winboard and variant engines

[shaxmatist]

This may have been addressed in another post, so please direct to such a post if it exists.
To wit, I would like to analyze a game of Suicide chess/Giveaway chess in Winboard and be able to record the game. I believe that I have the most current version of Winboard, but I don't see a specific Suicide chess engine for analysis. It works quite well while I am playing online, but I would like to load the game with a specific engine and do some analysis.

Any suggestions?

I don't see a faciltiy within winboard to tell me which version I am using, but I think it is at least 4.4.

Thank you for your help.

[H.G.Muller]

Pulsar is an engine that can play Suicide, and it is (optionally) included in the installer package. The install should create a menu item to start up WinBoard with Pulsar; you would just have to use the New Variant menu to set it to Suicide. (The menu item starts it in Atomic, mainly to surprise people who think they are playing normal Chess, when they make their first capture. ) Pulsar is not very strong, though, and I am also not sure if it supports advanced features like analysis.

Sjeng is another engine that supports Suicide. I have never tried it, though.

You should be able to see which version you are using in the Help->About menu.

[shaxmatist]

Thank you! Your answer is perfect. I do have Pulsar in my list of engines. Following your advice, I was able to play a simple game of Suicide chess. I tested it with 1.e4 which is a well known forced win for Black. I have a better line than what Pulsar played, but at least I know I can load games into this engine. Sjeng is pretty strong as I recall. I have played FICS games with computers rated 2999. Alas, giveaway chess is probably considered to be "solved," with respect to the mathematical game tree. Maybe, not yet.

Anyway, with your great advice, I can explore some of the other variant options of Winboard.

[rgrosz78]

I often use the Pulsar engine to analyze my Atomic games for better play (post-mortem). I definitely learn something, since I am not as smart as Pulsar. I am interested in doing the same thing for Losers chess. Pulsar is not very good at Losers, but Sjeng is better at this variant.

I use both Pulsar and Sjeng under the WinBoard interface. Does anyone know of stronger programs that play Losers chess? I have Googled for several days, did not find any. Both Pulsar and Sjeng are free, but I would be willing to buy better software.