I picked up Shogi during the pandemic as a new hobby to entertain myself and found myself infinitely fascinated with the game and its history. I began looking up as much shogi information as I could. I'd never have called myself good, but I was able to hold my own against the competition in my family and friends and against the bots in the Nintendo Switch version of Shogi.
After an extended period away from the game and picking it back up again, I've tried my hands at lishogi's bots. Level 1 was no problem for me. In fact, it was kind of insulting in the ways it actively didn't punish critical mistakes. I felt that upping the challenge was appropriate.
As soon as I challenge the level 2 bot, the game stops being an enjoyable back and forth and becomes actively infuriating. I have lightly studied (and re-studied) four openings and no matter which one I initiate or respond with, the bot *always* tears me apart. It will go for a perfectly pushed Wing Attack and no matter what my response is it will get in and take my Bishop. Ignoring it doesn't work, as it will simply respond to my moves with better ones....unless I open Primitive Climbing Silver, in which case it seems to want to let me play the game? That is until the board is setup and it refuses to be the first one to make a move, forcing me to suffer the egregious sin of trying to move the game forward and being punished for it EVERY. SINGLE. MOVE. As soon as I make one minor slip up, I will find a promoted Knight (or worse, Promoted Rook/Bishop) inside my territory and will be systematically picked apart until Checkmate occurs.
This happens EVERY. SINGLE. GAME. I have not even come CLOSE to winning against the Level 2 bot. It's demoralizing in a way I didn't anticipate and is actively making me consider no longer playing. This doesn't feel like a teaching tool, or even a challenge tool: it feels like it was purposely designed to get me to stop playing, and that kind of hurts, honestly.
With all the whining out of the road: What do I do? How do I stop the bot from tearing me to pieces? How do I improve to the point where what it does doesn't make me feel small, stupid and unfit to play? Or is this just the limits of what i can handle and I should really put the game down? I'm honestly without hope at this point, so anything at all would help.
I am struggling against the Level 2 Bot and it's killing my enjoyment of the game
You can try playing Shogi through Pychess, which uses Fairy Stockfish rather than YaneuaOu, which is more forgiving towards players.
www.pychess.org/
I thought my days of using Pychess as an alternative for AI play were over lmao.
@UmbreonMessiah
I looked through a couple of your games, and it looks like you're playing pretty fast; only a couple seconds per move. It would help you massively to think through your moves a lot more. Maybe even give yourself a MINIMUM time for making a move eg. don't make a move until you've looked at the position for 10 sec, 20 sec, whatever it may be. I also highly HIGHLY recommend the puzzles on this site, they will help you with seeing tactics and basic mate patterns.
Maybe it will help you, maybe not: what I used to do back in the day is take notes WHILE playing vs CPU games. I would write down my plan, and my idea for every single move. I would not make any move that I did not at least have SOME reasoning behind. I would also try and guess what my opponent's next move would be. Then after the game, I would use the computer analysis and compare what I was thinking.
Another thing you could do is play handicap games: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_(shogi)
Some people feel like it's condescending to play handicap, but that's not the case at all. Professional Shogi players practice through handicap games, and there's even opening theory for various handicaps. You could give the level 2 CPU a handicap OR you could play against level 1 CPU and give YOURSELF the handicap. Both methods are really great for understanding how the pieces work together. You'll be shocked at how difficult even a 6-piece handicap (opponent only has king, pawns, generals) can be to win against a strong opponent.
Last thing: It's not just you. I don't know how long you've used this site, but one of our BIGGEST issues recently was that we had a new player every single week come in and say that the level 1 CPU was WAY too strong, and they were all completely correct. The Yaneura-Ou engine is just disgustingly strong, even at lv 1. So Lishogi was recently updated (lishogi.org/blog/post/ZcQjlRAAACMAgvrF) so that the level 1 CPU runs on Fairy-Stockfish, a much weaker engine. But the level 2 CPU still uses Yaneura-Ou. So if it seems to you like level 2 is WAY stronger than level 1, you are actually correct.
Hope that helps
As already mentioned, it's not just you. I was one of the people really struggling against the old level 1 bot, which was supposedly more difficult than the level 2 is now. But eventually I won, and beat level 2, 3, 4... Then I stopped for six months and now the level 2 seems impossible again. Though, I play correspondence.
The reason you're wondering if you really always were so horrible at shogi is because it's labeled as level 2. It's really not. Just think it's level 4-5. It's not because you're bad, but because it's good. Imagine you're practising running against Usain Bolt. You might not realize you're improving, because you always lose.
So yeah, just imagine it's a world champion. Did you really expect to win so easily. Also, there's a lot more frustration ahead for when you actually start winning. Because not only it is good a winning, it's also really good at not losing and prolonging the game. I occasionally feel like I should easily win this, but 60 turns later...
Another boost of confidence might be gained from playing human players. Maybe not on this site, because there're only good players here, but somewhere else. Seeing your rating hover on 1000 just makes you feel better, even if it doesn't actually mean anything. Also, once you actually do beat the engine at your current pace, you'd also be beating humies left and right, is my guess, so that's encouraging as well.
Thank you for all the kind words and encouragement. I was not aware that the bot used for Level 2 was so good at the game. That helps my self-confidence a lot. I will see about doing more puzzles before moving on to human opponents.
Thank you for keeping my hope alive!
Yep
The difference between level 1 and 2 is too far
The second proplem is the level 2 bot dont follows the theory so it was a waste to watch the opening videos.
At least for 4th Minno
On the small board the other hand level 2 is preety beatable
Even level 3 is not that mutch stronger
I am in the same boat as you. In my opinion, knowing more defense strategies/castles helped immensely. I was close of beating level 2 but couldn't.
To add to what @LizardWizard said, I'd highly suggest taking your time to actually think about what moves you should make. If you create a game with the AI and make it correspondence (where the time per move is several days), there should be an option in the side panel indicated with a small microscope icon. You can use that to open an analysis board of the current position (without computer analysis) and just explore lines. What I like to do during a correspondence game is to also create a study so I can save lines I've thought of and come back to them after the game and analyze.
I feel your pain though, there aren't many bots or even human opponents here in the beginner-intermediate level. They're either complete beginners just learning the game, or already past the intermediate level. It's a tough plateau to get over :P.
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