Computer Defeats Human At Japanese Chess

Calopteryx writes "A computer has beaten a human at shogi, otherwise known as Japanese chess, for the first time. As New Scientist reports, computers have beaten humans at western chess before, but that game is relatively simple, with only about 10^123 possible games existing that can be played out. Shogi is a *bit* more complex, offering about 10^224 possible games."

Comments

Re:Nice headline

[Speare]

"First dan" or shodan is roughly the level of "starting to get serious" or freshman-professional. This goes for karate, shogi, igo (go), language, and pretty much the grading scheme in all other Japanese arts and skills including ikebana and shodo calligraphy. Westerners often think the black belt in karate is the pinnacle, when indeed your first black belt is just the beginning of a lifelong journey. Most schools go to 9-dan (kyuudan) and have an honorary 10-dan or 11-dan ranking for the highest practitioner in the world. Everything below 1-dan is just weeding out the hobbyists and dilettantes.

First professional player

[Chris Pimlott]

The actual accomplishment, not specifically stated until the FOURTH paragraph of the New Scientist article with the same terrible headline, is that it's the first time a computer has beaten a professional human player; in this case, Ichiyo Shimizu, the female shogi champion.

Re:Same Old Song And Dance

[phantomfive]

Are you referring to Deep Blue? While it is true that Deep Blue was relatively weak, and Kasparov lost because of psychological errors, he later played against Fritz, which is a much more powerful chess engine, in a more fair match. Also we now have Rybka, which was created by a team of programming grandmasters, and has a rating several hundred points above the highest human (although no one has ever shelled out the cash necessary to get it to play against the world champion, it would likely win).