchuan. It is 1960 in reverse: the same age, the same stage, the opposite result. Xu Yinchuan won his own first title three years later. Xu Tianhong (Red) vs Xu Yinchuan (Black) · 1990 National Individual Championsh…
inaccuracy: 5.4 win% given up, eval +1.14 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
1994 · Fourteen years later129 moves
Hu is forty-nine, and this is the man who ended his run fourteen years earlier. Six years after this he won the national title again, at fifty-five. Hu Ronghua (Red) vs Liu Dahua (Black) · 1994 National Individual Championship · 1994-10-15 · Hu Ronghua won. Engine notes are Pika…
inaccuracy: 7.2 win% given up, eval -0.44 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
1995 · Guangdong’s next champion125 moves
The third of Guangdong’s champions, against the man who ended Hu’s run. Xu Yinchuan grades 97.7 here with no blunder and no mistake, and won six national titles between 1993 and 2009. Xu Yinchuan (Red) vs Liu Dahua (Black) · 1995 National Individual Championship · 1995-10-11 · X…
inaccuracy: 5.1 win% given up, eval -0.40 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
1996 · Tao Hanming over Liu Dahua131 moves
Tao Hanming won a single national title, in 1994, in an era owned by four or five other men. Two years later he takes down Liu Dahua, a two-time champion, which is the better evidence of what he could do. Tao Hanming (Red) vs Liu Dahua (Black) · 1996 National Individual Champion…
inaccuracy: 8.1 win% given up, eval +1.30 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
2002 · Yu Youhua, once112 moves
Yu Youhua won the national championship in 2002 and never again, in the middle of an era owned by Hu Ronghua, Lü Qin and Xu Yinchuan. This is from the championship he won, against Xu Tianhong. Xu Tianhong (Red) vs Yu Youhua (Black) · 2002 National Individual Championship · 2002-…
blunder: 20.2 win% given up, eval -2.88 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
2010 · Sun Yongzheng, the year before60 moves
Sun Yongzheng took the title in 2011. A year earlier he beats Xu Tianhong in sixty plies and grades 97.1 doing it, one of the cleanest games here. Xu Tianhong (Red) vs Sun Yongzheng (Black) · 2010 National Individual Championship · 2010-10-18 · Sun Yongzheng won. Engine notes ar…
inaccuracy: 9.3 win% given up, eval +0.00 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
2025 · Shanghai, and the title leaves China217 moves
From the championship in Shanghai that Lại Lý Huynh won, the first man from outside China to take the standard world title in the thirty-five years the event has existed. Lại Lý Huynh (Red) vs Fung Ka-chun (Black) · 2025 19th World Xiangqi Championship · 2025-09-23 · Lại Lý Huyn…
inaccuracy: 5.4 win% given up, eval -0.11 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.
2025 · Wang Yubo, and an empty top177 moves
The most recent national champion, from the championship he won. He faces nobody else in this study, and that is the point rather than an omission: the generation that would have been across the board from him is serving competition bans. Wang Yubo (Red) vs Su Yilin (Black) · 20…
inaccuracy: 5 win% given up, eval -0.58 after. The engine wanted the line in the sibling branch.