Dou Shou Qi set

Dou Shou Qi is a small Chinese board game which is known in the West under a range of different names: 'animal chess', 'jungle', fighting animal game' and various permutations. 

I picked up a small boxed Dou Shou Qi set years and years ago in a Chinese shop in Soho, London. I was looking for xiangqi sets and this little boxed game looked like a fun curiosity.

Each player has eight pieces, representing eight different animals. These animals all move one square forwards, backwards or sideways and capture by displacement, so they are not distinguished by different moves. Rather, the animals have a strict hierarchy where a 'higher' animal can capture a 'lower' animal, but not the other way around. The only exception to this is that the lowest animal (the mouse) can capture the highest animal (the elephant), "by crawling into its ear and eating its brain". The board also has two lakes in the centre (which limit the movement of some, but not all, animals) and two dens at either end, surrounded by traps (which limit the power of opposing pieces). The winner is the player who gets one of its animals into the opponent's den. For anyone interested, full details of the rules are given here. 

Even though the game is included in the Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants and listed on chessvariants.com, I never considered it a chess variant myself. Until quite recently, that is, and that's why I'm including it in my chess collection and this blog.

First of all, although the origin of this game is obscure, there is no doubt in my mind that it is derived from, or inspired by (where do you draw the line?) xiangqi. The lakes in the centre and the two dens at either end strongly resemble the river and palaces in xiangqi, and I find it difficult to imagine that both these traits appeared completely independently in a country where xiangqi is so popular and well-known. But that's where the similarity stops: dou shou qi doesn't have any rooks, horses, elephants (well, it does, but that's a very different beast, pun intended), guards, cannons or pawns. And the moves and hierarchical way of capturing is completely different from xiangqi. And it doesn't have a king, whose capture is the goal of the game. That absence of a single piece that needs capturing for a win 'disqualified' it as a chess variant for me, even though it has some xiangqi DNA in it. 

Recently, I realised that dou shou qi actually does have a king, but it's hidden. Hidden in plain view ... Let me explain. Compared to FIDE chess, the general (=king) in xiangqi is limited in its movements: it can only move within the 9-point palace and can't leave that palace. Now restrict that movement even further, to its maximum. You then end up with a king piece that can't move at all, and is restricted to sitting in a single square. As the king is now completely immobile, there is not much point in having that piece as a physical piece, because it can't do anything. So you might as well not bother with that immobile king piece .... That is essentially the situation in dou shou qi, as I see it, where the object of the game is to occupy the opponent's den (and while doing that, capture the now invisible king). 

I'm well aware these are my own ideas, and people may well disagree with my reasoning. But, for me, that lifts dou shou qi into the realms of true chess variants, and therefore a place in my collection and this blog.