---
title: "How Long Should You Stick With an Opening Before Switching? · Xiangqi Master"
description: "Longer than most players give it, usually several dozen games, since early struggles are almost always about the middlegame rather than the opening choice itself."
url: https://xiangqimaster.com/blog/how-long-should-i-stick-with-an-opening
updated: 2026-09-23
source: Xiangqi Master (https://xiangqimaster.com)
license: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
---

# How long should I stick with an opening before concluding it just doesn't suit me?

These answers restate the rules implemented by our open-source engine, which follows the WXF laws and is regression-tested against the official 110-diagram repetition casebook. Where an answer refers to a specific position, that position lives on the linked reference page, where the build verifies it against the engine before publishing.

> Direct answer
>
> **Longer than most players actually give it, usually several dozen games at least.** Early struggles with a new opening are almost always about the unfamiliar middlegame it produces, not about the opening choice being genuinely unsuitable, and that unfamiliarity fades with exactly the repetition an early switch throws away.

## Why the early discomfort is misleading

Any new opening produces positions you have not seen before, and feeling lost in an unfamiliar middlegame is a normal part of learning it, not evidence the opening was the wrong choice. Switching after a handful of uncomfortable losses usually means abandoning a system right before the familiarity that would have made it comfortable actually arrives.

## When switching is actually justified

If you understand the resulting middlegames reasonably well after real repetition and consistently dislike the kind of positions they produce, not just individual results, that is a legitimate reason to change. This is a different situation from the losses-driven panic described in [why you keep losing in the opening](https://xiangqimaster.com/blog/why-do-i-lose-in-the-opening), which is almost never actually about the opening itself.

## Related questions

Is there a rough number of games to aim for?

Several dozen is a reasonable minimum before judging a system fairly; fewer than that is usually just early unfamiliarity.

What if I am simply bored of an opening rather than struggling with it?

Boredom with a genuinely sound, well-understood system is a more legitimate reason to add variety than losses are.

## Related xiangqi resources

Choosing an opening

How many you need, and which pair to learn

Opening principles

What the first ten moves are actually for

Xiangqi openings

The opening reference

## Try it on a real board

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