Golden hooked horse checkmate

The golden hooked horse checkmate is a more advanced checkmate pattern in Xiangqi. This checkmate is closely related to the palcorner horse checkmate we have learnt before.

Let’s take a look at the starting position of the example below:

As we can see, the I2 horse is in a good position right now. It not only controls the escape route for the black general(J4), but also can potentially go H4 to perform a palcorner horse attack. However, the I5 advisor is guarding the H4 spot. The main idea of the golden hooked horse checkmate is to sacrifice a chariot or a soldier, to lure away the central advisor of our opponent. Therefore, red can move the G4 chariot to J4.

This is a brilliant sacrifice! Black has to deal with the attack. Since the I2 horse is supporting the J4 chariot, black cannot capture the chariot with the general. This means that black can only capture it with the I5 advisor.

Now that the central advisor is gone, red can finally attack with the palcorner horse by moving the I2 horse to H4! The I8 chariot is guarding the I rank, hence the black general cannot escape to I5. Red wins!

In this Xiangqi tutorial, we talked about the golden hooked horse checkmate. The key concept of this checkmate is that we can deflect away the central advisor of our opponent by forcefully sacrificing one of our chariots or soldiers, such that we can attack with the palcorner horse.

Below is an exercise about the golden hooked horse checkmate. Try out the puzzle to see whether you can apply what you learn in this tutorial!

Practice makes perfect