Learn Chinese Chess XiangQi, it is fun and NOT hard to learn

[pichy]

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3492

[Tony Thomas]

You learn it and you play it. Ta taa..

[pichy]

You learn it and you play it. Ta taa..

Now that I know how to move the pieces I can NOT find anybody to play against, I will have to buy a decent XiangQi program to play a little, or probably download a very weak XiangQi program like this one:

http://www.jcraner.com/qianhong/

[Eelco de Groot]

You learn it and you play it. Ta taa..

Now that I know how to move the pieces I can NOT find anybody to play against, I will have to buy a decent XiangQi program to play a little, or probably download a very weak XiangQi program like this one:

http://www.jcraner.com/qianhong/

With a search, I found this online club. You need to have Java installed if you use Windows XP, just as for the Applet below. It seems possible to get a free account here, to practice, but there are also strong players. I think the site may be based in China somewhere?:

http://www.clubxiangqi.com/

Here is a Java applet to be found for "Coffee House" Chinese Chess:

http://play.chessvariants.org/ , then go to 'Play!'
http://play.chessvariants.org/coffeecc/index.php

You can set playing strength to a maximum Depth 9, maybe it is strong enough for practicing Chinese Chess, also the piece sets etc. can be changed, and there is more info on the applet on its home page:

http://www.nchess.com/cccmain.htm

[Eelco de Groot]

At one time it seems there was development of a GnuChess version of XiangQi, but although there is a protocol, GUI and engine already developed and downloadable, not much seems to have been done since 2003. The existing engines are not very strong yet it seems, from reactions in the forum. Latest development there is from Terence Tong who writes in the forum that he has developed another XiangQi engine and is working on a GUI, this was in a message from last year.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... p_id=69609


There a several strong commercial versions of XiangQi software available, some even running on quad software, these "deep" multi threaded versions are pretty expensive, we are lucky in the computer chess community with so many strong free programs.

Here is a site selling commercial XiangQi software:

http://www.xqmaster.ca/index.html


Screenshot of Neuchess

Chinese Chess sets from our sponsor:

http://www.chessusa.com/Merchant2/merch ... _Code=CHCS


Top of the range board and pieces

The free program Qianhong that Jorge already mentioned may not be as strong as the commercial software, but it does have a possibility for "plug-ins", some are downloadable from the site, and that are reportedly considerably stronger than the regular version of Qianhong. The strongest seems to be the "Elephant Eye" a XiangQi-engine made by programmer going by the beautiful name of 'Morning Yellow'.


Screenshot of Qianhong with the "Landscape" style board and "Midnight" color scheme

There is a helpful forum on that site as well:

http://jcraner.com/qianhong/forum/index.php

Eelco

[pichy]

At one time it seems there was development of a GnuChess version of XiangQi, but although there is a protocol, GUI and engine already developed and downloadable, not much seems to have been done since 2003. The existing engines are not very strong yet it seems, from reactions in the forum. Latest development there is from Terence Tong who writes in the forum that he has developed another XiangQi engine and is working on a GUI, this was in a message from last year.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... p_id=69609


There a several strong commercial versions of XiangQi software available, some even running on quad software, these "deep" multi threaded versions are pretty expensive, we are lucky in the computer chess community with so many strong free programs.

Here is a site selling commercial XiangQi software:

http://www.xqmaster.ca/index.html


Screenshot of Neuchess

Chinese Chess sets from our sponsor:

http://www.chessusa.com/Merchant2/merch ... _Code=CHCS


Top of the range board and pieces

The free program Qianhong that Jorge already mentioned may not be as strong as the commercial software, but it does have a possibility for "plug-ins", some are downloadable from the site, and that are reportedly considerably stronger than the regular version of Qianhong. The strongest seems to be the "Elephant Eye" a XiangQi-engine made by programmer going by the beautiful name of 'Morning Yellow'.


Screenshot of Qianhong with the "Landscape" style board and "Midnight" color scheme

There is a helpful forum on that site as well:

http://jcraner.com/qianhong/forum/index.php

Eelco

Thanks, for posting all this informations about XiangQi Programs.

[George Tsavdaris]

You learn it and you play it. Ta taa..

Now that I know how to move the pieces I can NOT find anybody to play against, I will have to buy a decent XiangQi program to play a little, or probably download a very weak XiangQi program like this one:

http://www.jcraner.com/qianhong/

You can find some players for playing Chinese Chess live at: http://www.kurnik.org

and also MANY MANY players for playing Chinese Chess in a correspondence form at:

http://brainking.com/ (!!!!!But be careful! Brainking.com is dangerous because it's highly addictive! No kidding! If you start playing there, then you will soon find yourself spending all time playing there.)

http://www.cowplay.com/

Both Brainking and Cowplay are free for playing with no real bad limitations for playing, but registering makes Brainking a super site for playing!


As for some Chinese Chess programs:

NeuChess(commercial) is probably the strongest Chinese Chess program today with a huge difference from the third best!

XQMaster(commercial) is the second strongest program or maybe just as strong as NeuChess.

You can buy these programs here:
http://www.xqmaster.ca/purchase.html

Qianhong is another program which is free. Unfortunately is very weak compared to the 2 aforementioned commercial programs.
Hopefully you can add many other engines in its GUI, like:
Elephant Eye
Ki11egg

XieXie Master is another very strong commercial program.