How many intersections are on a xiangqi board?
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
90. The board is nine lines wide and ten lines deep, and pieces stand on the intersections where those lines cross — so the playable points are 9 × 10 = 90, not the 8 × 9 = 72 squares the grid appears to contain.
Why intersections and not squares
It is the older convention, shared with go and with janggi, and it is why the river can exist at all: the river is a gap between two ranks that pieces cross over, which would be impossible if pieces sat inside squares.
Practically it means a beginner coming from chess must retrain their eye. The corner point is a real point; the corner square is not.
The regions of the board
- The river — between the 5th and 6th ranks. Elephants never cross it; soldiers change behaviour when they do.
- The palace — a 3×3 box of nine points at each end, marked with diagonals. Generals and advisors never leave it.
So the general has exactly nine points available for the whole game, which is why xiangqi attacks are so concrete.
Related questions
Is the xiangqi board bigger than a chess board?
Yes: 90 points against 64 squares. It is also not square — ten ranks by nine files.
How many points are in the palace?
Nine, and the diagonals drawn across it show the advisor's moves. The general uses only the orthogonal lines.
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