Minor Crafty issue when using Xboard protocol

[Peteshnick]

Hi,

I am having a strange issue when using Crafty 22.7. Whenever I import it as a Winboard engine in the new Shredder GUI (or in Chessmaster 11, for that matter), if Crafty plays black, it seems to evaluate the position as if it were white. In other words, if Crafty is black and is obviously winning big (like up a queen or something) it will evaluate the position as a high positive number, not negative. This leads to Crafty actually resigning in won positions. The strange thing is that it makes good moves - so on some level it is evaluating the position correctly (i.e. with the correct sign), but not for display and resignation purposes.

For my purposes, it would actually suffice just to set Crafty's resignation threshold to infinity or turn it off entirely, but a cleaner solution I guess would be preferable. I have tried both the wb2uci adapter and Shredder's built in Winboard adapter, both with the same result.

I am using Windows Vista 32bit. Any help would be appreciated.

[hgm]

In other words, if Crafty is black and is obviously winning big (like up a queen or something) it will evaluate the position as a high positive number, not negative.

Of course it does. This is standard, and like any WinBoard engine should do it.

You can be certain that Crafty will not resign in won positions. You probably confuse resignation with the fact that the GUI adjudicates games, and apparently adjudicates them erroneously. (Of course adjudicating only on the basis of a score is always an error, but that is a different issue.)

Probably you are using the GUI with wrong settings, and otherwise it is simply broken. (I don't have Shredder GUI, so I can't help you there.)

[Zach Wegner]

Of course it does. This is standard, and like any WinBoard engine should do it.

It is? Where?

[hgm]

Just try 100 randomly picked WinBoard engines. The 95 or more will do it this way. Only for ponder scores there is Baylonic confusion; a lot of engines (usually those that ponder a position, in stead of a move) then report scores from the POV of the opponent.

So the answer to your second question is: everwhere where there are WinBoard engines!

[Peteshnick]

Thanks for the help. Indeed, Shredder has an "etiquette" option that controls adjudication. Also, it has a "Evaluation for White" option, which, when turned off, at least makes the score the correct sign in the line analysis view (although it doesn't fix the adjudication error, and it still makes the histogram wrong).