Chess News and Chess Trivia Blog (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2010
Hello Everyone
"It made no eccentric moves, and from partway through it felt like I was playing against a human!"
These words are by top women's shogi player Ichiyo Shimizu of Japan while referring to a computer that beat her. Incidentally, this is the first time that a computer has beaten a human at shogi - Japanese chess.
This is no big deal in regular international chess but it is in Shogi. According to an article in the New Scientist, chess has only about 10 to the power of 123 possible games existing that can be played out. Shogi is a bit more complex, though, offering about 10 to the power of 224 possible games. Wow!
The Mainichi Daily News reports that top women's shogi player Ichiyo Shimizu took part in a match staged at the University of Tokyo, playing against a computer called Akara 2010. Akara is apparently a Buddhist term meaning 10 to the power of 224, the newspaper reports, and the system beat Shimizu in six hours, over the course of 86 moves.
Shimizu told the Mainichi Daily News. "I hope humans and computers will become stronger in the future through friendly competition."
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wow. that's great news for software programmers. now go is the main target
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but the point is have not these computers been programmed by humans so actually it is a human beating a human through the machine using the computing skills of the machine as a conduit?
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