📚 Yuanshen Haikua — a Qing-dynasty endgame manual
Red to move. Two Red pawns have pushed deep into Black's camp, backed by two chariots and a cannon ready to press home. Black has more pieces — an advisor, two elephants, a knight, a chariot, a cannon — but Black's king stands in a formation already hollowed out. Yet the classical manual Uyên Thâm Hải Khoát (game 8) concludes only: draw. The position has not been machine-verified; the result follows the book. The name is the most famous spy tale of the Three Kingdoms age: Jiang Gan, visiting his old friend Zhou Yu, 'stole' a secret letter at midnight — and thereby made Cao Cao execute his own two finest naval commanders. Except, as the anecdote below points out, that letter theft never happened in the historical record. And on the board: with two pawns already at the palace door, can you find a way to turn this draw into a win?
The forged letter that killed two admirals: Red Cliffs' most famous anecdote... never happened
Before Red Cliffs, Jiang Gan visited his old friend Zhou Yu's camp and at midnight 'stole' a secret letter: Cao Cao's two naval commanders, Cai Mao and Zhang Yun, promised to deliver Cao Cao's head and defect. Cao Cao beheaded both admirals in a rage — only to learn he had fallen for a linked…
Stories around this position — storytelling, not part of the engine-verified content.
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