TalkChess.com

[H.G.Muller]

The version of NebiyuReversi I have accepts normal moves (like e4e6) in addition to drops. I don't think that is legal in Reversi.

[Daniel Shawul]

Try this one . Nebiyu rejected such moves as illegal with WB-alien. I have made some changes in the winboard protocol code since last update to handle multi player games better, which may affect other behavior adversely.
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[Richard Delorme]

I have another problem. Not sure if it is related to NeniyuReversi or xboard/winboard

When playing matches between my program (Edax) and NebiyuReversi, if NebiyuReversi is wiped out and lose 64-0 the result is displayed as a draw because of "bare king". As there is no king in Reversi, just discs, and 64-0 are perfectly legal score, I do not understand what this means.

Here is an example of such a game :

[H.G.Muller]

Yes, that does sound like a WinBoard bug. And a pretty weird one, as in Reversi the disks are represented by Pawns, I think, so you should have plenty of pieces other than King. But even apart from that, is clear this kind of adjudication should not take place when adjudications (like mate detection) or legality testing are off.

I will check it out.

[Evert Glebbeek]

I've seen a similar problem (engine claims "1-0" or "0-1", but XBoard overrules it and gives "1/2-1/2" instead) for games where the goal is to capture all enemy pieces as well as for games where the goal is to occupy certain squares (XBoard doesn't know about those, of course, but it shouldn't have to as long as the engine knows).
My impression is that it gets confused if there is no royal piece.

[H.G.Muller]

I took a look at the code, and the problem seems to be that "verify engine claims" is switched on. Without that, it would never to this "result correction".

It could be considered a bit sloppy, though, that it even attempts to verify claims when legality testing is off. Although the rule that a bare King cannot force checkmate is almost universally valid in Chess variants. And it is a bad idea to use Kings in non-chesslike games (as it would for instance also clutter up notation with irrelevant check symbols).

The algorithm used is a bit course too, however: it counts pieces of the side that just claimed the win, and if the number is <= 1, it corrects to draw. It does not actually test if the remaining piece is a King, and the case of 0 pieces is of course also suspect. (The losers chess variants are of course not subected to this test.) I could limit it to a single King.

This does not explain the case with Edax, however, as it is the losing side that has no pieces there. So it seems to me that Edax is at fault here too, and claimed a win for the wrong side. Do you have a winboard.debug file for this case, so that we could see what result claim Edax actually made?

[Richard Delorme]

[H.G.Muller]

I agree that it is unfortunate that WB protocol identifies players by a color. Especially since in some games the players are red and blue. The Shogi system of sente & gote would be much less confusing.

For purists there is always the possibility to configure away the difference, however. You can pick any color for the pieces (like black for the white pieces, and white for the black pieces), and you can supply a language file (e.g. shoginese.lng) that defines "White" === "Sente" etc. to get the desired texts in the clock and menus (provided you select Shoginese from the Help menu).

[Mark Rawlings]

[Richard Delorme]