Chinese Chess : An Introduction to China's Ancient Game of Strategy by H T Lau - 1996

248 pages with folding frontispiece, diagrams and appendix. Small octavo (7 1/4" x 5") bound in original publisher's pictorial wrappers. First published in 1985. The ultimate strategy guidebook for Chinese Chess. Chinese chess, or "elephant chess," has intrigued the powerful and the quizzical for centuries. Although its rules are similar to the well-known Western game, subtle and fascinating variations must be mastered in order to understand the strategies it requires. Author H. T. Lau breaks decades of silence for any publishing on this game and introduces Chinese chess to Westerners. With the aid of 170 diagrams, "Chinese Chess" walks players through the board, the movement and values of the pieces, basic rules for capturing and defeating an opponent, techniques and game winning tactics. This book includes eighty mid- and end-game exercises designed to sharpen playing skills and strategy, and concludes with two appendixes devoted to the elegantly constructed games found in "The Secret Inside the Orange" and "The Plum-Blossom Meter, " two classic seventeenth-century works on Chinese chess. Condition: Corners gently bumped else near fine.