Palace
九宫 · jiǔ gōng · nine palaces
The three by three square marked with a cross at each end of the board, which the General and the two Advisors may never leave.
Each side has a palace: nine points, marked by the diagonal cross drawn between them. The General moves one point at a time inside it. The Advisors move one point diagonally and also stay inside it, which is why they only ever stand on five of the nine squares.
Everything about attacking in xiangqi comes back to the palace. You are not trying to trap a king that can run across the board, you are trying to reach nine known squares that the defender has spent the whole game reinforcing. That is why mating patterns here are so exact and so nameable: there are only so many ways into a box that small.
In practice
Count the defenders of the palace, not the pieces on the board. Two Advisors and two Elephants in place is a fortress; one missing Advisor is a target.
Related terms
- General将 / 帅The piece you must protect and the piece your opponent must trap, confined to the nine points of its own palace.
- Advisor士 / 仕A short range defender that moves one point diagonally and never leaves the palace, protecting the General from cannons and chariots.
- Flying General白脸将The rule that the two Generals may never face each other down an open file with no piece in between, which makes an empty middle file a weapon.
- Iron gate bolt铁门栓A mate where a cannon on the middle file freezes the palace and a chariot delivers the blow the defender cannot answer.