Scholar or idiot?

MarkShot · September 23, 2012, 10:06:39 AM

Do you have a favorite chess engine, Gus? And why?

Gusington · September 23, 2012, 10:22:01 AM

Why yes. The Wife. She is excellent at the game and usually takes 2 or 3 games from me but I always learn from her. I have never played AI chess, if you can believe it. I have always been intrigued but since many humans can beat me, I have never felt ready.

bob48 · September 23, 2012, 12:16:49 PM

I do like chess and have played it since I was school. Does anyone play Shogi, which is Japanese chess?

MarkShot · September 23, 2012, 12:40:26 PM

Is Shogi the same as the Chinese game of Go with the black and white stones?

Gusington · September 23, 2012, 02:24:53 PM

Also sounds a little bit like the old MB game Othello.

bob48 · September 23, 2012, 03:19:54 PM

Quote from: MarkShot on September 23, 2012, 12:40:26 PM
Is Shogi the same as the Chinese game of Go with the black and white stones?

No they are quite different. Go is the game with the B+W stones and is essentially an capture game. Shogi is much more like chess insofar it is played on a squared board (9x9) and used different movable pieces. However, there are some very big differencies. For one thing, all the 'men' are the same colour and are shaped so that the 'pointed' end faces your oponent. Given certain circumstances, in lieu of a move, you can 'drop' a captured piece on the board orientated against your oponent. In addition, many of the pieces have a 'promotion' side which give them extra abilities (the pieces are flat and have a Japanese symbol on each side). Three 'squares' out from each side of the board is a line called the promotion line, and when you cross your oponents line you can 'promote' the piece by flipping it over, again within certain restrictions.

There is no queen, so you do not have a single powerful piece. What tends to happen is that you spend a lot of effort on building up an assault that results in a exchanges - the object being to finish up with more of his men than you lose. Its very attritional, and quite complex. You can find a lot about it on the web.

I do have a set, just a cheapo one that I managed to find years ago - the main problem is finding some bugger to play it with!
Sho-Gi means 'Wooden Comander, or so I'm led to believe.

bob48 · September 23, 2012, 03:24:00 PM

Sorry for any spilling mistooks - seems like the spil chucker has gone tats ip. :)

MarkShot · September 23, 2012, 04:54:23 PM

Interesting. I never heard of Shogi before. I know Go is supposed to be far more complex than Chess and computer implementations are at best mediocre. Are there Shogi engines?

I was actually going to learn to play Cantonese (or HK) mahjong, since it is so ubiquitous. But since we decided to go to Taiwan instead of Macau ... I am no longer planning on it.

Bob, so, how did you get introduced to the game?

Gus, you play any other board or computer games with your wife? My wife last played CIVNET with me 20 years ago. She never forgave me for doing a tank rush, and that was the last game we ever played. :(

MarkShot · September 23, 2012, 04:58:31 PM

Actually, I should take that back. When I was trading stocks (not exactly a game), but my wife had a lot to discuss with me with regards to candle stick charts, setting the best price for the next day's open, stop loss orders, earnings season, whisper numbers, etc... (I still need to some time put together my thread on the game of stock trading in the real world. I learned so much, but not enough to win!)

MarkShot · September 23, 2012, 05:03:34 PM

One last comment on the market ...

You could read books and understand moving averages, Bollinger Bands, Stochastics, Oscillators, ... and feel like a "scholar", but by the closing bell, I often felt like an "idiot". :)

bob48 · September 23, 2012, 05:22:52 PM

I found out about Shogi in a UK Games mag, many years ago, in which there was an article about it. I had just been introduced to Go and thus got quite interested in oriental games in general. I managed to track down a copy of the game, (which I still have), and learned to play it.

Another interesting game is XiangQi, which is Chinese chess, and is totally different from either Shogi or 'western' chess, although I have not been able to get a copy of that.

Its now pretty easy to buy all these games now, although a few years ago they were little known in the West, but do now enjoy a considerable following (there has been a Go Association for a long time).

As a matter of interest, there are several different versions of Shogi using a variety of board size and extra playing pieces, although these are mainly played by Tibetan Monks (I kid you not). The largest one was recently discovered in a monastry and featured a massive board with hundreds of playing pieces - something like 128 per side!

Anyway - here's a link for you;
http://www.crockford.com/chess/shogi.html

MarkShot · September 23, 2012, 06:40:11 PM

Between globalization and the Internet and China's re-emergence on the World stage, there is is renewed interest in the East. Years ago no one was learning Chinese in the USA. I took one semester before going overseas, since a friend of mine was teaching it and in jeopardy of being cut due to lack of enrollment. (mainly it was Chinese kids from NYC's Chinatown looking to coast through with an easy A ... just me and one other guy, and the prof, were the only non-Chinese) Now, my local suburban/rural high school teaches Mandarin.

However, there was a period in the late 1980s when the American business community was enamored with all things Japanese. But that died when their economy tanked.

A few months ago I was working really hard on reading and writing Chinese, but I just got too busy. Too bad ... I wish Taiwan would just learn to speak Cantonese instead of Mandarin. My wife always holds a grudge as in the national language referendum Mandarin won by one vote ... cast by Dr. Sun Yat Sen (father of the Republic) who was, himself, Cantonese, but voted for Mandarin to promote unity. Aaargh!!!

Staggerwing · September 23, 2012, 06:46:24 PM

Is your Wife Taiwanese?

tgb · September 23, 2012, 06:51:41 PM

Judging by my performance in AJE, most definitely Idiot.

MarkShot · September 23, 2012, 06:52:21 PM

No, she is Cantonese from Macau which had been a Portuguese colony (oldest in Asia). Macau was returned to the PRC in 1999 two years after Hong Kong.

We met in Taipei in the early 80's while I was working for the military. She was an overseas student on a scholarship at National Taiwan University.

The KMT (ruling party at the time) offered people in her situation citizenship. Quite a few of her college friends from Macau and Hong Kong remained. Others have gone back to Taiwan. Now, we are also returning, but I'll be on the equivalent of a Green Card.