how to check losing chess soving proof ?

[xcombelle]

I would like to make a program to check independently the proof that losing chess is weakly solved http://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/~watkins/LOSING_CHESS/ .

I face two problems for that:

- I know only standard rules of chess, not losing chess ones. The wining conditions used on the loosing versions are especially fuzzy for me.

- the file format of the proof used are nearly totally of obscure. (I tried to look on the source code, but it is very terse. the best I found was dump_book.c but I don't understand exactly what each fields means. Especially what is the root node, what means "TRANS" (I suppose transposition) and how the nodes are numbered)

If you could help me on these subjects I would be especially grateful.

An alternative to post on this forum would be to email to the author, but I suppose he is busy.

[syzygy]

- I know only standard rules of chess, not losing chess ones. The wining conditions used on the loosing versions are especially fuzzy for me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losing_ch ... variant.29

In a second variant, stalemate is a win for the player with the least number of pawns/pieces left on the board (and a draw if the numbers are equal).

The proof works for both variants by counting a stalemate as a win only if the stalemated player has fewer pawns/pieces than its opponent (and as a draw otherwise).

- the file format of the proof used are nearly totally of obscure. (I tried to look on the source code, but it is very terse. the best I found was dump_book.c but I don't understand exactly what each fields means. Especially what is the root node, what means "TRANS" (I suppose transposition) and how the nodes are numbered)

I think there are some papers discussing the file format, but probably only at a conceptual level. The source code is the ultimate documentation.

TRANS will certainly mean transposition.