From what I understand, it is possible to underpromote to a commoner in Knightmate, though I am not sure there is any position where it would be desirable to do so. Using the Winboard/Xboard protocol, would I use the character "m" as the promotion piece? e.g.
e7e8m
Also, I was trying out several different versions of Winboard, in edit mode, and I didn't seem to be able to underpromote to a commoner. The promotion dialog gave me the promotion pieces for standard chess, and if I turned legality checking off, then it added the king as a possible promotion piece. However, the king button did not work, so I was wondering if there was a way to underpromote to a commoner using this GUI. If someone (especially HG) can clarify, that would be great.
Knightmate question
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tmokonen
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hgm
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Re: Knightmate question
Indeed, piece ID for Commoner is M in Knightmate, and should also be used in promotions. Example:
[d]8/1P6/8/n3N3/8/B7/8/8 w - - 0 1
If white does not promote now, black will play Kxb7, and KBK is draw. But 1. b8=Q and 1. b8=R stalemate black by attacking the Royal Knight's only remaining escape squares b7 and b3. And 1. b8=B leaves white with two equally colored Bishops, which is also no good. So the only winning move is 1. b8=M! KBMK is easily won.
The promotion dialog in variants is often a problem. It is hard to fix, because WinBoard is not aware of piece names in general, and the same piece is usually known under many different names in different variants. (E.g. the R+N compound is Chancellor in gothic, Marshall in Bird, Centaur in Carrera, Empress in superchess, Elephant in Seirawan...) This is why I invented detour under-promotion in WinBoard 4.5TM to get rid of the dialog completely (by setting -sweepPromotions true as a persistent option), and have a purely pictorial mechanism.
Unfortunately 4.5.3 does not support that yet.
It is always possible to type the move, though. (The move type-in pops up automatically when you start typing letters or digits to the board.) So e7e8m or e8=M would do what you want.
[d]8/1P6/8/n3N3/8/B7/8/8 w - - 0 1
If white does not promote now, black will play Kxb7, and KBK is draw. But 1. b8=Q and 1. b8=R stalemate black by attacking the Royal Knight's only remaining escape squares b7 and b3. And 1. b8=B leaves white with two equally colored Bishops, which is also no good. So the only winning move is 1. b8=M! KBMK is easily won.
The promotion dialog in variants is often a problem. It is hard to fix, because WinBoard is not aware of piece names in general, and the same piece is usually known under many different names in different variants. (E.g. the R+N compound is Chancellor in gothic, Marshall in Bird, Centaur in Carrera, Empress in superchess, Elephant in Seirawan...) This is why I invented detour under-promotion in WinBoard 4.5TM to get rid of the dialog completely (by setting -sweepPromotions true as a persistent option), and have a purely pictorial mechanism.
Unfortunately 4.5.3 does not support that yet.
It is always possible to type the move, though. (The move type-in pops up automatically when you start typing letters or digits to the board.) So e7e8m or e8=M would do what you want.-
tmokonen
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Re: Knightmate question
Thank you for your help, Harm.