What Shogi Programs Still Cannot Do
- A New Test Set for Shogi -
Grimbergen, R. and Muraoka, T. (2004).
in: The 9th Game Programming Workshop in Japan (GPW2004),
pp. 40--47, Kanagawa, Japan.
Abstract
Sets of test positions are an important tool for finding problem areas in
game programs. Compared to test sets used in chess, we feel that current
test sets for shogi have some important shortcomings. In this paper we
propose a new test set, which is more general than the ones proposed
earlier and also points to certain problem areas in computer shogi that
need to be addressed. The test set consists of 100 positions from Shukan
Shogi that could not be solved by Todai Shogi 5, Gekisashi 2 and AI Shogi 2003.
By using the analysis tools in these programs we discovered the following problem areas:
an horizon effect due to consecutive checks, not calling the tsume shogi solver deep
in the search tree, inaccurate evaluation function, problems with mate using unpromoted
pieces, incorrect forward pruning, insufficient hardware speed and problems with the
time allocation.