Single Comment

On Designing Good Chess Variants. Design goals and design principles for creating Chess variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Oct 16, 2008 12:37 PM UTC:

What do you mean by Xiangqi being 'technical'? Are you referring to the horrendously complicated rules to decide if repetitions are drawn or lost?

I don't think Xiangqi is any less drawish by nature than Chess. It is true that a Queen is stronger than the Rooks, which are the strongest pieces in Xiangqi. But the royal piece of Xiangqi (a Wazir) is also a lot weaker than the King in Chess. And it is constrained to the Palace on top of that. This makes that a Knight is often enough to perform a perpetual.

The fact that it never happens is only due to the rule that you lose when you do it. It would be easy enough to add a similar rule in Chess. I am not sure that it would help much, though: not many games end in a Queen ending. The usual draw occurs because there simply is not enough material difference left at the end to force a win.

In fact I am surprised that this should not happen in Xiangqi, as most material is completely useless in an end-game. I read a complaint recently on the Talkchess forum that NeuChess, one of the best Xiangqi programs in existence, was not able to beat itself when playing with 20-py search against 18-ply search (which in Chess would cause a crushing defeat), because all games ended in 'draw due to insufficient mating material'.

Btw, the draw percentage in Capablanca-type variants is usually only half of that in normal Chess (15% vs 30%). With Superchess, Dutch-Open rules (featuring an Amazon and Centaur in addition to the Capablanca pieces) it is even lower. The more strong pieces, the larger the probabilities for a quick mate, or devastating tactice.