Question about Polyglot move handling

[vladstamate]

Hi all,

I am hoping someone can answer this. I am trying to answer the question myself but somehow I am having some weird troubles running polyglot on my machine with the setup that I need. While I work on fixing them I am going to ask here.

When a promotion to a Queen move sent by my engine looks like this: "bestmove h7h8" Polyglot seems to ignore it. Does Polyglot expect instead one of the following:

"bestmove h7h8q"
"bestmove h7h8Q"
"bestmove h7h8=q"
"bestmove h7h8=Q"

Or is it happy with the one I send and assumes if nothing is being specified then a promotion to Queen should happen? My experience (during Olivier's OpenWar6 tournament) is that it totally ignores my move.

I would not fault Polyglot for expecting one of the options above, but I would like to know if that is the case. Arena accepts my move just fine, without the queen specifier.

Thank you,
Vlad.

[Michel]

The UCI "specification" here

http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/UCIProtocol.html

seems to suggest that the proper notation is h7h8q

PG accepts both h7h8q and h7h8Q.

If you set

PromoteWorkAround=true

in polyglot.ini then it also accepts h7h8.

[vladstamate]

Thank you Michel,

It seems you are right indeed. I've done some research using some popular UCI engines and it looks like the promote-to piece is always reported (even when it is a Queen).

Thanks,
Vlad.