📚 Yuanshen Haikua — a Qing-dynasty endgame manual
Red to move — and despite holding clearly heavier artillery (two chariots and two cannons against Black's one chariot and one cannon), the classical manual Uyên Thâm Hải Khoát (game 246) still concludes with a single word: draw. Black's block of four pawns makes up the difference: slow to advance, but harder and harder to uproot as the endgame nears. To win, Red must win before that pawn mass starts to speak. The name comes from the banquet of 206 BC, where Liu Bang rode in with exactly one hundred horsemen to feast amid Xiang Yu's four hundred thousand troops — and on the table, a jade token was raised three times as a signal. That brush with death is told in the anecdote below. On this board: can you break the draw, or will Black hold on the way that guest once held on to his life?
The Hongmen banquet: three raised jade signals, yet the sword never fell
In 206 BC, Liu Bang arrived at the Hongmen banquet with exactly 100 cavalry — where Xiang Yu was encamped with 400,000 men. At the table, the adviser Fan Zeng three times raised a jade jue as the signal: 'Strike.' Then a sword dance began, and everyone watching understood that the blade was not…
Stories around this position — storytelling, not part of the engine-verified content.
9/4R4/3k5/3r2P2/7C1/9/7C1/c1p1p4/3Npp1R1/3K5 wOpen this position in the app: try it against the computer or watch the engines play it out.
▶ Play this studyLoad this position into the Setup editor: rearrange it, edit it and try your own variations.
🧩 Open in Setup