Master profile
Hong Zhi
洪智
- Games
- 649
- Years of the dated games
- 1995–2008
- Archive record
- 254W · 274D · 121L
National titles: Men's national individual champion: 2005
The player
洪智 (Hong Zhi) was born in Wuhan on 16 July 1980 and became a master in 1996, when he finished fifteenth at the national individual championship. In 2005 he won that championship and received the grandmaster title the same year, and in 2010 he won the men's individual gold at the Guangzhou Asian Games. Over his career he played for Jilin, Chongqing, Shanghai and Hubei in turn, which earned him the name 流浪棋王, the wandering chess king, alongside 洪天王.
No one in the archive opened with the Palace-Corner Cannon more often than Hong Zhi, who played it 31 times. His results with it were the best too: of the players with at least 30 games with it, none scored better than his 72.6%. Xu Yinchuan was the player he met most often, 35 games in all.
The two games below come from his years at the top, and you can see him win with each colour.
In the archive
| As Red / as Black | 335 games as Red, 314 as Black |
|---|---|
| Score | 65.4% as Red, 54.8% as Black |
| Most played systems | Central Cannon as Red (139 games) · Screen Horses as Black (99 games) |
| Best-scoring system | Palace-Corner Cannon as Red: 72.6% over 31 games |
| Most frequent opponent | Xu Yinchuan (35 games) |
| Longest game | 301 plies against Liu Dahua |
Hong Zhi - Tao Hanming, 2007
2007 Yitai Cup National Individual Championship · 2007 · Tao Hanming (red) vs Hong Zhi (black)
Hong Zhi, who won the national title in 2005, has Black against Tao Hanming, another former national champion, at the 2007 individual championship. The game lasts sixty plies and ends in a short, sharp win for Hong.
The soldiers clash on move eight, and around move eighteen the game opens fast, with six captures in ten plies. Hong's pieces push into the red position and pick off soldiers, and Tao resigns before the ending with most of his soldiers gone. Games like this made Hong Zhi one of the hardest players of his generation to stop.
Black won · 30 moves
The starting position.
Key moments
All the moves
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Hong Zhi - Zhao Guorong, 2006
2006 Qixin Golf Cup National League · 2006 · Hong Zhi (red) vs Zhao Guorong (black)
Hong Zhi has Red against Zhao Guorong, a champion of long standing, in a league game of 121 plies. Both players hit hard, and the result is a long fight that Hong settles only in the ending.
Zhao takes the first soldier on move four, and the sharpest exchanges come around move ten. From there it is a long technical fight that Hong wins in the ending. Wearing down Zhao Guorong took real endurance, and Hong had it.
Red won · 61 moves
The starting position.
Key moments
All the moves
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Study the games yourself
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