From: atkinson VAXROM CERN CH Date: 9 nov 1991 Subject: Crimes against humanity Ok, I have now had the chance to play Level 1 of "Shogi Master" several times on a friend's PC. The Subject field summarises my conclusion. I also talked to Agostino Guberti and he agrees with me. On level 1, the following things happen: Late in the opening, the program will start shifting its rook from 8b to 7b and back again because it can't think of anything better to do. If you seriously threaten a major piece, the program "horizons" splendidly and will do ANYTHING to push the capture of that piece beyond its lookahead. Thus, it will, in succession, drop EVERY piece in hand into your castle. You take all of these pieces. Then it will make any on-the-board moves it can think of which you "need" to respond to. When it runs out of moves like this it does something pointless, and you capture the major piece. The program handles edge attacks very very badly. (I never play Spearing the Sparrow against human beings, but found myself doing it very often against this program.) Large amounts of pawn/lance drops and captures will happen, and you end up ahead. Sometimes it will even start the exchanges when it shouldn't do so. The program doesn't recognise checkmate. If you have no legal moves you have to resign. The program itself resigns if you checkmate it. I did manage to lose a game against level 2. I will try to play level 2 some more to see if it is any better, but Guberti tells me it isn't really. Guberti also tells me that level 6 is painfully slow (1 hour per move?) though this depends on your computer, of course. I think it is best to ignore level 1 completely. I suppose a total beginner COULD lose games against it by making serious opening blunders. (The program is obviously clever enough to take pieces which you leave en prise for no reason at all!) But a beginner who learns to beat this program has not learnt very much about real life Shogi. Guberti tells me Chess programs were about the level of Shogi Master in say 1975. Since I was rather small in '75 I don't know if this is true. I am NOT a strong player, so this next comment may be wrong... The program seems to me to make some odd choices. Once I forked a major piece in the enemy camp AND a minor promoted piece in my camp. The computer moved the promoted piece and allowed me to capture its undefended bishop, promoting my rook, rather than capture a promoted lance. Since I already had 3 golds (real or minor promoted pieces) in the enemy camp, this choice struck me as rather odd. The program seems very keen to promote pieces. It will promote its bishop and then do nothing with it. Obviously, a promoted bishop in my camp is a useful thing to have from its point of view, but there are sometimes better things it could do, especially when the bishop doesn't attack any thing and can be trapped. Oh well. Has anyone else out there played this program as well? What are the intermediate levels like? Adam Atkinson Rome