Game of the Three Kingdoms

Game of the Three Kingdoms, known in Chinese as Sanguo Qi and also called Three Kingdoms Chess or Three-Handed Xiangqi, is a three-player variant of xiangqi, the game often called Chinese chess. Each of the three players commands a full xiangqi army standing for one of the rival states of the Three Kingdoms period, Wei, Shu and Wu, which contested control of China after the fall of the Han dynasty. The armies are drawn in blue, red and green, and each player may also use two optional extra pieces called bannermen that move like an extended horse. The board joins three xiangqi half-boards into a hexagonal shape, each retaining the traditional river. Checkmate follows xiangqi convention except that the mated general is removed and the player who delivered the mate takes over the defeated army, so the last surviving kingdom wins. The date of origin is disputed between the Southern Song and Qing dynasties, because the two original Chinese texts that described it are lost. The game reached Western readers through an 1876 report by O. von Moellendorff.