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Janggi - opening setups

The variant of chess that is played in Korea is called Janggi, also called Changgi or Jangki. There are different setups used in the game. The most common one is the following.

Standard setup of Korean Chess

As you can see, the knights (horses) are next to the rooks.

The same setup, but now with pieces in a westernized look is shown next.

Standard setup of Korean Chess

A rule that is often used is that players may decide at the start of the game to switch the locations of knight and elephants. First, red makes his arrangement. Thus, red has the choice of the following four setups:

After this, red has the same choice of four arrangements, of which he choses one. This results in 16 possible starting setups, many of which are symmetric to each other.


Webpage made by Hans Bodlaender, using material of Jean-Louis Cazaux, Wikipedia (Wikicommons). Some drawings were done in Inkscape.
WWW page created: December 29, 2011.