ICGA Journal - Volume 19, issue 2 - Journals

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Chess or Beyond?

Authors: Herschberg, Bob | van den Herik, Jaap

Article Type: Editorial

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-1996-19201

Citation: ICGA Journal, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 73-74, 1996

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An Explanation Tool for Chess Endgames Based on Rules

Authors: Herbeck, H. | Barth, W.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Moves played by a chess program are often hard to comprehend by a human opponent and the “idea” the program “had in mind” when it chose that specific move is difficult to see chess programs usually do not provide any explanation of their moves. The rule method for endgames (Barth and Barth, 1991, 1992) uses a combination of expert knowledge with a modified version of α -β -search. The expert knowledge is expressed by rules such as can be easily understood by a human chess-player, therefore they can be used to give the chess-player a blow-by-blow explanation of the program’s …decisions. In this paper, several methods for generating such explanations for endgame programs are described. Show more

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-1996-19202

Citation: ICGA Journal, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 75-82, 1996

Price: EUR 27.50

Beware the Bishop Pair

Authors: Sturman, Mark

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The relative strengths of Bishop and Knight are extensively investigated for various combinations of pieces and Pawns. The study is performed with the help of a large database (over 350,000 games). Other imbalanced endgames such as Queen vs two Rooks, two Rooks vs three minor pieces, and a Rook and a Pawn vs two minor pieces are discussed analogously. The results are compared with Capablanca’s (1921) statements and Timoshchenko’s (1993) findings. The conclusions are given 10 the form of 14 heuristics.

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-1996-19203

Citation: ICGA Journal, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 83-93, 1996

Price: EUR 27.50

A Parallel Algorithm for Solving Hard Tsume-Shogi Problems

Authors: Nakayama, Yasuichi | Akazawa, Tadafumi | Noshita, Kohei

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: For the last four years, the power of Tsume-shogi solvers (i.e., programs for solving Japanese-chess problems) has advanced remarkably. Hard problems with 19 to 25 steps are now being attacked by several different types of search algorithms in the hope of solving all but a small set of these problems within a short time. In this paper, we present a parallel algorithm on network-connected distributed UNIX workstations, and show new computing results by solving 100 hard problems. The results confirm that our parallel program can solve most of the problems much more quickly than the best sequential program on a …UNIX workstation. Show more

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-1996-19204

Citation: ICGA Journal, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 94-99, 1996

Price: EUR 27.50

Why did Kasparov Blink?

Authors: Berliner, Hans J.

Article Type: Research Article

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-1996-19205

Citation: ICGA Journal, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 99-100, 1996

Price: EUR 27.50

Searching Game Trees under a Partial Order

Authors: Dasgupta, P. | Chakrabarti, P.P. | DeSarkar, S.C.

Article Type: Other

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-1996-19206

Citation: ICGA Journal, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 101-101, 1996

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Information for Contributors

Article Type: Other

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-1996-19207

Citation: ICGA Journal, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 102-102, 1996

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Natural Developments in Game Research

Authors: Matsubara, H. | Iida, H. | Grimbergen, R.

Article Type: News

Abstract: In game-programming research there are four interesting and related domains Chess, Xiang Qi (Chinese chess), Shogi (Japanese chess) and Go. In this article we compare Chess with Shogi by rules and by computational aspects. We will see that Chess and Shogi are mostly very similar, but that there are some important differences which complicate Shogi programming. The most important difference is the game-tree complexity, which is considerably higher than the game-tree complexity of Chess. We will then argue that the similarities and differences make Shogi a good choice for advanced research in game programming. In the near future Chess …will no longer be competitively interesting. Since Xiang Qi has a game-tree complexity similar to Chess, the same AI techniques will also be successful in this domain, and, as a consequence, this game will also no longer be interesting. Go is too risky as a next research target because little is known about the cognitive aspects of the game, which in our view hold the key to developing new techniques. A short history of computer Shogi with the results of the latest CSA computer Shogi tournament is given. Conclusions are provided in Section 5. In the appendix, a short introduction to the rules of the game is included. Show more

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-1996-19208

Citation: ICGA Journal, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 103-112, 1996

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