It’s half an hour to midnight. Most people had left, except a dozen or so were still around watching attentively this longest game of the night. It was the match between two up-and-coming players in round 2 of the Singapore National Xiangqi Championship, Open A Category.
Both players were under time pressure when the following position arrived…
A post-mortem of the ending of this game unveils many interesting variations. There are two instances where Red could have forced a win, as diagnosed in the two diagrams below.