xiangqi.plyyard.com is a browser-based xiangqi board maintained by Ply Yard. You do not need an account or any knowledge of notation: practice against AI, take turns with someone beside you, or send a room link to a friend elsewhere. We keep the board, rules, and practice guidance together so you can quickly answer, "Why was that move illegal?" or "What else could I play here?"

Start with the mode that fits how you want to play

  • Practice at your own pace: choose Play AI. Multiple AI levels, hints, undo, and replay let you test two candidate moves against each other, and the AI searches inside your browser.
  • Teach a friend or play face to face: choose Two Players. Share one device and take turns without creating accounts or a room.
  • Arrange a game with someone elsewhere: choose Play Online. Create a room and share its link; both players see the same board, and synced moves cannot be undone by one side.

New to xiangqi? Begin with the Rules Guide. If you know the moves but are unsure how to choose between them, start with Practical Tips.

No account also means no cloud game library

AI and local two-player games are stored in the browser on the current device and can usually continue after a refresh. They do not automatically appear on another phone or computer, and clearing site data removes information we cannot recover through an account.

Online rooms temporarily store the board, seats, and moves so both players can sync and reconnect. A room is not a permanent game archive, so save an important position yourself. See the Privacy Policy for details.

We do not present practice as a rank exam

  • This site has no rating ladder, rank certification, or automatic matchmaking with strangers.
  • AI levels represent different search strengths, not real-world player ranks.
  • A hint is one candidate move to compare, not the only correct answer.
  • The rules and tips help you understand positions; they do not promise quick mastery or guaranteed wins.

Useful practice does not have to end in victory. If you can say, "The cannon had no screen," or "That move opened the two generals," you already have a clear goal for the next game.

Our content standard is simple: can you use it immediately?

The Rules Guide should let a complete beginner finish a game independently. Practical Tips should turn vague instinct into checks you can perform, such as seeing who covers an advisor's old square or confirming a cannon screen before you fire.

These methods have conditions and are not winning formulas. A soldier that crosses the river can move sideways, but it does not gain extra cover. If the explanation disagrees with the board, the page or program needs fixing; the reader should not have to guess at an exception.

If something is wrong, tell us exactly where you got stuck

Unclear rules, a legal move that the board will not accept, or a failed room connection all deserve feedback. A full-board screenshot, the previous move, and the names of your device and browser are usually more useful than a general report that something does not work.

Use the Contact page for the most helpful details. We correct reproducible rule and connection problems as well as wording that misleads new players.

Open-source piece artwork

The red and black discs on the board are the hnz SVG set from the open-source pychess-variants project by gbtami and contributors, used unmodified under GNU AGPL-3.0. Local copies and the license note sit with the files at /xiangqi-pieces/. The grid, river labels, and palace marks are drawn by this site’s interface, not taken from that project’s board bitmap.

The engine behind the AI

When you play the AI or ask for a hint, moves come first from the open-source Fairy-Stockfish engine. It searches inside your browser, so your game is not sent to anyone else’s server. We load a single-threaded build paired with a public xiangqi neural network (about 11 MB, from the xiangqi-c07e94a5c7cb lineage, which is released under CC0). While it searches, the side panel shows depth, the main line, node count, and speed.

Fairy-Stockfish is led by Fabian Fichter (ianfab) and grew out of Stockfish, which Tord Romstad, Marco Costalba, Joona Kiiski, and Gary Linscott started before many others joined in. The fairy-stockfish.wasm build is what lets it run on a web page. The engine is licensed under GNU GPL v3; the full license is in COPYING.txt and the author list is in AUTHORS.txt. Our thanks to everyone who turned search and evaluation into free software others can build on. None of these authors endorse this site.

If that engine fails to load, the game switches to the lighter XQWLight and keeps going. XQWLight was designed by Morning Yellow (Xiangqi Wizard, xqbase.com) and is licensed under GNU GPL v2 or later. It only picks moves in the browser. Legal moves, check, stalemate, and perpetual check or chase are still decided by this site’s own rules code. Thank you for a classic engine that still runs on the web.

Where the endgame studies come from

On the endgame campaign, the names and positions from Shi Qing Ya Qu come from the Ming treatise and are in the public domain. The FEN index used to recover those boards is shiqingyaqu551.fen from the open-source kuiba1949/xiangqi-tools project, used under the BSD-3-Clause license. Mate-distance metadata for some of the same studies comes from floatai/xiangqibench, used under the MIT license. The basic mate patterns and practical endings were arranged on this site. None of those authors endorse this site.

Who maintains this board

This site is maintained by Ply Yard. The design, xiangqi engine, online rooms, and English content continue to evolve with real feedback. We do not ask for a player account, legal name, or payment information.