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."

Nice headline

[mrvan]

First time "a computer" has beaten "a human", eh?

I'm sure they mean: first time a computer has beaten a 1st dan (or whatever shogi ranks are called) grandmaster in an offical tournament setting...

Also, I don't think the theoretical number of games is very relevant. Paper-scissor-rocks has an infinite amount of possible games, ie 1 draw followed by a win, 2 draws ... inf draws. Much more relevant would be branching factor, difficulty of estimating positional strength, horizon problems, long term dependencies etc.

Re:*yawn*. Call me when we lose at Go.

[Anonymous Coward]

soooo irritating whenever a go player brings this up.

Go only wins through brute force.
go is 19x19
shogi is 9x9
chess is 8x8

If a game like shogi or chess was extended to 19x19 it would be vastly harder for a computer.

Computers playing Go on 9x9 have beaten 9th dan.
And if it was 8x8 it would be even easier.

What makes Go hard isn't anything particularly neat about the game.
Is just a boring brute force exercise.

Same Old Song And Dance

[__aaasvk1266]

Ugh. What's with perpetuating this nonsense? A computer did not beat the top ranked Western chess player. Rather, a group of people _reprogrammed the computer after each match_ to beat the top ranked Western chess player.

TFA, it is annoyingly vague on an important point: What is the rank of the Japanese player that lost?

And as others have pointed out, let see a computer take down a top ranked (10th Dan) player at Go. The best a machine has done (I think) is winning against a 5th Dan.

Re:*yawn*. Call me when we lose at Go.

[sexconker]

Go is a simple game.
Mind numbingly simple, in fact.
It's just a LARGE game.

Chess has actual complex rules. It is a hard game.
Mind-numbingly hard, in fact.
It's just a relatively SMALL game.

Re:*yawn*. Call me when we lose at Go.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure they can.
The rules just need extending.

Is no different than fischer random chess dramatically increasing chess complexity for an AI.

That's the problem for me with go. It is a simplistic game that, yes, takes a lot of skill for a human. No doubt.
But the number of varying interactions is, well, limited by the tiny ruleset.

Re:*yawn*. Call me when we lose at Go.

[Moridineas]

Depends on what your definition of "good" is. Efficient? Easy? Fast? etc

If you can map out every possible outcome of a game given every possible move (calculate every ply), you can play optimally. You might need multiple super computers, lots of time, etc (for now!), but if you can do that, you can pretty much guarantee optimal play. Other "smarter" methods are of course faster, more resource efficient, etc, but not as optimal if you know every possible outcome.

Re:*yawn*. Call me when we lose at Go.

[PiSkyHi]

Go vs. Chess. RISC vs. CISC all over again.

Re:Same Old Song And Dance

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but human players do the same thing: they memorize specific openings rather than starting with a blank slate each time. Why wouldn't a computer program do that?

Re:*yawn*. Call me when we lose at Go.

[Laxori666]

We don't know how our minds work well enough to say that we don't use brute force. Obviously, consciously, we're not thinking about it that way, but who knows what kind of processing the brain does to produce those conscious thoughts? When you get a knack of intuition like "ah that move would win" - is that just a brute force algorithm in the subconscious signalling termination with a result?