Variant ICS

[hgm]

Tonight I am doing another trial run of the Chess-variant ICS (using FICS-like protocol), after many changes. I installed 3 engines on it:

Sunsetter (crazyhouse)
FairyMax (gothic, capablanca, knightmate, shatranj)
hoiXiangqi (xiangqi)

To play, say, Xiang Qi, type

match hoixiangqi 5 0 u xiangqi

or

match hoi 5 0 u xq

(Of course you can choose other time+increment than 5+0.)
Short name for shatranj is sj. Capablanca has sub-variants embassy, bird, carrera:

match fairy 5 0 u capablanca bird

To use the server for the more exotic variants, you need the WinBoard on my website:

http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/ICSclient.zip

which also contains a shortcut for connecting directly to the server in ICS mode, and one in zippy mode that you can alter to run your own engine.

Of course you can also play each other, or each other's engines! (Note that the users admin and hgm will be AFK.)

[TonyJH]

Xiangqi seems to be working well. I was able to connect my xiangqi engine and played it against hoixiangqi for a few games.

[hgm]

OK, great. Yesterday, before going on air, I spent nearly all day removing an extraordinarily large number of bugs all related to xq, and apparently I caught most (palace boundaries in wrong places, Pawns that were allowed to capture diagonally, which affected checkmate judgement even though the engines of course never tried to do it, Pawns that promoted to Queens upon reaching the 9th rank, faulty SAN output on forward Pawn captures...)

Main problem left with xq is the scoring of repetitions: this is still subject to the FIDE 3-fold repeat and 50-move rules....

BTW, is there something like a 50-move rule in Xiang Qi? And if so, do sideway moves of over-the-river Pawns count as reversible or irreversible moves?

[TonyJH]

BTW, is there something like a 50-move rule in Xiang Qi? And if so, do sideway moves of over-the-river Pawns count as reversible or irreversible moves?

I don't think there is any official rule in xiangqi, like chess's 50-move rule.

However, the xiangqi server at clubxiangqi.com does enforce its own similar rules to prevent games from dragging on:

http://www.clubxiangqi.com/?F=rules

To prevent one or both players from dragging the games for a long time, CXQ imposes the following 3 rules for automatic drawing:

1. Effective Rule: When the total number of effective moves, moves made by each side excluding checking/chasing moves or moves to respond to checking/chasing, reaches 120.
2. Progress Rule: When the total number of moves by each side since the last time a progress is made, i.e. since (1) the last capture or (2) the last advance of a pawn already crossed the river, reaches 30.
3. Moves Rule: When the total number of moves made by each side reaches 300. This rule is rarely used, but is here for completeness.