Chessbase & Chess960

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Trahald
Posts: 70
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2008 12:26 pm
Location: Australia

Chessbase & Chess960

Post by Trahald »

Recently I purchased Fritz 12, this is the first time I've used a Chessbase product since the days of Fritz 5! Consequently I am also new to the Playchess server, having been a member of ICC for the last several years.

I have 2 questions regarding these products and Chess960, firstly is it possible to play Chess960 on the Playchess server? Seems not as far as I can tell, but quite frankly I find this rather surprising, perhaps I am overlooking something here?

Secondly I would like to run engine tournaments for Chess960 in the Fritz interface. Simple enough, but I would like to include the Fritz 960 engine and I cannot find out how to do this, seems like the program maintains separate engine lists for standard, chess960 and giveaway, and I can only get the 'standard' list when I run a match or tournament.

Confusingly when I click on match or tournament, there is a dialog box popup which asks for the chess variant, but this seems to have no effect on the list of engines, or even the type of tournament itself. **Edit Seems this popup only appears if I am already in 'Wild' mode eg. By clicking New Game -> Chess960 or Giveaway, and is therefore not related to the tournament functions of the program?

Naturally I have tried just selecting the Fritz 12 engine, but it does not work in a Chess960 game.
Russell Murray
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Eelco de Groot
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Full name:   Eelco de Groot

Re: Chessbase & Chess960

Post by Eelco de Groot »

Russel, maybe you could ask this question on the HIARCS forum, where there is a subforum for Playchess questions. Can't help with the Chessbase questions, but I do know the Chess960 support in the Chessbase interface is just not so good. I think the Chess960 Fritz is mainly meant to play against as a human. I did not think Chess960 engine tournaments were possible for instance. But as you say there is a tournament list for these tournaments in Fritz 12 so maybe I'm mistaken about that.

I think participating in Chess960 games on Playchess should be possible though, at least it was the last time I was there, that was some months ago but there was a special Chess960 room. You will be assigned a random opening. Do not know if they have tournaments. Best interface for Chess960 engine tournaments would be Shredder UCI but maybe the ChessGUI from Matthias can do something like this? http://biglion.110mb.com/ I really do not know.

Regards, Eelco
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first
place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you
are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
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Trahald
Posts: 70
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2008 12:26 pm
Location: Australia

Re: Chessbase & Chess960

Post by Trahald »

Thanks for the tip Eelco, I will check out the Hiarcs forum. I agree with what you say about Chessbase support for Chess960 being not so good because it is clearly designed for human-computer play and analysis.

I've used Shredder previously and it's no doubt the best for Chess960 play, but for now, I've already switched back to WinBoard for this purpose.
Russell Murray
Trahald
Posts: 70
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2008 12:26 pm
Location: Australia

Re: Chessbase & Chess960

Post by Trahald »

Found the 960 room, so thanks again. Still getting used to the Playchess interface, I find ICC so much simpler, BlitzIn FTW! :wink:
Russell Murray