The Elimination of defense

The elimination of defense refers to moves that remove the opponent's pieces that are protecting a target piece, leaving the target vulnerable to capture. This is accomplished by either capturing the defending pieces or putting them in a position where they cannot move.

There are generally three common patterns in the elimination of defense:

1.     Attacking the defender

2.    Blocking the defender

3. Exchanging the defender

Let us take a look at the following examples.

In this example, red wants to capture the black cannon, but it is protected by the horse. Red can move the F1 Soldier to F2 to attack the horse.

If the horse runs away, the cannon will be unprotected and captured by the red chariot. If black moves away the cannon first, then the soldier can also take the black horse. Either way, black is going to end up losing materials.

In this case, the black cannon is protecting the black horse from being captured by the G7 chariot. Red can perform the elimination of defense by moving the E3 chariot to H3.

 This move block the protection of the horse whilst attacking the black cannon, black must lose a piece here.

In this scenario, black is trying to exchange its chariot with red. Red can respond by moving its H2 chariot to H4, exchanging the defender of the black chariot.

At first glance, this move looks like a blunder. But red can capture the black chariot by E5-F5 after black plays I5-H4. Red took a chariot and a horse, while black only took a chariot. Red gains material.

In this Xiangqi tutorial, we talked about the elimination of defense. This strategy gives us insights on how to attack the protected piece of the opponent by removing their defender, and help us to gain material advantage during the xiangqi game.

Below is an exercise on the elimination of defense. Try out the puzzle to see whether you can apply what you learn in this tutorial!

Practice makes perfect