Xiangqi online: start your first game without chess habits
A practical Board Atlas guide to Chinese chess online — palace, river, cannon screens and facing generals — so your first browser game matches the rules this build enforces.
If you already know Western chess, Xiangqi (Chinese chess) looks familiar until the first illegal move. This is a how to start guide for the live Board Atlas table at board.pocketplay.win/xiangqi, checked 4 October 2026 — not another chess-history origin piece.
Open the table and what this build enforces
Play here: Xiangqi on Board Atlas. The page describes the rules this browser build follows:
- Generals stay inside the palace
- Elephants cannot cross the river; horses can be blocked at the leg
- Cannons capture across exactly one screen
- Generals may not face each other on an open file
- A player with no legal move loses
- Long-check and repetition adjudication are not included on this build
That last line matters for online play: do not assume tournament draw/perpetual-check handling until the product adds it.
The board in one minute
Xiangqi uses a 9×10 point grid. Pieces sit on intersections, not inside squares. The middle river and the two palaces (3×3 boxes with an X) are the landmarks you need before you move anything. Red moves first.
LearnXiangqi’s beginner rules page (updated 22 September 2026, re-checked today) is a clear primary rundown of the same structure.
Pieces that surprise Western players
| Piece | Remember |
|---|---|
| General | One point orthogonally, palace only; also the flying general rule (cannot face the other general on an empty file) |
| Advisor | One point diagonally, palace only |
| Elephant | Exactly two points diagonally; blocked at the “eye”; never crosses the river |
| Horse | Orthogonal-then-diagonal L; cannot jump — an occupied “leg” kills that direction |
| Chariot | Rook-like along ranks/files |
| Cannon | Moves like a chariot; captures only by jumping exactly one intervening piece (either colour) |
| Soldier | Forward one; after crossing the river, also sideways; never back; no promotion |
A first-session checklist on Board Atlas
- Open /xiangqi and play a few moves against the interface before inviting anyone.
- Practise one cannon capture and one blocked horse so those two rules stick.
- Before you pull a piece off the centre file, ask whether the generals would face each other.
- Treat “no legal move” as a loss here (stalemate is not a Western-style draw on this build).
- After one short game, re-read only the piece that confused you — usually cannon or horse.
Limits
- Rules summaries above align with LearnXiangqi’s published beginner page and Board Atlas’s on-page schema; local house rules elsewhere may differ.
- This post does not teach openings or endgame theory.
- Long-check / repetition handling is explicitly out of scope for the current Board Atlas Xiangqi build.
Sources & checks
How we write and check articles: Editorial method