Hu Ronghua

Hu Ronghua (, born 1945), a native of Shanghai, is one of the strongest players of xiangqi, or Chinese chess. Hu Ronghua is often referred to as the Bobby Fischer of Chinese chess.

Xiangqi career
Hu Ronghua first won the Chinese National Xiangqi Championship in 1960 at age 15, the youngest record ever. Hu went on to win the next nine consecutive national championships, which gave him a 10-championship streak from 1960 to 1979 (due to the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese National Xiangqi Competition was not held annually during that period).

In the 1980s, Hu Ronghua won the national xiangqi championship in 1983 and 1985. By the mid 1990s, people thought that he was past his prime, and that younger generations of top players would eventually replace him. However, Ronghua won yet again in 1997 and 2000.

Hu Ronghua holds the record for the greatest number of national xiangqi titles (14), the youngest champion (age 15 in 1960) and the oldest champion (age 55 in 2000) in the history of the game.

Contributing developments to xiangqi
Hu Ronghua has been advocating for a revival of xiangqi. In 2011 he launched a reality show called Let's Play Chess to find a new personal apprentice.

Hu Ronghua has made great additons to xiangqi theory, including pioneer work on the elephant opening (飞相局) and the Back-Palace-Knight (反宫马) opening. He also devised a new xiangqi rule: the chance of playing black is obtained by auctions of two players. The player who offers less time wins the auction. If the xiangqi game finally ends in a draw, black wins. The Hu Rule is aimed at eliminating "negative draw games" and making xiangqi more spectator-friendly. However, the Hu Rule was boycotted by professional players, one year after its birth.

In 2022 Hu Ronghua made grandmaster live commentary at a major exposition of advanced Artificial Intelligence algorithms, applied directly to xiangqi.

Other interests
In his early years, Hu Ronghua was trained for a short period in weiqi (Go). He also plays a game called daguailuzi(大怪路子)，a popular local game of Shanghai.

Titles

 * 1982: Grandmaster
 * 1988: International Grandmaster of Chinese Chess.

Publications

 * XIANGQI Grandmaster Hu RongHua and his Elephant Openings (English publication 2017)