Master profile
Zhao Guorong
赵国荣
By the Xiangqi Arena editorial team ·
- Games
- 1,185
- Era covered
- 1990–2008
- Archive record
- 445W · 532D · 208L
The player
Zhao Guorong, born in Harbin in 1961, is a four-time national individual champion - in 1990, 1992, 1995 and 2008 - and the 1991 world champion, one of the great all-round players of the modern game. Named a grandmaster in 1990, he won his fourth national title in 2008, fully eighteen years after his first.
A student of the 'Northeast Tiger' Wang Jialiang, he inherited both his teacher’s fierce northern attacking instincts and the nickname that went with them - the 'New Northeast Tiger' - but married them to a southern precision that made his game unusually complete. He went on to lead the Heilongjiang team as player and coach, guiding it to the 2013 national league title.
The games collected here span his long prime, from the early-1990s titles to his matches with the era’s other champions.
Zhao Guorong - Lü Qin, 1995
1995 National Individual Championship · 1995 · Zhao Guorong (red) vs Lü Qin (black)
Zhao Guorong - four-time national champion, the great all-rounder of the northern school - takes red against his direct rival Lü Qin at the individual championship. Zhao opens with the Flying Elephant, declining to hand Lü Qin the sharp cannon game he loves.
The tension holds until a pair of chariots trade on move seventeen, and the exchanges keep coming - five in ten moves - until Zhao has stripped the board down to a position where his cannons and connected soldiers simply win. Precise, unhurried, and completely convincing against one of the era’s best.
Red won · 50 moves
The starting position.
Key moments
All the moves
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Zhao Guorong - Hu Ronghua, 1999
1999 National Individual Championship · 1999 · Zhao Guorong (red) vs Hu Ronghua (black)
Zhao Guorong with red against Hu Ronghua, two champions a generation apart meeting at the 1999 individual championship. Zhao plays a manoeuvring game, keeping the pieces on and probing until something gives.
Nothing is captured until a chariot trade on move twenty-nine - unusually late - and then the game sharpens quickly, the decisive exchanges landing in the fifties. Zhao emerges a clean chariot ahead into the ending and converts without fuss. Beating Hu was the mark of a great player; Zhao did it more than most.
Red won · 42 moves
The starting position.
Key moments
All the moves
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