Checkmate patterns
Every position, move and legality claim on this page is verified programmatically against our open rules engine, which implements the WXF laws and is tested against the official 110-diagram repetition casebook.
Direct answer
Xiangqi has a small set of named mating patterns that cover most finished games. The common ones are 馬後炮 (horse behind cannon), 重炮 (two stacked cannons), 雙車錯 (two chariots) and the soldier mates that arrive when a soldier reaches the palace. Learning the shapes is faster than calculating them each time.
Why the patterns have names
A general is confined to nine points for the whole game. That means the number of genuinely different ways to trap it is small, and players noticed the shapes centuries ago and gave them names. Learning them is not memorising variations. It is learning to see a finished position from three moves away.
The patterns worth knowing
| Pattern | Chinese | What it needs |
|---|---|---|
| Horse behind cannon | 馬後炮 | A horse in front of the general, a cannon behind the horse |
| Double cannon | 重炮 | Two cannons on one file, the front one defended |
| Two chariots | 雙車錯 | Two chariots on neighbouring ranks, nothing else |
| Chariot and soldier | 車兵 | A chariot to check, a crossed soldier to cover a point |
| Horse and chariot | 車馬 | The horse covers what the chariot cannot reach |
Each of the first three has a page with a position you can play out, and every position on those pages is checked against the engine before it is published.
What they all have in common
Every mate here does the same two jobs at once: one piece attacks the general, and something covers each point the general could move to. The reason xiangqi mates are so often two pieces rather than three is that the palace is small, so covering the escape points is cheap.
It also explains the defensive rule that follows from it. Keep a spare point for your general, and keep your own advisors and elephants from filling the points it needs.
Related questions
How many checkmate patterns are there in xiangqi?
There is no fixed number, but a handful cover the large majority of finished games. The named ones on this page are the patterns that appear often enough to be worth learning as shapes rather than calculating each time.
Which xiangqi mate should I learn first?
Horse behind cannon. It needs only two pieces, both of which usually survive into the endgame, and once the horse is placed it is difficult to prevent.
Do these patterns work with advisors on the board?
Some do and some do not, and that is the point of studying them. The double cannon mate actually relies on the defender's advisors being in the way, while the two chariot mate is stopped by an advisor on the right point.
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