Unlike other Xiangqi sites, the Xiangqi Academy on MentalGym applies real science to improving your
play. Other sites just hand you a pile of game records or long, fast-paced videos to watch —
MentalGym is built to expand your repertoire memory and train the specific abilities behind playing
the correct move, to actually raise your level.
Long-standing research shows that learning any skill is a process of building a knowledge base and
mastering a way of thinking about it. Learning Xiangqi is a textbook example. A Xiangqi master carries
tens of thousands of positions and patterns in their head, and those memories surface instantly the
moment they're needed — that's what lets a master spot which patterns or mating combinations are
hiding in a position far faster than anyone else.
The Xiangqi Academy on MentalGym gives you exactly that: a large library of practices, two proven
memory systems, an interactive board with immediate feedback, and progress review and weakness
detection — a complete, science-based toolkit to raise your playing strength.
"Where should I start? What should I learn next?"
The Xiangqi home page answers that before you have to ask — it isn't a blank search box, it's a shelf of eight rows, each one a stage of the game a learner actually moves through, plus a fresh Puzzle of the Day waiting at the top.
Making a move with your own hands on the board and picking an answer from a multiple-choice list are worlds apart. The difference matters more than it sounds: recognizing the right answer among four options and finding it yourself under real conditions are simply not the same skill — and it's the second one that actually wins games: muscle memory.
The other key ingredient in memory training is immediate feedback — every wrong move gets corrected on the spot. Both of these show up in the interactive board's two different modes:
Play out a repertoire yourself — an opening or a Hidden Dagger tactic — move by move. Every move is scored or corrected on the spot, until you've played the whole thing correctly.
Draws on a game database and an AI engine to train your play. It uses the same two principles — muscle memory and immediate feedback — to sharpen your skill, especially position judgment and endgame technique.
"I can't remember the line. What do I do?"
Every learner hits this wall — you drilled an opening last week and today it's just gone. This is exactly what the next two systems exist to fix. Every line and puzzle you play feeds into one of two review engines, and both answer the same question: when should you see this again?
The Leitner box — simple and visible. Five boxes, five fixed intervals. Get it right, it moves up a box. Get it wrong, it drops straight back to Box 1.
✗ miss it, and it's back to Box 1 — clear it a fifth time and it's retired as mastered.
FSRS — personalized and algorithmic. For learners who organize practices into a study Track, MentalGym runs the same forgetting-curve algorithm used by top spaced-repetition tools. After each card, you rate how it went, and the schedule adapts to you specifically.
Your Study History page tracks how much you practiced today, this week, per skill — and every individual practice keeps its own 90-day calendar, colored by how well that day went.
Deeper red, better day — in Xiangqi's own color language, red has always meant good fortune, not danger.
Alongside it, a score-trend line shows the same practice's accuracy climbing over weeks and months — proof, not just a feeling, that the review system is working.
Every category on the home page is also a shared, living list. Built a strong personal set on 中炮 (Central Cannon) openings? Make it public and add it to that list with one click — it sits alongside everyone else's contributions for other learners to discover. A toggle lets you switch between browsing everything and viewing only what you've added yourself, and you can always remove your own entries.
"I just watched a great video on this — how do I actually remember it?"
Community is great for finding lines other players already trust. MentalGym isn't only a library of pre-made drills — it's a place to build your own. Create your own Xiangqi Practice. From the moment you save it, it's wired into the two memory systems. Turn on the Leitner box for it, or drop it into an FSRS Track. You create your own content; MentalGym will help you actually remember it.
The 课程 Courses row points here. Strong players and coaches package their practice sets into paid courses — browse by category, rating, or price, and when you buy one, its practices are copied straight into your own account. From that moment, it's yours: it drills the same way, and slots into your Leitner box or FSRS track like anything you built yourself.
Reached a level worth teaching from? You can become a seller too — attach your own practices to a listing, set a price, and earn a share of every sale.
None of it demands a big leap — just the next position, right when you're about to forget it.
Get started — it's free