Xboard "False Draw Claim" bug

[H.G.Muller]

Nice example.

One thing I forgot to point out: most engines will not continue after they claimed a draw. So the GUI has no choice than to declare a result. If it would ignore the claim, the claiming engine would likely lose on time. That would not only needlessly waste time, but it would also hide the problem: from the PGN and result it would not have been obvious at all that the engine lost on time because it was stalled waiting for the next game. Painstaking analyssi of the debug file would be needed to reveal that. And the result would be the same anyway, the false claimer would lose.

The "false claim" result details immediately point out the problem in the PGN.

This is an option intended for use by people who debug engines, or help authors debugging engines by testing them. (It might take thousands of games to expose an error in the claim logic, so any help is always welcome.) Those who don't want to participate in that process have no reason to switch this option on.

[Volker Pittlik]

...cheating engines like Sloppy and Crafty...

Unfortunately the discussion is missing any reasonable base now. I'm out of it now.

[H.G.Muller]

Well, that is up to you. I have no desire to be in this discussion at all, I am just addressing the points you raise.

I am always very grateful to those who report bugs. Many bugs are extremely rare, and I could never find them without the help of 10,000+ games played by others. But this just isn't an XBoard bug, as you could very well have seen for yourself. The claims you reported _are_ false under FIDE rules, and if you switch on an option to forfeit false claims, that is what will happen.

If that is not what you want, and if this option is not useful to you, just don't switch it on. It is very useful to me, and many others. That is why it was implemented. You are not the only XBoard user, and there are many users that use XBoard for entirely different purposes than you do.