Utilisation de Winboard pour la variante "chessgi" (called a

[jipey]

Chessgi (or Loop chess) has rules close of Crazyhouse.
Is it possible to use winboard for this variant?
Is it necessary a modification of the current vesion for that?
If yes, Is it possible to envision it?
This variant "chessgi" seems me more to play online that Crazyhouse (to see the sites Brainking, Goldtoken,etc.).

[H.G.Muller]

WinBoard can be configured to play variant crazyhouse with Loop Chess rules by setting its pieceToCharTable to "PNBRQKpnbrqk" (e.g. using "Additional options" /pieceToCharTable="PNBRQKpnbrqk"), i.e. removing the definition of special piece types for the promoted pieces. An alternative that is even simpler, is to set the holdingsSize to 5 in normal Chess (/holdingsSize=5). This can even be done interactively, through the New Variant dialog.

Of course you cannot do this with an engine, unless the engine is made for playing Loop Chess rather than Crazyhouse. And in that case you would have to bow to the notion of the engine as to how it callse the variant (8x8+5_normal, crazyhouse, or whatever).

[jipey]

WinBoard can be configured to play variant crazyhouse with Loop Chess rules by setting its pieceToCharTable to "PNBRQKpnbrqk" (e.g. using "Additional options" /pieceToCharTable="PNBRQKpnbrqk"), i.e. removing the definition of special piece types for the promoted pieces. An alternative that is even simpler, is to set the holdingsSize to 5 in normal Chess (/holdingsSize=5). This can even be done interactively, through the New Variant dialog.

Of course you cannot do this with an engine, unless the engine is made for playing Loop Chess rather than Crazyhouse. And in that case you would have to bow to the notion of the engine as to how it callse the variant (8x8+5_normal, crazyhouse, or whatever).

Thanks Muller!
I did not well understand.
Where to find: "pieceToCharTable", "Additional options", "holdingsSize" ?
Is it existing a engine that allows playing "Loop chess" and compatible with winboard?

[H.G.Muller]

Additional options is a field in WinBoard's Startup Dialog, where you can type options.

/pieceToCharTable or /holdingsSize is what you would have to type there.

But when you do it through the New Variant dialog, you don't have to do either of that: you just open the dialog, and at "Holdings with room for ... pieces" you type 5, and OK.

I don't know any engine that plays Loop Chess. But I am not really into Crazyhouse stuff.

[jipey]

OK, thanks!
I understand better now.

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Additional options is a field in WinBoard's Startup Dialog, where you can type options.

/pieceToCharTable or /holdingsSize is what you would have to type there.

But when you do it through the New Variant dialog, you don't have to do either of that: you just open the dialog, and at "Holdings with room for ... pieces" you type 5, and OK.

I don't know any engine that plays Loop Chess. But I am not really into Crazyhouse stuff.

[Tony Hecker]

WinBoard can be configured to play variant crazyhouse with Loop Chess rules by setting its pieceToCharTable to "PNBRQKpnbrqk" (e.g. using "Additional options" /pieceToCharTable="PNBRQKpnbrqk"), i.e. removing the definition of special piece types for the promoted pieces.
...

Hi HG,
I tried this method (setting pieceToCharTable) to enable loop chess rules and it works with Winboard 4.5.1gc (from an old Winboard Grand Chess package), but it does not work with other Winboard versions I tried. I've tried 4.6.0, 4.6.2, and 4.7 beta. In these versions Winboard seems to still follow normal crazyhouse rules.

To the OP: TJchess 1.1 supports loop chess. TJchess can be started with command line parameter "-variant loop" and then it will treat crazyhouse games as loop chess.

Tony

[H.G.Muller]

Hmm, it only seems to work with legality testing off. Are you sure that this wasn't why it seemed to work in the GC version?

This is wrong, of course; there is no reason why Loop Chess should be played without legality testing. So I will fix this in the next version. Currently the promotion code unconditionally uses 'shadow pieces' when a Pawn promotes in Bug/Crazyhouse, even if the shadow piece is not marked as such in the pieceToCharTable. Which would make it impossible to print FENs for that piece, or write SAN moves with it, etc. The reason that it does work with legality testing off is that I added a patch that unconditionally performs promotions in that case (so you can promote non-Pawns, or outside the promotion zone, etc., as the variant requires), and this corrects the initially faulty promotion. (And this patch does properly tests for the availability of shadow pieces.)

Thanks for reporting.

[Tony Hecker]

I just checked and I have legality testing on in the GC version, yet loop chess works fine. But it's possible I have some other setting changed.

[Tony Hecker]

HG,

Thanks for fixing the issue. The Winboard 4.7 beta now works for using loop chess rules in crazyhouse, by setting the pieceToCharTable to "PNBRQKpnbrqk".

There is still a similar issue when I try to set up 'crazyhouse960' rules. Winboard treats it as loop960 instead. I used these command line options:

/variant=fischerandom /holdingsSize=5 /pieceToCharTable="PNBRQ.......~~~~Kpnbrq.......~~~~k"

I remember you had this working before:
http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... t&start=47

[H.G.Muller]

OK, I see.

The intepretation of the ~ in the pieceToCharTable is currently limited to Bughouse and Crazyhouse. But this is needlessly conservative; there is no reason I can think of why it should not always apply it. There is no alternative to enabling Fischer castling than using variant FRC, but holdings can be piggy-backed onto any variant, and the presence of holdings is sufficient reason for wanting to use the ~. So I will remove the variant part from the test.