The Four Greats: Xiangqi's Entrance Exam, Four Endgames Every Serious Player Must Know

Four composed endgames stand above all others in xiangqi: Seven Stars Gathering, Wild Horse Ploughing the Field, Earthworm Subdues the Dragon, and Travelling Alone a Thousand Li — the Four Greats. They are not famous for being the prettiest positions, or even the hardest in the ordinary sense. They are famous because for centuries they have worked as the entrance exam of mastery: understanding why all four are draws — when the board at first glance looks already decided — is what it means to understand how endgames actually work. This article walks through all four using the data of the Xiangqi Position Dictionary we are building at SynerWorlds, with our honest verification label for each — including the one an engine is currently suing for a recount.

Seven Stars Gathering: exactly seven pieces per side, Red to move, the old books say draw.

The strange common thread: four draws that look decided

Look at the material in each:

• Seven Stars Gathering — Red has two rooks, a cannon and three pawns; Black is down to one rook and one elephant, but holds four pawns. Red is far ahead in major pieces, yet the books say draw.
• Earthworm Subdues the Dragon — Red's two rooks and a pawn face three black pawns behind a full advisor-and-elephant shell. The name is the whole idea: a lowly earthworm subduing a dragon — the "overwhelming" rooks cannot break the fortress of pawns and guards.
• Travelling Alone a Thousand Li — one red rook and two pawns (one pawn already deep in Black's camp) against a black horse, four pawns and a sealed defensive shell. The strongest piece on the board cannot round up a pawn mass sheltered by a horse.
• Wild Horse Ploughing the Field — Red has two rooks, a horse, two pawns and both elephants; Black has a rook, two pawns and an intact guard shell. The books say draw — but this is the disputed one; see below.

Three of the four share the same optical illusion: the side ahead in major pieces cannot win, because the weaker side owns the thing beginners systematically underrate — a mass of pawns and a watertight defensive structure. That is the first lesson the Four Greats teach: endgames are not scored by counting big pieces, but by structure. Any player still thinking "up a rook means winning" fails this exam on the spot.

Why these four, of all positions, became the canon

First, print carried them. All four appear in the Hundred Games Xiangqi Manual and resurface across many other classical manuals under different names: Seven Stars Gathering is called Seven Stars Celebrating Together in the Xinwu Canbian, Seven Stars Arching over the Dipper in the Zhuxiangzhai manual, and Seven Stars Shining in Yuanshen Haikuo. A position reprinted in book after book under name after name has won the fiercest competition of the pre-internet age: the competition to be copied at all.

Second, they teach. Each is a complete endgame lesson in miniature: Seven Stars teaches fortresses and pawn mass; Earthworm teaches rook-proof pawn fortresses; Travelling Alone teaches how to value a rook against a horse shepherding pawns; Wild Horse teaches that a single edge pawn can flip a verdict. Generations of teachers needed no syllabus — just these four boards.

Third, they are honestly hard. The book main line of Seven Stars Gathering runs 85 moves, with long stretches of position repetition. There is no shortcut and no cheap sacrifice to memorise: to understand it, you have to calculate.

Our labels: three "as the books say", one "disputed"

Our dictionary does not reprint book verdicts unconditionally. Every entry carries one of three labels: engine-verified, unverified (result as recorded in the classical books), or disputed — when engine and book disagree. For the Four Greats, the current state is:

• Seven Stars Gathering, Earthworm Subdues the Dragon, Travelling Alone a Thousand Li: unverified — two or three independent transcriptions agree character for character, and the book main lines replay legally under an engine, but we do not yet claim engine confirmation of the draw. The label says so plainly: result as recorded in the books.
• Wild Horse Ploughing the Field: ⚖️ disputed — currently the only position among our 1,500-plus entries carrying that label. The earliest surviving form, printed in Jiaochuang Yipin (1879), records a draw. Later books, however, added edge pawns — Zhuxiangzhai adds one red edge pawn, the Hundred Games and Yuanshen Haikuo lines add a black one too — and modern transcriptions record both of those variants as Black wins; engine-era research also leans toward Black rather than a draw. One name, three boards, two verdicts: a textbook case of why "the book says so" is no longer a sufficient answer (we devote a separate article to books meeting engines).

The fifth Great that never was: Ten Thousand Horses

One confusion is so common that we nearly made it ourselves while planning the collection: many online lists add Ten Thousand Horses (Qianjun Wanma) to the group. Our intake cross-checking found the original four to be Seven Stars, Wild Horse, Earthworm and Travelling Alone; Ten Thousand Horses is a separate, later-famous composition, not one of the four. It is also, for now, absent from our dictionary, because our collection pass has not found two independent transcriptions that match under the quality gate we apply to every entry. We say this not to slight a fine composition — a dictionary that wants to be trusted has to start by naming correctly what it has and what it doesn't.

Their influence today

The Four Greats are still the reserve currency of xiangqi prestige: every endgame book makes room for them, every teacher teaches them, and players measure each other by asking how long they have sat with Seven Stars. In the engine era their role has shifted from answers to open questions: a three-hundred-year-old draw must now survive machine analysis — and as Wild Horse Ploughing the Field shows, it does not always survive. We keep all four on the Classics shelf of the dictionary, in their original forms, with their book verdicts and honest verification labels side by side — so readers can check for themselves instead of trusting either us or the books blindly.

From the SynerWorlds series on classic xiangqi positions: Jianghu traps and the secret manuals · Seven Stars Gathering, dissected · Ancient books meet engines.