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Subject: Re: has any program reached master level on chinese chess ?

Author: Keith Evans

Date: 21:24:39 06/23/04

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On June 23, 2004 at 13:48:03, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On June 22, 2004 at 07:46:02, TEERAPONG TOVIRAT wrote:
>
>>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I've never seen any downloadable Chinese chess program that can match
>>a strong human player. IMHO, it's much more difficult to create a master
>>level program than in chess. In chess, when you lose the first pawn,it's
>>likely that you'll lose the game eventually. But, in Chinese chess, you may
>>find yourself in trouble after you have 1-2 pawns up in the opening.
>>And you have to handle many specific endgame positions differently.
>
>>Regards,
>>Teerapong
>
>There is no commercial motivation for writing chinese chess programs that's the
>sole reason why the more popular of the 2 games is dominant in computer games.
>
>I know the rules of both games and can assure you that it is for an outsider
>much harder to write a chessprogram beating the strongest chessprograms, than it
>is to write a chinese chess program beating the strongest chinese chess
>programs.
>
>Note that both require a big effort, but chinese chess is at a much lower level
>thanks to commercial driven developments in chess.

Don't you think that rules for xiangqi are more complicated that for chess? (See
Chapter 4 Section 4 of http://www.clubxiangqi.com/rules/asiarule.htm) I don't
think that there is any free Xiangqi program which understands these rules. If
you could distill these rules into some trivial C code, then you could help to
improve the computer referees at the online servers, and you could also help to
improve the state of non-commercial Xiangqi software.

It is my belief that Xiangqi masters could exploit programs which don't
completely understand these rules, but I don't have any firm evidence of this.
It's difficult to find much written by masters which has been translated into
English. It's not clear to me that the rules are well defined in
computer-computer competitions, in fact there are some that believe that the
rules should be simplified for computers. I assume that masters insist on some
official rules when playing computers, but I don't know this for a fact. (Either
AXF or CXA rules?)



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