Enjoy Watching Japanese Chess Games like Football: an Evaluation Method of Game Positions for Beginners

Abstract

Researches for computer Shogi (Japanese chess) have been widely conducted. Most of the previous researches have tried to create a strong program that can defeat the professional players. They use the estimated information of pieces arrangement to evaluate a current game position. The evaluation is less comprehensible for beginners because it seems not to correspond to the current arrangement. We propose a novel method for the beginners to evaluate a current game position of Japanese chess game. Our method uses only a current arrangement of pieces to evaluate the game position. We developed a prototype interface to visualize the evaluated game position, and conducted a small experiment. We asked participants to watch Japanese chess games with the interface, and speak what they thought while watching the games. The participants gave more questions and interpretations that were related to understanding of game positions. The results indicated that our system enhanced the beginners enjoyment of watching Japanese chess games with questions and understandings.