Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.

This is from the FAQ of rec.games.chinese.chess, written by Stephen Leary.

YiTong [The Unified, All-in-One Piece]

To play YiTong, remove red's cannons, knights, and left rook. Black plays with all his pieces. All pieces move as in the regular game, except that red's rook can move either as a rook, or a cannon, or a knight on any move. I don't have many details as I saw this mentioned in a Chinese game book I browsed through in a store. Supposedly it was very popular in Manchuria.

This is the starting lineup: 


     r---n---m---g---k---g---m---n---r
     |   |   |   | \ | / |   |   |   |
     +---+---+---+---|---+---+---+---+
     |   |   |   | / | \ |   |   |   |
     +---c---+---+---+---+---+---c---+
     |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
     p---+---p---+---p---+---p---+---p
     |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
     +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
     |                               |
     +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
     |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
     P---+---P---+---P---+---P---+---P
     |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
     +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
     |   |   |   | \ | / |   |   |   |
     +---+---+---+---|---+---+---+---+
     |   |   |   | / | \ |   |   |   |
     +---+---M---G---K---G---M---+---R
Usually, red's first move would probably be N1+2, moving like a knight.

Stephen Leary

Last modified: March 28, 1996.