An Introduction to Ban Chi
Ban Chi is a two-player Chinese board game played on a 4×8 grid. It is a social game, usually played for fun rather than serious competition. Much chance is involved, but that luck can be deftly manipulated by skilled players.
Most games last between ten and twenty minutes. Occasionally, a particularly interesting game will go on for an hour or more.
The name of the game is pronounced \ˈbän-ˌchē\, or bahn chee. Think of the first syllable of bonfire and the first syllable of cheesy.
Equipment & Setup
Board
It is common to play on half of a Chinese chess board (as in the image above), but any four-by-eight grid of appropriate size will do.
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Pieces
Each player starts the game with five pawns, one king, and two each of the five other piece types, for a total of 16 pieces each. The other pieces are guard, elephant, cart, horse, and cannon.
One player's pieces are red, and the other player's pieces are black (although pieces with other color schemes are not uncommon).
| Type (Count) |
Image | Notes |
| King (×1) |
 |
Highest rank. Captures everything except pawns. |
| Guard (×2) |
 |
Captures everything except kings. |
| Elephant (×2) |
 |
Captures everything except kings and guards. |
| Cart (×2) |
 |
Captures carts, horses, pawns, and cannons. |
| Horse (×2) |
 |
Captures horses, pawns, and cannons. |
| Pawn (×5) |
 |
Lowest rank, though it can capture the king as well as pawns. |
| Cannon (×2) |
 |
Captures everything, but must jump to do so. |
Setup
All 32 playing pieces are turned face down, scrambled, and placed randomly in the squares of the 4×8 playing surface. The pieces are placed in the squares as in checkers, rather than on the intersections as in most oriental games.
Playing the Game
The first player turns up a piece to begin the game. The color of that first uncovered piece is the color he or she will play in the game. The second player then makes a move, and the two alternate until the game is finished.
The game ends when a player cannot move, and that player is the loser. Most often, the game is lost because all of a player's pieces have been captured and so he has no pieces to move. However, it is possible for one player to surround all of the other player's so they cannot move.
There are no specific rules for determining stalemate, but is negotiated by the players.
Rules for moves
There are three kinds of moves: turnup, move, or capture.
Turning up a piece
Turning a piece face up is a legal move if there are any face-down pieces remaining. There is no penalty if the piece turned up belongs to the other player. Once revealed, a piece may move, capture, or be captured.
Moving a piece
A player may only move face-up pieces of their own color.
All pieces move identically. A piece may move exactly one square up, down, left, or right. No diagonal moves are allowed. A piece may never move onto a square that is already occupied unless such a move is a legal capture.
Capturing an opposing piece
All pieces capture the same way that they move, except for the cannon.
A player may only capture with a face-up piece of their own color, and may only capture a face-up piece of the opposing color. In all captures, the captured piece is removed from the board and its square is occupied by the capturing piece.
All pieces except the cannon are ranked. The cannon is unranked. The ranked pieces form a hierarchy with the king on top and the pawn at the bottom. The full precedence is: king, guard, elephant, cart, horse, and pawn.
Ranked pieces capture with the same motion as they use for normal moves. Pieces of equal or lower rank may be captured, except that kings may not capture pawns, and pawns may capture kings.
All ranked pieces except pawns may capture cannons.
A cannon may capture any opposing piece type (including cannons). Its method of capture is unique. To capture another piece, the cannon moves any distance along a single row or column of the board, jumping over exactly one intermediate piece (called a screen). Any other squares between the cannon and its target must be empty. The color of the screening piece does not matter; it may be friend or foe, or even face-down.
Since a cannon must jump over a screen to capture, it can never capture a directly adjacent piece.
Stalemate
A stalemate threat occurs when one player forces an endless cycle of moves. In a typical stalemate, the instigator repeatedly attacks, but cannot capture, an enemy piece.
The ability to instigate a stalemate in an otherwise losing game is one of the ways that skill can overcome luck, since the victim must accept either a drawn game or the loss of a piece.
The necessity of heading off a potential stalemate adds spice to an otherwise overwhelming victory. And deciding whether you can still win, even without that piece, requires great expertise.
Implications of the rules
The uniqueness of the cannon, with its distinct style of capture and peculiar mixture of strength and weakness, is a great source of interest in this game.
The eccentricity of the king/pawn interplay also adds spark to the game.
Strategy
The strategy early in the game is to turn up pieces a cannon's hop away from the enemy. Thus, playing first is a slight disadvantage because the opponent can attack and kill your piece before you have a chance to do anything about it.
The element of chance plays a big part in this game. A rank novice can obliterate an expert with very little coaching, if the luck falls his way. In spite of this, the game is still interesting because expert play can do much to overcome overwhelming luck.
It is easy to forget that the point is to win the game, not to keep all your pieces. You should consider giving away even valuable pieces if this leaves you in a position to force a win. Amazingly often, the move that will win most quickly (or break an impending stalemate) gives away the most valuable piece. Such moves are often overlooked.
In particular, remember that preserving the king is not the point of this game. In most ban chi games, both kings die long before the end of the game. The game ends only when one player has no legal move.
Although the pawn is the weakest piece, it is capable of capturing the strongest piece. On the other hand, the king cannot capture a pawn, and so is helpless against pawns unless it has accomplices to shield it. Since there are five opposing pawns to assault it, the mighty king is perversely vulnerable. The king can be a real terror if it faces few pawns, but frequently the king turns out to be worthless in the face of pawn trouble. This vulnerability makes the guards the most powerful pieces in many games.
Because of the king's weakness against pawns, a good strategy is to seek and destroy enemy pawns, which the opponent often overlooks as less valuable pieces.
The cannon vies with the guard and king for “most valuable player” status. Like the king, the cannon is both very powerful and very vulnerable. Since the cannon can strike across the entire length of the board, and can capture any piece, it has devastating potential if it is well placed behind a shield of strong allied pieces. Given such position, a cannon can be stronger than either king or guard, especially if the opposing king and/or guards have limited lateral mobility (that is, if they can't sidestep a cannon attack). On the other hand, the opponent has plenty of pieces that can capture the cannon if only they can get next to it, so a poorly placed cannon is usually short-lived. Most players will gladly sacrifice a horse, cart, or elephant to capture a cannon. In some situations even a guard or king is an acceptable price to pay.
Especially in the early game, play is often directed by the face-down pieces. Your pieces are vulnerable in a dead end “tunnel” (a sequence of empty squares one square wide, surrounded by face-down pieces), because if your opponent turns up a larger piece you have no way to evade capture: you can run to the end of the tunnel, but will eventually be trapped at the end. If there is enough space between you and the attacker, you will have time to turn up some face-down pieces before the attacker closes on you. If you can get to an open area, at least 2×2 in size, you will be able to dodge a single enemy piece by sidestepping. Such an open area is called a “rotation space.” You might be able to create a rotation space by turning up a smaller enemy piece on the inside corner of a bend in the tunnel, or you might be able to punch through a wall of the tunnel to reach an open area on the other side.
Although stalemate is a consensual outcome, it is usually forced by the player who is clearly losing the game. A player obtains a stalemate by forcing an endless cycle of moves. The opponent must then either concede the stalemate, or continue playing the game for the rest of his natural life. The stalemate is usually instigated by continually attacking a valuable but vulnerable piece (such as a cannon or king) that is free to move away from its attacker, but the attacker relentlessly follows. If the piece under attack is not able to scurry behind some larger ally, this leads to a stalemate condition. The threat of stalemate is often the losing side's only tool to even the game. Many times a lopsided game is turned into an interesting match by the surrender of a piece to avoid a stalemate.
Ban Chi is often a game of attrition. Equal trades are usually to the advantage of the player who is ahead on pieces, so the player with the upper hand often tries to force equal trades. When winning by a sufficient margin, even disadvantageous trades can accelerate victory if chosen carefully.
In a game where it has become obvious that defeat is inevitable, some players derive pleasure from making it as difficult as possible for the opponent to actually accomplish the win. Others make a game of seeing how many opposing pieces they can capture before their demise. Others just throw in the towel when defeat becomes evident, and start a new game.
Parity is important, especially in the end game. Suppose that only your pawn and the opposing king are left alive, and that they face each other with one empty square between them. If it is your move, the game is a stalemate, but if it is your opponent's move you will win. If it is your move, you can attack the king with your pawn, but it will simply move away. If you attack it again, it can just move back to the square he just vacated, and repeat the cycle indefinitely. On the other hand, if it is his move, he can run away from you, but you need only follow until he runs into the edge of the board. At this point, he can only move sideways, and then you can step up to occupy the square diagonally adjacent to his king. The king cannot step away from the edge of the board or you will capture him and win the game. He can move down the edge of the board away from your pawn, but you need only follow in lock step until the king is cornered. Once the king is in the corner with your pawn diagonally adjacent, he only has two possible moves, both of which allow you to capture him.
Since the board is only four squares across its shorter dimension, it is fairly easy to pin a piece against the edge of the board. This is something you should try to do to your opponent, and (of course) try to prevent from happening to you. Frequently, being pinned or not is the difference between defeat and stalemate.
It's often important to keep track of what pieces are still face down. Usually this is done by checking both the “graveyard” of dead pieces and the playing field for live pieces. By the process of elimination you can figure out what must still remain. However, when there's only one piece left face down, you may as well just peek at it and save yourself (and your opponent) the effort. But make sure there's only a single piece face down: if there's another face-down piece on the board (you missed it – it's over there in the far corner, where you didn't look closely enough), you've just exposed secret information and probably ruined the game.
Buying a set
It can be difficult to find a chinese chess set, especially one that is suitable for ban chi. Chinese chess doesn't have a need for pieces with unmarked backs, so many sets have blemishes that make them bad for ban chi.
Wooden pieces seem to be the worst, since wood grain can make face-down pieces recognizable, and most wooden sets I've seen have ink stains on their backs as well.
Plastic sets are much better for ban chi. I recommend ChessHouse.com as a source. Their sets are only $12.95 (as of 2025-07-20), and they have good customer service.