Banqi
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| Banqi | |
|---|---|
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| Players | 2 |
| Age range | Any |
| Setup time | < 1 minute |
| Playing time | 5-15 minutes |
| Random chance | High |
| Skills required | Tactics, Strategy |
Banqi (Chinese: 半棋; Pinyin: bànqí), or Half Chess, is a two-player Chinese board game played on a 4x8 grid, or half of the Chinese Chess board. Most games last between ten and twenty minutes, but advanced games can go on for an hour or more. Banqi is a social game, usually played for fun rather than serious competition. Because it has a significant element of chance, some people consider it a child's game, but Banqi often has remarkable depth of strategy.
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[edit] Equipment
[edit] Board
Although boards made specifically for Banqi exist, it is common to play on one half of the Xiangqi board (using only one side of the River).
[edit] Pieces
Banqi uses Xiangqi pieces. The backs of the pieces must be indistinguishable from each other so the pieces cannot be identified when face down. Pieces with international symbols printed on their backs are unsuitable. Each player controls five Soldiers, one General, and two each of the five other piece types, for a total of 16 pieces. In a typical set, one player’s pieces are red, and the other player’s pieces are black. The characters may also differ.
| Soldier • 兵 bīng, 卒 zú | Cannon • 炮 pào, 砲 pào | |||
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Eats: Soldier, General
Eaten by: Soldier, Cannon, Horse, Chariot, Elephant, Guard |
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Eats: Soldier, Cannon, Horse*, Chariot*, Elephant*, Guard*, General*
Eaten by: Cannon, Horse, Chariot, Elephant, Guard, General |
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| Horse • 傌 mà, 馬 mǎ | Chariot • 俥 jū, 車 jū | |||
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Eats: Soldier, Cannon, Horse,
Eaten by: Cannon*, Horse, Chariot, Elephant, Guard, General |
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Eats: Soldier, Cannon, Horse, Chariot
Eaten by: Cannon*, Chariot, Elephant, Guard, General |
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| Elephant • 相 xiàng, 象 xiàng | Guard • 仕 shi, 士 shì | |||
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Eats: Soldier, Cannon, Horse, Chariot, Elephant
Eaten by: Cannon*, Elephant, Guard, General |
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Eats: Soldier, Cannon, Horse, Chariot, Elephant, Guard
Eaten by: Cannon*, Guard, General |
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| General • 帥 shuai, 將 jiàng | ||||
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Eats: Cannon, Horse, Chariot, Elephant, General
Eaten by: Soldier, Cannon*, General |
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* In some versions, the cannon is limited to eating only soldiers and other cannons.
[edit] Playing the game
The 32 pieces are shuffled and randomly allocated face-down to squares on the board. The pieces, as in Western Chess, are placed inside the squares, rather than on the intersections as in Chinese Chess.
The first player turns up a piece to begin the game. The color of the piece he turns up is the color he will play in the game. The second player then makes a move, and the two alternate until the game is finished.
The game ends when a player cannot move; the player who cannot move loses. Most often, the game is lost because all of a player’s pieces have been captured and so he has no pieces to move. However, it is possible for one player to surround all of the other player’s pieces in a manner that makes it impossible for them to move.
[edit] Rules for moves
There are three kinds of moves: a player may turn a piece face-up, move a piece, or capture an enemy piece.
[edit] Turning up a face-down piece
This is always a legal move as long as there are face-down pieces on the board. There is no penalty if the piece turned up belongs to the other player.
[edit] Moving the pieces
A player may only move face-up pieces of his own color. All pieces move identically. All pieces capture the same way that they move (except the Cannon in Taiwanese rules). A piece may move only one square up, down, left, or right. A piece may never move onto a square that is already occupied unless such a move is a legal capture.
[edit] Capturing an opposing piece
A player may capture an enemy piece with one of his own pieces only if both pieces are face-up. In all captures, the captured piece is removed from the board and its square is occupied by the capturing piece. The first six piece types are ranked pieces; the Cannon is unranked. The ranked pieces form a hierarchy with Pawn having lowest rank, followed in order by Horse, Cart, Elephant, Guard, and King (which has the highest rank). The ranked pieces capture with the same motion that they use for normal movement—one square up, down, left, or right. Ranked pieces may capture opposing pieces of equal or lesser rank, except that Kings may not capture Pawns, and Pawns may capture Kings.
Pawns may not capture Cannons. All other ranked pieces (Horse through King) may capture Cannons using the standard one-square move (up, down, left or right).
A Cannon may capture any opposing piece type (including Cannons), but its method of capture is unique. To capture another piece, the Cannon must jump over another piece, called a screen, in an orthogonal direction (up, down, left, or right). There may be any number of empty squares between the Cannon and its screen, or the Cannon may be adjacent to the screening piece. Likewise, there may be any number of empty squares between the screen and the piece the Cannon captures, or they may be adjacent. There must be exactly one screening piece between the Cannon and its target; it cannot jump over two or more pieces, nor can it capture unless it has a screen to jump over. The screening piece may be face down or face up, and its color does not matter—it may be either friend or foe. Since a Cannon must jump over a screen to capture, it can never capture a directly-adjacent piece.
[edit] Stalemate
A stalemate threat occurs when one player forces an endless cycle of moves. In a typical stalemate, the instigator repeatedly attacks, but cannot capture, an enemy piece. The legality of stalemating varies by culture:
- Some players consider stalemate illegal. This is consistent with the rules of Chinese Chess, which require the instigator to cease the continual attack, else the victim wins.
- Some players consider stalemate a legal strategy. The ability to instigate a stalemate in an otherwise losing game is one of the ways that skill can overcome luck, since the victim must accept either a drawn game or the loss of a piece. Handling a stalemate situation requires skill for the the winning player, as well — the necessity of heading off a potential stalemate adds spice to an otherwise overwhelming victory. And deciding whether you can still win, even without that piece, requires great expertise.
Games in which stalemate is allowed tend to produce much more even games — many a lopsided game is turned into an interesting match by the surrender of a piece to avoid a stalemate.
[edit] Strategy
- Early Action - Playing first is a slight disadvantage. If you turn up a cannon, the opponent can turn up next to it with a high likelihood of capturing the cannon and no risk of losing his piece to the cannon. If you turn up anything else, the opponent can turn up a cannon hop away. If he finds a cannon, it can take your piece, but no matter what it is, your piece can't immediately take his. By convention, the new challenger plays first to give the previous game’s loser a slight advantage.
- Chance - It is difficult to form strategy early on, since all pieces are hidden. This is a disadvantage to experienced players, who cannot follow a formulaic win strategy.
- Royalty - Incidentally, the life of the King is not the point of this game—the game does not end because of the King’s death. In fact, both Kings usually die long before the end of the game. The game ends only when one player has no legal move. Banqi is often a game of attrition.
- Pawns - Since there are five opposing Pawns, the mighty King is perversely vulnerable, and frequently the King turns out to be worthless in the face of a Pawn front. This vulnerability makes the Guards the most powerful pieces in many games.
- It is often advantageous to search out and destroy the enemy pawns, which the enemy often overlooks as less valuable pieces. Once the enemy pawns are eliminated, the King can roam free across the field in relative safety, vulnerable only to attacks by the enemy Cannons and King.
- Cannons - The cannon has devastating potential if it is well placed behind a shield of strong allied pieces. Given such position, a Cannon can be stronger than either King or Guard; especially if the opposing King and/or Guards have limited lateral mobility (that is, if they can’t sidestep a Cannon attack). On the other hand, the opponent has plenty of pieces that can capture the Cannon if only they can get next to it, so a poorly placed Cannon is usually short-lived. Most players will sacrifice a Horse, Cart, or Elephant to capture a Cannon; in some situations even a Guard or King is an acceptable price to pay.
- Hidden Pieces - Play is often directed by the face-down pieces. Pieces are vulnerable in a dead end “tunnel” (a sequence of empty squares one square wide, surrounded by face-down pieces), in which there is no escape from a pursuing enemy piece.
- If there is enough space between you and the attacker, you will have time to turn up some face-down pieces before the attacker closes on you. If you get to an open area at least 2 x 2 in size, you can use that “rotation space” to dodge a single enemy piece by sidestepping. You can sometimes create a rotation space by turning up a smaller enemy piece on the inside corner of a bend in the tunnel, or you might be able to punch through a wall of the tunnel to reach an open area on the other side.
- It is often important to keep track of what pieces are still face-down. Usually this is done by checking both the “graveyard” for dead pieces and the playing field for live pieces; by the process of elimination you can figure out what must still remain.
- Resignation - A player may simply resign if the game seems lopsided.
- Attrition - Exchanging equal pieces is always to the advantage of the winning player. When winning by a sufficient margin, even disadvantageous trades can accelerate victory if chosen carefully.
- Objective - Often, the move that will win most quickly (or break an impending stalemate) gives away the most valuable piece. Such moves are often overlooked.
- Evasion - Some players derive pleasure from making it as difficult as possible for the opponent to actually coerce the win. Others make a game of seeing how many opposing pieces they can capture before their demise. Some just resign when defeat becomes evident, and start a new game.
- Parity - Parity is important, especially in the end game. In situations where only an opposing King and pawn are left with one space between, turn order invariably determines the winner. The pawn's move will produce a stalemate, while the King's move will result in his inevitable capture.
- Pinning - It is fairly easy to pin a piece against the edge of the board. Frequently, being pinned or not is the difference between defeat and stalemate.
[edit] Variants
- Novell rules - A variation of the rules in which Cannons can capture pieces which are face-down. Cannons have another added ability: they can capture Pawns and Cannons directly (as a Horse would, not by jumping over a screen). In other words, the Cannon is more like a normal piece, ranking below Horse and above Pawn, capturing in the normal style, but also has the ability distinctive to the Cannon of capturing by jumping over a screen. This variant is used by a group of players at Novell, Inc. in Provo, Utah.
