unknown wild type

[chessp]

for event name i have a town ending in "w" and the year, minimum example "W 2015". opening this .pgn file gives an error message "unkown wild type 2015". why is this? do i have to escape the "w"?

[H.G.Muller]

WinBoard recognizes the variant from the Event tag, because the event tag for ICS games is set to a message from the ICS that contains variant information. w + number is a way used by ICS to indicate which variant is beng played (e.g. w 23 = FRC). So event tags that contain a word that WinBoard would recognize as a variant name (also things like 'atomic' and 'suicide') will confuse it. The only work-around is to modify the event tag.

[chessp]

i understand almost nothing of that. what is ICS? what is variant? this weird visual basic data type? i thought event is simply a text where i enter the name of the event like "berlin summer open 2015"? why is this text interpreted in any way? so no towns ending in the letter "w" are allowed as event locations?

[H.G.Muller]

ICS = Internet Chess Server, like FICS or ICC.

A variant is a specific way to play the grand game of Chess, like Bughouse, Suicide or FIDE.

The text is interpreted for historic reasons, because there was a time where the Event tag was the only PGN tag that contained information of what Chess variant it was about. E.g. it would say something like

[Event "FICS suicide game"]

and from that you would have to conclude that the game notation was not for a game of orthodox Chess, but for a game of Suicide Chess.

Currently WinBoard writes a non-standard 'Variant' PGN tag for games that are not orthodox Chess, but as it is non-standard games saved by other interfaces, or by old versions of WinBoard, might not contain it.

I am not sure how precise recognition of a variant name from the Event string is. I would imagine it only recognizes 'wild' variants if the contain the word 'wild', or a one-letter word 'w', followed by a number, and not somthing like "Warsaw 2014".

[chessp]

i got this error using [Event "Kleinmachnow 2015"], interestingly, Warsaw 2014 does not cause it. what the hell is going on?

[H.G.Muller]

It seems that WinBoard checks if the first 'w' in the string is followed by a number. This should definitely be made a bit more selective. E.g. by excluding cases where the 'w' is directly preceded by another letter.

[chessp]

so will you do that? or is this not winboards fault?