--- title: "Deflection and Decoy in Xiangqi · Xiangqi Master" description: "Deflection wins material by giving a defender something it cannot refuse, so it has to stop defending." url: https://xiangqimaster.com/tactics/deflection updated: 2026-09-30 source: Xiangqi Master (https://xiangqimaster.com) license: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) --- # Deflection Every position, move and legality claim on this page is verified programmatically against our open rules engine, which implements the WXF laws for movement, checkmate and both repetition rulings: a side that forces a repetition by perpetual check or perpetual chase loses rather than drawing. The chase half has not been validated against the official casebook. > Direct answer > > Deflection means forcing a piece away from the job it is doing. If a chariot is the only thing defending a point, a threat it must answer somewhere else leaves that point undefended. Chinese writing calls the defender the 根 — the root — and a piece with no defender is 无根子, rootless, which is what deflection is for: making a piece rootless and then simply taking it. ## Rooted and rootless Chinese xiangqi vocabulary is unusually precise here, and it is worth borrowing because it makes the tactic obvious: - **根** (gēn), the root — the piece that would recapture if you took the one it guards. - **有根子** — a piece that has a root: capturing it costs you the capturer. - **无根子** — a rootless piece: it can simply be taken. Once you are counting roots rather than counting pieces, half of tactics becomes bookkeeping. Every capture is really a question about whether the target has a root, and every tactic that wins material is some way of answering that question *no*. ## Four ways to remove a root There are only so many things you can do to a defender: - **Deflect it** — threaten something it must answer instead. A check is the strongest version, because it cannot be ignored. - **Capture it** — trade it off, even at even material, if what it was guarding is worth more than the trade. - **Block it** — interpose on the line it defends along. A chariot guarding down a file stops guarding the moment something stands in the way. Against a **horse** this is the xiangqi-specific version: occupy the point its leg steps through and it defends nothing. - **Overload it** — give it two things to guard at once. It does not have to move for this one to work; it simply cannot be in both places. The last two have no real equivalent in western chess, because nothing there can be blocked out of defending the way a horse or a cannon can. ## The cannon, which works backwards Cannons invert every rule in this family and it is worth stating plainly, because an instinct carried over from chess will be wrong half the time. A cannon needs exactly one screen. So a cannon defends a point only while there is one piece between it and that point — which means you can switch off a cannon’s defence by **removing** the screen, or by **adding a second** one. Both work, and both look like doing nothing to the defender itself. The same inversion is why [discovered attacks](https://xiangqimaster.com/tactics/discovered-attack) with a cannon are made by interposing rather than by moving out of the way. ## Related questions What is deflection in xiangqi? Forcing a defending piece to deal with something else, so that what it was defending becomes free to take. A check is the most forcing kind of deflection, since it cannot be declined. What does 无根子 mean? A “rootless piece” — one with no defender behind it. 根 (root) is the piece that would recapture. Making an opponent's piece rootless, then taking it, is the whole point of deflection. How do you stop a cannon from defending something? Change the screen count. A cannon defends through exactly one intervening piece, so removing that piece or adding a second one both end the defence — without touching the cannon. ## Related xiangqi resources Discovered attacks Where the cannon also works backwards Trapped pieces When a piece has nowhere safe to go Cannon tactics The screen as the tactical object ## Put it into practice Play a game against the computer or a real opponent. It is free, it starts instantly, and there is nothing to install.