Research Report on the History of Computer Chinese Chess (Xiangqi) Game-Playing

2013

• BugChess (Xiaochong Xiangqi) won gold at the 17th ICGA
• Xiangqi Mingshou won CCMC
• Deep learning achieved breakthroughs in Go (predecessor to AlphaGo), attracting attention from the Xiangqi community

2014

• Xiangqi Mingshou won CCMC again, setting a record of consecutive championships
• The commercial engine market reached its peak

2015

• The commercial engine market began to shrink; mobile and free engines emerged
• AlphaGo defeated a professional human Go player, triggering a global AI craze

2016

• AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol; the potential of reinforcement learning in board game AI was fully recognized
• The Xiangqi community discussed the possibility of applying AlphaGo/AlphaZero methods to Xiangqi

2017

• Xiangqi Xuanfeng won CCMC
• The GGzero project was launched, exploring the application of reinforcement learning in Xiangqi
• Stockfish introduced NNUE evaluation, greatly improving strength

2018

• Yu Nasu released the NNUE evaluation network, ushering in the NNUE era in chess
• The Xiangqi community followed up with research on the feasibility of adapting NNUE for Xiangqi