From: "Bernhard C. März" arcor de> Date: 11 may 2007 Subject: RE: Freeware WCSC Programs! Hi Mark, Thanks for your list. (Still I believe I also know a few freeware programs, but not worth=20 listening this terrible weak programs.) > 1) GNU Shogi. GNU reached 7th place in the 5th CSA Championship. Oh, really, I forgot this one. Principially GNUShogi didn't play so badly, but it has a terrible style. GNUShogi was a "simple" work of transforming a chessprogram to a shogi=20 program without further work. So GNUShogi didn't know anything about castling and it didn't know how=20 to attack. So it moves always with one piece to one side an back (or=20 something similar), till the opponent starts his attack. Nevertheless in tactic situations (when the HUMAN have started to=20 attack) GNUShogi makes strong moves. Still you can see the origin of GNUShogi: it prefers material, so it=20 prefer to create tokins instead bring a won position to a mate. > 2) Phil Holland's Shogi 4.1. It's only a simple ASCII-view, hard to play. But nevertheless I was able to win easy. The program makes stupid moves and also simple moves his pieces to one=20 side and back in next move. > 3) Steve Evans' Shogi program Yes, his program "Shogi Variants 1.55a" I also knew. But I thought it's not worth to listen it (in my table). Of course this program have some value if you are interested in variants= =20 of shogi, but ONLY if you have a HUMAN OPPONENT!!! I was laughing very much, when I've read first time the possible=20 difficulty levels: "weak" and "less weak" ;-) I can win against it with 6P handicap (without having fun). > There will also be Tord Romstad=91s program. He wrote a strong chess > program. I expect his shogi program will be strong. But till know, there is not a shogiprogram from him. (And we all know, that many plans and ideas often never will be=20 finishing.) Furhtermore he will write his program for the Macingtosh computer and I=20 didn't know if a port to windows system will be possible. Also I for myself know about chess-programing and thought about=20 shogi-programing. Knowing about writing a strong chess program will help a little bit, but= =20 it's still an enormous step to make a medium strength shogi-program. Nevertheless I'm waiting very interestingly, how much success he will=20 get in shogi-programing. > Tell us which programs you beat and which programs beat you. To receive an usefully information, I believe the hardware of the=20 computer is very important. (My computer is absolutely not up-to-date.) But nevertheless this could be at least an interesting info about the=20 relationship between the programs. At the moment I play against Bonanza receiving R+L-Handicap (short=20 timelimit). Against Kinoa I play even, but at the moment not at the highest level. Against Value shogi I give 2L-Handicap (a bad thing: there is no=20 L-Handicap and instead the program removes both lances). I still hadn't time to play more. I will put this info at my homepage in future (unfortunately german=20 only, but for this table it should be understandable without german=20 language ability and also you can ask me in english ;-) ) And something new about Value shogi (Baryou Shogi): I've read, it uses the KCC-Engine. But the free version (V2) is rather old and so it's not a good idea to=20 set it at the KCC-level. Nevertheless it plays not bad, when take into consideration that it=20 moves very, very fast. Bernhard --^---------------------------------------------------------------- This email was sent to: = shogi-l shogi net EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a2i6Ys.= aB5TiY.= 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=3DTEXFOOTER --^----------------------------------------------------------------