Xiangqi client

[Mwin]

I already bought Stoneman and Giant, hugely strong!

Mats

[H.G.Muller]

Strong compared to what?

And I thought the problem was that they did not support analysis.

[Mwin]

Of course, one can use them for analysis, but they are unstable, and the features aren't very useful. Saola is a better design. I will investigate Giant's opening book feature, which could be very useful, but it probably doesn't function as it should. Stoneman won the 2005 computer WCH.

(Well, maybe I'm not being quite fair in my judgement. Giant could be quite useful, even better than Saola. It's just that it irritated me that the help files were erroneous and the program suddenly hung occasionally.)

/Mats

[H.G.Muller]

What is the "computer WCH"? I Googled for Stoneman+Xiangqi, and I do find sites were it is offered, but there it is advertized as having "The 10th Olympic Chinese Chess Software Match silver Medal award!". No idea what that is either. Can that be the ICGA Computer Olympiad? The 10th Olympiad was in 2005, and according to the ICGA website Siga got silver medal. Are Stoneman and Shiga the same thing?

[Mwin]

Oh, I don't know. Stoneman is a strange software because you cannot set time, only play diverse Arena matches against different opponents. But you can also analyze with display of moves. Giant has normal functions. They both play very fine. It seems like Saola makes strange moves sometimes, so maybe you are right about Saola.
/Mats

[Mwin]

Correction, one can certainly change time settings in Stoneman.
/Mats

[Mwin]

H.G., I've been trying to get an account on the QianHong forum, but I need a VIP code, which I can get if I email the administrator. However, in order to email him I must be a member. In effect, no more people can become members. Could you inform him of this?
/Mats

[YOUZINESS]

To muller and mwin

Xiangqi has position play same as english chess, all chess has positional play anyway, so its not correct to comment only english chess has. For example selling a car at early-mid game for horse + cannon + position advantage to win a game. The beauty of the game is players can lose with material advantage whereas in english chess its unlikely. There is flair in xiangqi because cannon and horse has unique attacking moves.

I agree we will never make a sw which is bug free because there are millions of repetition moves at end game and all sw can be beaten by repeated moves rule if there is gm level human supervising the competition. We can only improve as the day go by in the engines to reduce these. Currently as of 2011 April bugchess(modification of GG engine) should be the strongest program in the market, with exception to some forbidden sw (which we will not get) by programmers sent out for competitions. Not sure about GG and cyclone though, their updates(if any) have not been released for ages and i am not going to pay for chess programs. Although bugcchess havent beaten (could only draw) with the strongest 12U Gaga program using 8 cores, i think one day the author will release 12-16 cores engines. With fairly decent com u can stay in 2600-2700 in clubxiangqi, not sure how some people get more than 3000. There are def. stronger engine and books out there not released.

Its not possible for engines to play attractive chess because they calculated the best moves when it already surpassed human top level in 2009 or 2008. Thanks to UCI and Core technology. These moves will drop every game to more solid moves by the sw.

The engine will never solve chess because the game-tree is 10^150 and rules dont allow to move more than a few minutes. In order to win there is sniping going on between the top softwares. Changing opening books and engines continously which accounts approx. 30% each for your overall strength, the rest is cpu strength. It is known for weaker cpu u need heavy books to match a top cpu with same engine. But the loading will be like a crawl with a heavy package, the stronger cpu can counter with a heavier book and he will not lag as much. Definitely a tip top 4Ghz-5Ghz (fast nodes and depth) overclocked multi-core cpu is needed for the best chess. When both has the best computer, engine and books it is a gambling match. The reason is some books counter each other. An inferior engine and light book can tie a heavy book + superior engine but couldn't beat a stronger engine with another book. Simply because it counters one kind of play. But the 3rd package will lose to the 2nd package every game.

And yeah, good luck to your testing and accumulate more .BIN and .OBK in the process.


Edit: CCgiant and Stoneman is garbage, don't ever pay for that unworthy 2009 made rubbish. Its not even the top during 2009 at all. Btw Cyclone2009 is strongest that year, 2010 is GG. Very much inferior compared to Cyclone and Gaga. Giant/Stoneman is very dependent on its strong book. Cyclone/GG/Deepsky/Bug engines etc can turn off their books(PURE Engine execution) to play against Giant/Stoneman and the result will be embarrasing.

[Mwin]

The problem is that Cyclone, etc. are *engines* and I want to have a good *software*, especially the ability to manipulate the opening book and move about in it by clicking links. Such software existed for chess in the DOS era. But there is still no such software for Xiangqi. I want to be able to set up an opening database, and traverse the tree.

Mats

[YOUZINESS]

yeah i agree. I would like to have this kind of function too. But the person need to be proficient in C++ to make his own book and get the whole tree for each move, presenting it in anyway he want. Basically the author for present sw did not bother about this function. Its logical because sw surpassed human, after 5-6 opening book moves running engine yields better moves. He must be thinking engine strength comes first and ignored user friendly functions. He could have created this function definitely. Most people who buy want to win online games and would care less about learning chess, much less manipulating books.

Engines like GG, deepsky, bugchess were edited and mod(stolen u can say) from cyclone by other programmers to reduce errors. So probably the main person behind the first program is not doing it anymore. We will hardly see any new kind of software in near future. Maybe business not profitable? Many hackers can crack serial numbers. Its always the same thing for recent software, Intella GUI and an engine that looks like cyclone.