From: Mark Schreiber <mschribr <at> ACCESSHUB <dot> NET>
Date: 12 apr 1999
Subject: Re: Report 9th CSA Computer Shogi Championships

 Marc Schreiber wrote:

<Has anyone proposed that a human play the winner of
<he computer Shogi tournament? This will give a more current
<and direct evaluation of how well the best computers play Shogi
<against humans. We would not need to speculate based on
<computer versus computer games or computer versus a human
<played over a year ago. Are computers allowed to play shogi
<in human tournaments? Of course a computer would not win
<a human tournament, but it would evaluate how strong or weak
<the computer plays.
<Mark Schreiber

As referee, I have never made objections to programs competing
in 'human' events (not the European championship however).

As early as 1993, a Belgian Computershogi program 'Jomahashi'
(made by Matt Casters, Joris Ballet en myself) entered the
Richard Verkouille Memorial tournament anb scored 1/6 on a
RS6000 system.

Even earlier, a Shogiprogram written by David Levy (or one of his
programmers) entered the last London-Hodges tournament on a single-
purpose machine and didn't perform too well either

Later on, a strong Japanese program (Sekita) played in the 1995 Verkouille
memorial and scored no less than 5/6 (beating o.a. Segers 3-dan
and Pottier (2-dan at the time) and losing only to Van Oosten, 4-dan)

In the mean time, I wrote a 'western' chess program myself (Bionic)
and Albrecht Heeffer managed to persuade me to rewrite the code for
Shogi (which I'm doing right now). I hope the first version of "RONIN"
will be ready by the end of may (29-30, Verkouille memorial)

kind regards,

Hans Secelle
FESA Chairman