TalkChess.com

[H.G.Muller]

I am working now together with Yasser Seirawan to get the variant he and Bruce Harper invented (also known as S-Chess) running on the open-source ICS code. I have set up the Fairy-Max bot on my ICS to now also take challenges in variant seirawan.

Those interested are invited to give it a try, either by playing each other, or playing the Fairy-Max bot. To start an S-Chess game when logged on to the ICS, you can use the command:

match FairyMax 5 1 sc

(the sc here means S-Chess = variant seirawan; gc would be variant gothic, km would be knightmate, su would be SuperChess = variant super. 5 1 means 5min +1 sec/move, as usual, and in stead of FairyMax you could of course type the name of another opponent).

To connect to the ICS you can use the command

winboard -ics -icshost 80.100.28.169 -icshelper timeseal

or tick 'use an ICS' in the startup dialog, and select the 80.100.28.169 line from the ICS combobox. You can then type a name of your choosing to login as a guest.



Also see:
http://hgm.nubati.net/VICS
http://www.seirawanchess.com

[Robert Purves]

Is that winboard only? I have xboard for Mac but it seems unable to connect.

[H.G.Muller]

No, it should work with XBoard just the same. Have you tried it without the "-icshelper timeseal"? Could be that your timeseal is bad or missing. can you logon to FICS (-ics freechess.org)?

[Robert Purves]

This works to log on to your ICS:
$ xboard -ics -icshost 80.100.28.169

This works to log on to FICS:
$ xboard -ics -icshost freechess.org

The installer put timeseal and timestamp at what looks like a bad place:
/Applications/Xboard/
Where should they be?

[H.G.Muller]

[H.G.Muller]

OK, it seems the problems are solved, and the bot no longer crashes. The development version of XBoard I was using had a problem with uninitiaized castling variables when reading ICS boards. This made it crash every time a King left the back rank. It was not S-Chess related, but I never noticed this problem in a WinBoard compile from the same code (I use this version every month on ICS, in the blitz tourney).

[Robert Purves]

It (timestamp) had the wrong permissions. After
$ sudo chmod 755 /Applications/Xboard/timestamp
everything is OK. Thanks for your help.

[Ferdinand Mosca]

[H.G.Muller]

Gating moves are written as promotions. (There never is any ambiguity, as Pawns are not allowed to gate, and even if they would, a virgin Pawn cannot promote.) So you would write f1g3e to gate the Elephant at f1. In SAN WinBoard now accepts both = and / in gatings and true promotions, and writes = with promotions and / with gatings. The ICS writes = for both, however.

Note that a gating is consiered a two-step move, and you are not allowed to pass through check.

[d] 4k3/4p3/8/8/8/8/4P3/qN2K3 w
In the above diagram Nb1-c3/E would be illegal.

Pieces in hand are written between [] after the board in FEN. We are still discussing how to best indicate virginity of pieces. This info seems to make the castling field superfluous, and could perhaps replace it. Reinhard proposed two hex numbers separated by a period, representing a bitmap of the virgin pieces, like

rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR [HEhe] w FF.FF - 0 1

I am not so keen to use hexadecimal in FEN, though. A alternative would be to append the file letters of non-virgin pieces still in their original position to the castling field. (In practice there are never many of those).

Another, more general issue is if it is really desirable to use H and E for pieces that in other variants are called A and C.

[H.G.Muller]