Takodori's Entrance to Shogi World

Recent announcement and Q&A regarding Shotest Shogi in shogi-l

Jeff Rollason at AI Factory recentluy posted the following annoucement to the shogi-l mailing list.

Shotest Shogi Web

So far there have been several questions and answers. Here are the links to them.

Shotest is stand-alone

The current PC version will not have the tutor + tsume, but a later version coming will.

We do indeed plan to bring out a PC version with a English tutorial.

We are going to add a table of features go the web.

 

Shotest Shogi 3D is available to buy through The Trading Center

It seems that The Trading Center started to sell Shotest Shogi 3D. For more information, please visit the following;

Shotest Shogi 3D - Windows PC Download Shogi Shogi Software The Trading Centre

Shogi viewer for PSN format

Here is the link to Shogi Viewer. It is a program to replay shogi games stored in PSN format.

Shogi Viewer

New version of Spear has been released

The new version of Spear has been released. You can find the information on the linked page below;

The Spear Program

Link to Reijer Grimbergen's Report of 18th CSA Computer Shogi Championship

Reijer Grimbergen is the developer of the shogi program called SPEAR. His report of the captioned tournament is available to read at;

18th CSA Computer Shogi Championships

 

Link to the Kifus of the exhibition matches of 18th WCSC

Here is the link to the Kifus. The upper in the linked page is Tanase Shogi vs Kato Yukio. The lower is  Shimizugami Toru vs  Gekisashi(Java-capable browser will be necessary to replay the games).

Exhibition Matches in 18th WCSC, May 5 2008

Thinking time was 15 minites per player. After cosuming them, 30 second byoyomi took place.

 

Gekisashi and Tanase Shogi beat top amas

Gekisashi and Tanase Shogi beat top amas in the exhibition match after the 18th World Computer Shogi Championship tournament on May 5.

Gekisashi beat Toru Shimizugami in 100 moves. Tanase Shogi beat Yukio Kato in 75 moves. Here is the links to the related articles with board diagrams, photos and videos in the blog of the tournament in Japanese.

Exhibition match 1(Yukio Kato vs Tanase Shogi) | Tanase Shogi's Victory

Exhibition match 2(Gekisashi vs Toru Shimizugami) | Gekisashi's Victory

I think seeking for sponsors of the match between a professional player and computer program will be necessary soon. The Japan Shogi Association has banned their professional players to play against computers without guarantee since 2005. The match between Bonanza vs Ryuo Watanabe last year was sponsored by Daiwa Securities.

 

The top 8 standings of 18th WCSC tournament which was held from May 3 through 5 are as below;

1 - Gekisashi
2 - Tanase Shogi
3 - Bonanza
4 - YSS
5 - Bingo Shogi
6 - Ohtsuki Shogi
7 - Nara Shogi
8 - Kakiki Shogi

Tagua 1.0 Alpha2 was released on April 13

I got to know the news though this page titled freshmeat.net: Project details for Tagua. Tagua is a generic board game suite for KDE, including games like Chess, Shogi, Xiangqi and variants. its shogi varients seems to include Tori Shogi and Minishogi now and Sho Shogi is to be supported.

Here is the link to the toppage of Tagua project.

Welcome to Tagua Project

Screenshot of Shogi

Screenshot of Tori Shogi

Shion no ou for DS

Although it's in Japanese, Shion no ou for DS starts to be sold today in Japan. It's developped by Mainichi Communications. The official page of the software is here(in Japanese).

More news about Shotest Shogi

TeamXbox.com released an new article about Shotest Shogi on April 2. The link is below;

Shotest Shogi Hands-on Preview (Xbox 360)