Wukong Xiangqi - Chinese chess engine

[mvanthoor]

the very first real world chess programming job in my life!

Congratulations Next to the team at Komodo, you're possibly the only person in the world still making some money from writing a chess engine... because it's not a western chess engine

[maksimKorzh]

the very first real world chess programming job in my life!

Congratulations Next to the team at Komodo, you're possibly the only person in the world still making some money from writing a chess engine... because it's not a western chess engine

Thank you)

re: Next to the team at Komodo
- I guess not) I'm too noob for them, I hate C++ etc.

re: you're possibly the only person in the world still making some money from writing a chess engine... because it's not a western chess engine
- I told you - xiangqi software is an unexplored territory with lots of opportunities!

[mvanthoor]

- I told you - xiangqi software is an unexplored territory with lots of opportunities!

Yes, *If* playing on a computer screen is good enough.

I even gave up playing Go (got to 4-5 Kyu with self-teachig) because there isn't a DGT-like board to play on against a computer, and I don't want to be in a Go club (or chess club, even).

[phhnguyen]

...
- I told you - xiangqi software is an unexplored territory with lots of opportunities!

I guess you are joking or you didn’t study enough before starting

In Xiangqi software field, there are plenty strong engines, tools, GUIs, EGTBs, opening books, databases... Xiangqi engines may vary from using traditional programming ways to ones using NNUE, Lc0...

I didn’t see any tech/tools which chess has but not updated for Xiangqi within a short period! Some people/groups I have known are quite clever and work so hard thus I believe they could gain/build everything they/Xiangqi players want.

Frankly speaking, you may create successfully a high level Xiangqi engine but look like it has very little chance to be on top since Xiangqi engines/players may need some deep knowledge which could be learnt easier in a country such as China, Vietnam where people play Xiangqi much more than chess and/or any other chess variants but not other countries. The competition of Xiangqi top engines is very hard too.

Of course except the engines you have full chances to be number one in Xiangqi software world

BTW, congrats to your engine/tools and your chess job!!!

[hgm]

If you really want an area where the oppotunities ly wide open: for Janggi (Korean Chess) there hardly seems to exist anything. It seems that Fairy-Stockfish was the first engine playing Janggi; everything that existed before was integrated with its own GUI (often as Android app). And the evaluation of Fairy-Stockfish in Janggi doesn't seem to be very good; Janggi need a very special evaluation that is hardly compatible with the other variants Fairy-Stockfish plays. WinBoard supports Janggi only since a few months.

I have now started developing a Janggi engine too, and managed to crank out a first (very simplistic) version today. This project will focus more on evaluation then on search.

[maksimKorzh]

...
- I told you - xiangqi software is an unexplored territory with lots of opportunities!

I guess you are joking or you didn’t study enough before starting

In Xiangqi software field, there are plenty strong engines, tools, GUIs, EGTBs, opening books, databases... Xiangqi engines may vary from using traditional programming ways to ones using NNUE, Lc0...

I didn’t see any tech/tools which chess has but not updated for Xiangqi within a short period! Some people/groups I have known are quite clever and work so hard thus I believe they could gain/build everything they/Xiangqi players want.

Frankly speaking, you may create successfully a high level Xiangqi engine but look like it has very little chance to be on top since Xiangqi engines/players may need some deep knowledge which could be learnt easier in a country such as China, Vietnam where people play Xiangqi much more than chess and/or any other chess variants but not other countries. The competition of Xiangqi top engines is very hard too.

Of course except the engines you have full chances to be number one in Xiangqi software world

BTW, congrats to your engine/tools and your chess job!!!

Don't get me wrong)
Probably it would've been more accurate to say in xiangqi software development jobs market there is an unexplored territory with lots of opportunities.
I was looking for classical chess jobs but none of them satisfied my requests.

re: xiangqi technologies
- obviously! I don't even dare to compete with those. I'm just happy to land my niche. I think it's important to find a space where your approach might be really helpful. It's not the matter of absolute programming/knowledge strength but a matter of relative ability to be in right time and in right place.
Btw project is growing and might need more expertise in the field so potentially collaboration is possible. I can't say much at the moment, the dev team
are real pros in web development but they know almost nothing about chess programming, for instance they don't even seem to have a move generator for move validation purposes. The collaboration I'm talking about might be on the cards later on when the strength of my engine might not be enough.