Master profile
Hu Ronghua
胡荣华
By the Xiangqi Arena editorial team ·
- Games
- 1,364
- Era covered
- 1990–2007
- Archive record
- 548W · 554D · 262L
The player
Hu Ronghua, born in Shanghai in 1945, is the defining figure of modern xiangqi - a record fourteen-time national individual champion whose career spanned six decades. He won all ten national championships held between 1960 and 1979, the famous 'ten in a row', and remains both the youngest national champion in history, at fifteen in 1960, and the oldest, at fifty-five in 2000.
Known respectfully as 'Commander Hu', he was celebrated for the depth of his calculation, the flexibility of his play, and above all his openings: he did more than anyone to revive and modernise systems like the Flying Elephant, reshaping opening theory for the professional era. He was named among the first grandmasters in 1982 and authored several influential books.
The Shanghai teams he led won five national team titles. To play through his games is to watch the mind that set the standard every player in this archive was measured against.
Hu Ronghua - Liu Dahua, 1992
1992 National Individual Championship · 1992 · Hu Ronghua (red) vs Liu Dahua (black)
Hu Ronghua, the 'Ever-victorious marshal', against Liu Dahua, the 'Dahua of a hundred games’ famous for his blindfold displays. Hu takes red and opens quietly with the Flying Elephant - the patient system he did more than anyone to make respectable at the top level.
The soldiers clash first, on move ten, and Hu slowly builds until the position opens into a five-piece exchange around move thirty. He keeps two cannons into the ending, and it is a horse of all things that lands the finishing check. A model of how the quiet opening turns into a concrete attack.
Red won · 54 moves
The starting position.
Key moments
All the moves
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Hu Ronghua - Lü Qin, 2000
2000 National Team Championship · 2000 · Lü Qin (red) vs Hu Ronghua (black)
The rematch of a generation, nine years on, with the colours reversed: this time Hu Ronghua has Black against Lü Qin’s Central Cannon. At sixty, the old marshal was still a match for the man who had inherited his throne.
Lü Qin’s chariot draws first blood on move fifteen, but Hu defends the Screen-Horses structure with the accuracy that made his name, absorbs the attack, and turns it around. By the end Black holds an extra soldier and the initiative, and Lü Qin - who beat him here in 1991 - resigns. Honours even across the decade.
Black won · 61 moves
The starting position.
Key moments
All the moves
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