Who has strong Shogi chess engine for winboard?

[Dann Corbit]

How strong is the strongest program compared to humans?

Weak club player.

You may be right as there is no hard data to contradict you. Care to make a prediction when the computer will reach professional level? I don’t mean top professional but professional class C2. How do you think we will know? As pros don’t play computers.
Mark

I'm not very good at prophecy. I will say that eventually computers will surpass the best Shogi masters and it will happen before they surpass the best Go masters {bigger branching factor} because of the exponential advance of hardware. But exactly when it will happen I have no idea.

[Vinvin]

Here are some articles about Shogi and computer :
http://www.teu.ac.jp/gamelab/SHOGI/CSA2009/19csa.html
http://shogi.typepad.jp/eweblog/statsdata/index.html
http://www.teu.ac.jp/gamelab/SHOGI/articlesmain.html
a server rating list : http://wdoor.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/shogi/logs ... dgate.html


And the stupid rule :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_s ... _Computers
"One month later the Japan Shogi Association sent a message to professional shogi players, telling them that they should not compete against a computer in public without permission.[7] The Japan Shogi Association said the rule is to preserve the dignity of its professionals, and to make the most of computer shogi as a potential business opportunity. Others said the shogi professional that wins a tournament against a computer shows shogi requires greater imagination than other chess variants because a shogi professional is still able to beat the computer. This rigid prohibition has denied professionals any fees from playing the computer. It also prevents the rating of computers relative to professional players. A rating for the computer based on public games played against professionals is not available because there are too few games to calculate a rating."

[mschribr]

And the stupid rule :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_s ... _Computers
"One month later the Japan Shogi Association sent a message to professional shogi players, telling them that they should not compete against a computer in public without permission."

This reminds of the group of chess players opposed to computers playing at chess tournaments. I forgot what they called themselves. But I don’t hear them anymore. I guess nobody wants to enter a computer in tournament anymore so they have no more complaints.

I think we can also thank the ex world champion Kasparov and others who accepted the challenge to play the computer. They did not see the computer as a threat but as something that will help chess players. There does not seem to be anybody in the shogi world that will stand up to the Japan Shogi Association. But this is difficult to know as I don’t read Japanese.
Mark