📚 Xinwu Canbian — a Ming-dynasty endgame manual
Red to move. The two sides are almost perfectly balanced: each has a Rook, four Pawns and an Elephant; Red's only edge is a second Cannon against Black's one, and Red keeps an Advisor while Black has none. The classical manual Tâm Võ Tàn Biên concludes: draw. This position has not been verified by engine; the result follows the old book. The name is the idiom 'covering one's ears to steal a bell', from the Lã Thị Xuân Thu: the thief plugged his own ears and believed the whole village was deaf too. The story is told in this page's Anecdotes section. In your view, is one extra Cannon in such a balanced endgame a real advantage — or just a 'bell' that only Red can hear?
The thief who plugged his own ears — and believed the whole village had gone deaf too
He feared the bell's sound would expose him, so he plugged his ears tight and hammered on in peace. There was just one small problem: the ears he plugged were his own — while the whole village's ears heard every hammer blow clearly. The story is told in the Lüshi Chunqiu: the Fan clan of Jin had…
Stories around this position — storytelling, not part of the engine-verified content.
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