From: Jeff Rollason virgin net> Date: 15 jan 2007 Subject: Re: Some thoughts on computer Shogi Hi Tord, For your interest, I have subscribed you to our newsletter, which contains a number of articles on Computer Shogi. You can easily unsubscribe, if you want. I am the author of the Shogi program Shotest. Welcome to Computer Shogi! Cheers Jeff Jeff Rollason - CEO and founder AI Factory Ltd - www.aifactory.co.uk jeff.rollason AIFactory co uk jeff.rollason virgin net (+44) (0) 20 8866 7202 work (+44) (0) 79 5638 4321 mobile ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tord Romstad" gmail com> To: topica com> Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 6:00 PM Subject: Some thoughts on computer Shogi > > Hello all, > > I am new to this list, and apologise in advance if the topics below > have already been discussed to death before. Before posting, I spent > some time browsing the archives and couldn't find any such > discussions, but I may have missed something. > > I know very little about Shogi, but I have some experience with > computer chess. I am the author of Glaurung, one of the stronger open > source chess engines (it is stronger than Crafty, but weaker than > Fruit). In the near future, I will get an enthusiastic Shogi player > as my colleague (hi, Oluf!), I have therefore decided to stop doing > chess programming for a while, and spend some time working on computer > Shogi instead. > > There is no doubt that computer Shogi is currently quite far behind > computer chess, in the sense that the strongest chess programs are > almost certainly stronger than the best humans, while the top shogi > programs have no chance against professional players. To a big > extent, this is without a doubt because Shogi is a more difficult game > to program. But I don't think this is the only reason. This brings > me to the topic of this e-mail. > > One of the most striking things about computer Shogi, from the > perspective of a chess programmer, is the lack of "technical > infrastructure". In chess, there are two wide-spread chess engine > protocols (the XBoard and UCI protocols) for communication between a > chess engine and the GUI, and almost all of the about 400 publicly > available chess engines support one or both of these protocols. GUIs > with support for these protocols exist for all major operating > systems. > > The existence and ubiqutouness of these protocols gives several > benefits: It makes it much easier for the programmer to make a chess > program, because he can write a simple text-mode program instead of > writing a full-featured GUI app. Because the engines are running in > console mode, they are usually very easy to port to different OSes. > From the user perspective, it is nice to be able to run all chess > engines from a single GUI, instead of having to start a new GUI every > time he wants to switch to another program. > > The most important advantage of all, however, is that it is very easy > to run automated matches and tournaments between chess engines. There > is a huge crowd of enthusiasts who run tournaments and produce rating > lists with all the programs. Have a look at the CCRL and CEGT rating > lists, for instance (and note in particular the immense number of > games played with every single engine): > > http://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404/ > http://www.husvankempen.de/nunn/ > > The big community is one of the main attractions of computer chess, > and probably also the most important reason why computer chess has > progressed so much in recent years. Needless to say, I would like to > see something similar in computer Shogi. > > Another problem with computer Shogi seems to be that there is no > really strong open source program. Of course there is GNU Shogi, but > I've been told that it is rather old and no longer close to the top > programs (please correct me if I am wrong). I think strong open > source programs are an important resource for beginners. > > My ambition is to work on these two problems. I want to design an > engine communication protocol for shogi engines, and to write a strong > open source shogi program (the latter goal will take some time to > achieve, of course). But evidently, I cannot do this without support > from the community. An engine communication protocol is worthless if > it only works with my own engine and GUI. It is necessary that as > many shogi programmers as possible add support for the protocol to > their engines, and that someone is willing to do the work of writing > GUIs for Windows and Linux (I'll write a Mac OS X GUI myself). Before > I start programming I therefore would like to hear some opinions from > the rest of you. > > My suggestion is that we use the UCI ("Universal Chess Interface") > protocol as the basis for a shogi engine protocol (USI?): > > http://download.shredderchess.com/div/uci.zip > > As far as I can see, it should be possible to adapt the UCI protocol > to shogi with just a handful of small changes, but beging a computer > shogi beginner, I might be missing something obvious. I would > appreciate if the programmers among you could have a look at the UCI > specification and let me know what we should change in order to make > it work for shogi. > > Tord > > > --^---------------------------------------------------------------- This email was sent to: shogi-l shogi net EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a2i6Ys.aBsjvI.c2hvZ2kt Or send an email to: shogi-unsubscribe topica com For Topica's complete suite of email marketing solutions visit: http://www.topica.com/?p=TEXFOOTER --^----------------------------------------------------------------