Tibetan Tiger Chess

Opening positions for two different variations of Tibetan Tiger Chess.

Alternate Names

西藏虎棋, Tigers and Sheep, Tiger and Sheep Battle

No. of Players

Two

Equipment

There are three different boards that Tibetan Tiger Chess can be played upon. From largest to smallest they are the Tibetan Tiger Chess Board 1, the Mogol Putt'han Board, and the Tibetan Tiger Chess Board 2. The largest board requires four black tiger counters and sixty-four or seventy-four white sheep counters. The medium sized variation utilizing the Mogol Putt'han board requires two black tiger counters and eighteen white sheep counters. The smallest version is played on the Tibetan Tiger Chess Board 2 and requires one black tiger counter and fifteen or sixteen white sheep counters.

History

The Tibetans seem to have taken the concept of the Hunt Game to its most grandiose proportions, both in terms of the size of the board and the number of counters. These games are played in Tibet and Nepal. They bear much similarity to Cows & Leopards and the two are probably closely related to one another. The primary difference seems to be that TIbetan Tiger Chess usually prescribes a certain opening position for the counters on the board, whereas Cows & Leopards commences with the board vacant of counters.

Objective

The sheep player wins by hemming in all of the tigers so that they are unable to make a legal move. The tiger player wins by reducing the amount of sheep to an amount too small to allow them to obtain their objective.

Play

  • Each round sheep side may have two kinds of action to Lazi as a priority, when all has been not at hand chess moves before child:

    • Lazi: the one already placed in an empty chess chess point.

    • Move son: their own sub-step move to an adjacent empty chess point, not two consecutive pieces are moved with the child.

  • Each round tiger can only choose one of two of the following actions:

    • Move son: their own child move to an adjacent empty chess point.

    • Captures: Skip chess sheep near a point falls in the same direction abuts a null point, and then skipped out of enemy chess board no longer use, you can even jump eat.

Strategy

Variations