The Opposite-Direction Cannons

The lopsided mirror

Black’s first move plants the queenside cannon on the centre file - the cannon that, in every classical defence, would have stayed home to guard that wing. The choice buys real things: black’s centre is contested immediately, the kingside cannon keeps its natural file for later work, and black’s development leans toward the wing red’s standard attack comes from. It costs real things too: black’s queenside is a shade bare, and red knows exactly where to look.

The resulting games have a signature rhythm. Red, development in hand, presses first - usually with the crossing chariot the model line shows. Black absorbs, keeps the structure honest, and waits for red’s attack to define itself; then the counterattack arrives on the file red’s pieces left, often with both black cannons suddenly pointing the same direction. Liepao wins tend to look like ambushes because they are.

Choose it when you like defending with a plan rather than a wall. The Screen Horses asks you to hold; this asks you to hold and then hit back at the right address.

The counterpuncher’s classic

The liepao stands beside the shunpao in the oldest layer of recorded theory - the classical manuals debate both, and for centuries they were the fighting player’s two answers to the centre cannon. Its reputation has always been the same: riskier than the horse defences, richer in counterattacking venom, the choice of players who trusted their middlegame.

The modern era treated it better than most old defences. Twentieth-century analysis found the counterattacking ideas sound at the highest level - particularly the delayed 'half-way' versions - and the archive’s decades feature it regularly as a professional weapon. Its statistical profile there is exactly what its character promises: fewer quiet draws, more decisive games, in both directions.

The model line, move by move

Both centre cannons appear inside two moves, and then the game splits from its shunpao cousin: black’s development stays classical - horses, chariots to the open files - while the asymmetry does its quiet work. By step eleven red commits to the crossing chariot, and step twelve shows black’s counterattack machinery starting up right on schedule.

As you step through, watch black’s kingside cannon in particular: it does nothing for ten moves, which is the point. Its file, its options and its eventual redeployment are the counterattack’s stored energy.

The ideas underneath

The lent cannon changes the board’s economics. Black’s centre pressure means red’s cannon no longer pins alone - red must actually guard the middle, which taxes the attack’s tempo budget. Every move red spends on the centre is a move the queenside raid does not get; black’s opening bid is that the tax outweighs the thinness.

Black’s kingside is the bank. Cannon on its home file, horse well-placed, chariot developed early: when red’s attack commits queenside-ward, black’s counter comes from the strong wing with pieces that never had to move twice. The model line’s last step is the pattern in miniature - and in full games the kingside cannon often re-crosses to join the centre file behind its twin, the liepao’s famous doubled-cannons moment.

Timing discipline holds it together. The counterattack works because it answers a committed attack; launched early it is just a weak wing fighting a strong one. Liepao players count red’s irreversible moves - the crossed chariot, the advanced soldier, the traded defender - and strike after the second one.

Plans for both sides

Red plays the position’s honest claim: the queenside is thinner, so fix it and hit it - the crossing chariot to the sixth rank, a soldier lever to open the file, the queenside horse joining if black’s counter is slow. Red’s games are won before black’s machinery spins up, or converted from the material black concedes to survive the first wave. What red cannot afford is drift: an uncommitted red position gives black’s counterattack its target anyway, at no cost.

Black’s plan is the counterattack’s checklist: structure sound, general insured, red committed - then the kingside cannon redeploys, the chariots take the files red’s attack vacated, and the queenside cannon that started everything becomes the rear piece of a battery. The classic finishing geometry is both cannons on one file with a chariot alongside; the checkmate guide’s stacked-cannons pattern is where this opening’s wins tend to end.

The move-ten diagram shows the calm before both storms: four chariots staring, two centres locked, one wing thin and one wing loaded. Whichever player understands that diagram better usually wins the next fifteen moves.

How the counterpunch misses

Defending the thin wing with the strong wing’s pieces. Dragging the kingside cannon or chariot across to babysit the queenside dissolves the counterattack before it exists - black ends up thin everywhere instead of thin somewhere on purpose. The queenside is defended by structure and timing, not by reinforcements.

Counterattacking against an uncommitted red. If red has kept the position flexible, the strike back has no vacated files to use; black’s pieces arrive at a defended wall and the queenside’s thinness starts mattering for free. Against patient red setups, black must be patient longer - the system’s hardest discipline.

From red’s chair: treating the liepao like a shunpao. The racing recipes misfire here - black’s structure is built to absorb exactly one committed assault, and red players who spend everything on the first wave meet the counterattack with an empty hand. Against opposite cannons, red’s attack needs a second act.

Making it yours

Learn the skeleton in the Opposite-Direction Cannons lesson on Xiangqi Arena, then train the timing where it can hurt you: play it against the site’s master-level replies and let the counterattack fail a few times early - each failure teaches the 'too soon' boundary better than any rule.

In the archive, replay liepao games watching only the kingside cannon: note the move it redeploys in wins versus losses. That single habit of observation is most of this opening’s education.