Game Complexity
Shogi has the distinctive feature of reusing captured pieces. Therefore shogi has a higher branching factor than other chess variants. The computer has more positions to examine because each piece in hand can be dropped on many squares. This gives shogi the highest number of legal positions and the highest number of possible games of all the popular chess variants. The higher numbers for shogi mean it is harder to reach the highest levels of play. The number of legal positions and the number of possible games are 2 measures of shogi’s Game complexity.
| Game | Board Size | Number of Pieces | Number of Different Pieces | Legal Positions | Possible Games | Average Game Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chess | 64 | 32 | 6 | 1047 | 10123 | 80 |
| Xiangqi | 90 | 32 | 7 | 1048 | 10150 | 95 |
| Shogi | 81 | 40 | 8 | 1071 | 10226 | 110 |
| Wei-qi | 361 | Up to 360 | 1 | 10171 | 10360 | 150 |
Read more about this topic: Computer Shogi
Famous quotes containing the words game and/or complexity:
“The indispensable ingredient of any game worth its salt is that the children themselves play it and, if not its sole authors, share in its creation. Watching TV’s ersatz battles is not the same thing at all. Children act out their emotions, they don’t talk them out and they don’t watch them out. Their imagination and their muscles need each other.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“The price we pay for the complexity of life is too high. When you think of all the effort you have to put in—telephonic, technological and relational—to alter even the slightest bit of behaviour in this strange world we call social life, you are left pining for the straightforwardness of primitive peoples and their physical work.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)