Daily Xiangqi

The date fixes the session identity, not a scripted move sequence

Every Daily Xiangqi date begins from the standard 32-piece opening position. The date determines your side and the deterministic seed used by the local AI when multiple choices evaluate similarly. Once the game starts, your decisions create the actual position. Two people can therefore play the same date and still reach different games.

Red always has the first move

Xiangqi begins with Red. On a date where you are Red, your first decision appears immediately. On a Black date the computer makes the opening move before you act. The board orientation follows your assigned side so your pieces remain closest to you while the internal coordinate system stays stable for legal-move checking and autosave.

The full palace and river rules stay active

Daily mode uses the same rules engine as unlimited Practice. Generals and advisors remain inside their palaces. Elephants cannot cross the river and cannot jump a blocked eye. Horses cannot jump a blocked leg. Soldiers gain sideways movement only after crossing. Chariots move along clear orthogonal lines and cannons need exactly one screen to capture.

Flying-general safety is checked after every candidate move

A legal move may not leave the two generals staring down an empty file. This matters when a central soldier, chariot, cannon or other blocker moves sideways. The move generator applies the move on a cloned board, checks the moving side’s general safety, and rejects the candidate if the resulting position exposes that direct line.

Checkmate and stalemate are both losing endings

When a side has no legal move, Xiangqi awards the game to the opponent whether or not the general is currently in check. The Daily history still records the reason so checkmate and stalemate remain distinguishable. The browser also uses a transparent identical-position threefold draw to prevent an endless local repetition loop.

Returning to the date restores the exact position

The autosave stores board state, side to move, player color, repetition counts, move history, match score and the Clean or Assisted label. Opening the same Daily date resumes that state rather than silently replacing it. A date with no save starts from the standard opening with that date’s side assignment and AI seed.

Hint and Undo keep their study boundary

Hint highlights a legal move selected by the strongest local evaluator. Undo returns to the state before your previous decision, including the computer response that followed it. Restart begins the same deterministic date again. Each action marks the current game Assisted because you now have information that was unavailable during the first attempt.

Daily completion is not a claimed rating

The specialist history records the local result, side and move length. It does not estimate an Elo rating, national rank, percentile or opponent pool because the site has no verified multiplayer population behind this browser game. Easy, Standard and Hard describe local AI settings only.

Today’s 6 remains unchanged

Daily Xiangqi is a separate specialist habit. It never occupies a Today’s 6 slot and does not modify the frozen six-game rotation. Its streak lives only under Xiangqi statistics in the versioned local store. Cumulative QA explicitly checks that Xiangqi and earlier specialists remain outside the main Daily lineup.

Use Practice for unlimited sessions

Daily gives one stable identity per date. Practice Game gives a reusable seeded session with Red, Black or seeded-random side selection. Fresh Practice generates a new seed. Match to 3 carries points across several deterministic games. All three modes share the same board, legal-move engine and AI.

No remote service is required

The Xiangqi engine, AI and autosave all run in the browser. There is no paid API, account or remote engine dependency. That keeps the product reproducible for QA and lets migrations preserve the previous release store without rewriting it.

No wagering, chips or prizes

Daily Xiangqi is presented only as a strategy and learning game. There are no wagers, chips, prizes, stakes, purchases or paid-random mechanics. Local statistics describe only play on this device and are not connected to money or a competitive leaderboard.