Chess for Android: version 6.1.1

[adams161]

My first game against the AI on Chess for Android i got a draw on my Nexus 9 but it really should have been a win. I'd promoted one pawn to a queen. All he had was a knight and two pawns. was working on promoting my other and i got lulled by the fast moving pieces and let him walk right over and take my first queen then come back and fork my king and pawn and get a material draw. After that couldn't beat it. So i tried my older Asus transformer from 2012. Won the first game and lost the second and not played more now.

but if it's doing the same thing using fixed time its setting up a playing hall were the newer more powerful phones and tablets are stronger and the older weaker ones are weaker. So years ago that means the program was eaier to beat and every year it gets harder. Just a thought. Really am a fan of some fixed depth levels

I don't consider myself the greatest chess player. I"m better at programming. But i can play 1500s and above at 15-minute and standard which makes me better than probably a good number of the guys off the street or new players. I know from Pulsar I've' met so many 2000+ players. But they are hardly everybody and more common in competitive club environments. And yea i'm worse at checkers.

Mike

[adams161]

Well to summarize now that i've had some more time to think about it. Checkers for Android is still fun to play, but after awhile you want to stop if you keep losing. i'll probably get back to it. maybe i'll learn more. Though I always thought of checkers as the more casual game with not as many truly serious players. Maybe that is just me and that is not your audience. Still think your average online player is going to be a better guy for me to play than the program at the moment at least if I don't improve a lot.

The Chess for Android I made some of the same criticisms, but i think the level is set a bit better. even my losses i think i could do better at it if i didn't get lulled by the faster pace.

[abik]

Maybe it's fine for slightly more advance checkers players who know an opening. But it be nice to see some level progression for a guy who doesn't really know an opening and wings it. My best game so far i got down at end one king to two kings. I avoided the traps and being jumped mostly. But it did a better job of blocking me from kinging and kinged first.

Indeed, probably the only way to beat the program is to have a solid strategy. Trying for fast paced tactics usually turns the table unfavorably.

[adams161]

Maybe it's fine for slightly more advance checkers players who know an opening. But it be nice to see some level progression for a guy who doesn't really know an opening and wings it. My best game so far i got down at end one king to two kings. I avoided the traps and being jumped mostly. But it did a better job of blocking me from kinging and kinged first.

Indeed, probably the only way to beat the program is to have a solid strategy. Trying for fast paced tactics usually turns the table unfavorably.

The main thing is even with best play i can get, avoid blunders and being jumped, it seems to either beat me on tempo and basic put me in Zugzwang, any move is a bad move or has better control of kinging. So it is figuring out how to move in a way that gives it a better back rank to work with and it doesn't run out of moves. In fact my rear pieces are almost always having to move when it has them all protecting mostly the kingship squares.

So i need to better learn what the strategy to do this is so i can then use time effectively to have that solid strategy. Maybe the short primer in checkers by Fred Reinfeld is worth me looking at.

Mike

[adams161]

Indeed, probably the only way to beat the program is to have a solid strategy. Trying for fast paced tactics usually turns the table unfavorably.

The play did play off and i was able to play a friend tonight, a Pulsar player at giveaway, and win at checkers on ICC. I used Lantern Chess on Mac and they used ICC's Popular Blitzin Interface. Here is the game. I mentioned you were considering doing connect to icc in checkers for android. They had not played in awhile so it was not as strong as a game as i bet i get if there are more checkers games going on on icc.

[Event "ICC w30 5 3 u"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2019.04.24"]
[Round "-"]
[White "kylie"]
[Black "Mike"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ICCResult "White resigns"]
[WhiteElo "1656"]
[BlackElo "1270"]
[Time "05:49:20"]
[TimeControl "300+3"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "1p1p1p1p/p1p1p1p1/1p1p1p1p/8/8/P1P1P1P1/1P1P1P1P/P1P1P1P1 b KQkq - 0 1"]

1. 9-13 21-17 2. 6-9 23-18 3. 9-14 18-9 4. 5-14-21 27-23 5. 11-16 24-20 6.
8-11 28-24 7. 4-8 23-18 8. 2-6 31-27 9. 1-5 26-23 10. 6-9 18-15 11. 10-19-28
23-18 12. 9-14 18-9 13. 5-14 22-18 14. 14-23 27-18 15. 7-10 25-22 16. 16-19
20-16 17. 11-20 30-26 18. 19-24 26-23 19. 12-16 {White resigns} 0-1

looks like icc messed up the PGN. i won as black but it was 1-0.

Well there help file says

Being a chess site, we've implemented checkers with minimal fuss and won't
be introducing much of any new features, much less variants of
checkers, etc. We also aren't following any rigorous international standards,
so please keep your suggestions in line with that. Important: checkers can be
played with ICC for Mac/Windows and Blitzin. Dasher is unfortunately not
supported and it's unlikely to ever be. Dasher users are kindly asked to
upgrade to ICC for Mac/Windows or download Blitzin if they wish to enjoy
checkers.

[abik]

I am in contact with the helpful ICC team, and got the client working with ICC too. Since style12 worked out-of-the-box, only a few tweaks with the rest of the protocol was required, not much new implementation. I will circle this to my alpha testers, but expect to go to production real soon with this!

[adams161]

I am in contact with the helpful ICC team, and got the client working with ICC too. Since style12 worked out-of-the-box, only a few tweaks with the rest of the protocol was required, not much new implementation. I will circle this to my alpha testers, but expect to go to production real soon with this!

great news. keep us posted when the update/s is/are out. I of course can check my devices too.

I used is/are as I wasn't sure your plans. You mentioned you might do chess and/or checkers. Bear in mind i don't except you'd taken on both, if you did that, necessarily immediately i understand the need to schedule over time and take breaks etc.

Back to pulsar work now myself. making progress. Hoping to release with Pulsar able to read its own log file not just export by end of week. This is about 3/4 done now. I"m putting analysis off till after the basic read its log file release. It's nice to have both though. If you open a pgn game and you're not really playing thats a nice moment to have an engine for analysis. But i figure at this point focus on one thing at a time.

I told a good friend though last night I might still have more to learn from your programs and it could be worth spending more time on them vs jsut on an update schedule and some free time use. I told my friend i started out with "what is your secret" to the high installs. And i told my friend, maybe i'm starting to learn something. The play experience is very nice on your apps. I need to do more side by side play with pulsar and see if i can see the differences. Well it's never just about high installs but i'm a firm believer the android market votes with it's feet. If you are doing good work then they will more likely pick and stay and use your apps. Well developers need to hit on things that have appeal of course but we can always make allowances for well its this type of app etc and this is about how big they get

[gbtami]

Seems there is some interest on using Chess for Android with DGT + lichess.org also.
https://lichess.org/forum/general-chess ... lichessorg

The only problem(?) that DGT usage on lichess have to use BOT API, so you can't play with your normal account if you use it.
https://lichess.org/api

[abik]

You mentioned you might do chess and/or checkers. Bear in mind i don't except you'd taken on both, if you did that, necessarily immediately i understand the need to schedule over time and take breaks etc.

Adding support for checkers is on my to-do list for sure! But adding ICC support for Chess for Android was a low-hanging fruit; I already had the style12 client implemented for FICS, and the incremental work was next to nothing. Adding a client to Checkers for Android will be more elaborate; I can reuse some of the client code for chess, but not all.....

[abik]

The only problem(?) that DGT usage on lichess have to use BOT API, so you can't play with your normal account if you use it.

The reason given for being restrictive towards alternative clients is that part of the cheat detection for lichess resides in the lichess client itself. Completely understandable, of course, but that makes writing a client for lichess less interesting to me....