My fears became reality in the first two rounds of the tournament. First Spear messed up the opening against Shogi Moba, but this program was too weak to follow this up and despite some anxious moments, Spear won quite quickly in the end. Worse was what happened in the second round. Sekushii Aichan is the program of the students of the lab of professor Kotani and this program has participated in this tournament before. Again Spear got into an opening build-up it didn't recognize and it played a completely wrong opening strategy. Unlike the first round opponent, Aichan followed this with a strong attack and when a terrible bug in my program cost Spear a major piece and time, Aichan had a completely won position. I could hardly bare to look as for several moves as there was a simple and very quick win. Simple for humans, but not for computers as it turned out. Aichan let Spear escape and under time pressure didn't see a simple mating threat (the game had already turned around by then), which abruptly ended the game in Spear's favor. There went my carefully built-up confidence, but I had two wins to hide my embarrassment. It seemed that the shogi Gods thought that I had suffered enough after this, as the next two rounds brought good wins against the Amano family. I first beat the program of the son ( Amano Sofu) and then the program of the father ( Amano Shogi). I'm afraid I am not welcome for dinner at the home of the Amano's anymore. These wins put me at the top of the table with Yano Shogi and Hyper Shogi and meant that I needed only one win from the remaining three games to qualify for the next round. This win would not come in the fifth round, as I lost against Yano Shogi. Interestingly, Spear found a bug in Yano Shogi: it would not avoid repetition of moves (which is a draw in computer shogi). Unfortunately, Spear was programmed to avoid this if possible, as a draw would almost never be a desirable result in this qualification round. I had forgotten to reset the parameter to avoid draws before the game against Yano Shogi. When both programs didn't know how to continue and started moving around pieces aimlessly, Spear finally got over an evaluation threshold and opened the game at a very bad time. Yano Shogi was quick to take advantage and steamrolled over Spear's position after that.Still one more game to win and my next opponent also didn't look easy. S1.6 is the program of the students of the lab of professor Noshita and one of the veteran program in the CSA tournament (it even played in the finals a couple of years back). Furthermore, I had lost against this program last year because of a programming bug. Surprisingly, this game went very smoothly. I was quite lucky that a strange opening this time worked in Spear's favor. My program is not programmed to play quick attacks, but in this game it was more or less forced in one as its bad castle could not be improved (this is the main priority in the opening). The attack went perfectly and Spear got an overwhelming position. S1.6 struggled for a long time after that, but never got a chance to get back in the game. This win was a great relief, as this meant qualification for the second round despite all the problems that my program had, especially in the second round against Sekushii Aichan.Some time to relax? From left to right: Calvin Hutt, Martin Müller, Reijer Grimbergen, Pauli Misikangas and Jeff Rollason
Shotest shogi 3d para pc.zip
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