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ChessVA computer program
. Program for playing numerous Chess variants against your PC.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Aurelian Florea wrote on Tue, Jan 31, 2023 11:02 AM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 08:54 AM:

Ok, HG, thanks!


H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Jan 31, 2023 08:54 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Mon Jan 30 04:47 PM:

Short follow-up on posting diagrams: You must only write the board part of the FEN between the tages; the other stuff contained in a FEN would not be expressed in the image anyway. When I place your FEN between the tags I get this:

These are not the pieces you want; apparently the standard meaning for C is Cannon, for S Squirrel, and for J it is Camel. But that doesn't have to discourage you: you can either try an alternative likely letter (like M for Marshall), or replace the letter by the full name of the Alfaerie image in braces ({berolinapawn} and {fool}:

[ fen]3{FOOL}3k1w/10/10/8p1/2P5Pp/1{SERGEANT}7P/5{sergeant}4/10/4m4{fool}/7BK1[ /fen] gives

 


Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 04:47 PM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from 04:43 PM:

And because it was facing a difficult position white decided to go for a draw. Thanks Greg!


📝Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 04:43 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 04:38 PM:

That's right. If white's last move was a chancellor, then it is a stalemate by either the old rules or the new rules.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 04:38 PM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from 04:10 PM:

White's previous move was by a chancellor from h8 to h10. That chancellor got captured. I now think I know what you mean, is what's the black joker's current power. The stalemate/checkmate status depends on that. And because the last moved white piece until white moves again is a chancellor that does not attack the king. We have a stalemate here.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 04:32 PM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from 04:10 PM:

No matter about my previous comment.


📝Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 04:10 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 03:59 PM:

I have no idea what you mean


Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 03:59 PM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from 03:31 PM:

Agreed, but I'm not sure if it is a different stalemate.


📝Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 03:31 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 03:07 PM:

Ok, diagram updated with Chancellor.

What was White's last move? The version you have doesn't have the updated rules yet, so the black joker can't move. In the updated version, the black joker will have the ability of white's last move, which could make it a checkmate if it attacks the white king. Otherwise, it is still a stalemate under the new rules. Any piece white moves would lead to white's king being in check by the black joker. Even white moving joker (imitating a king) would make black's joker imitate a king and therefore it is still check. Since white cannot move, it's a stalemate.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 03:07 PM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from 02:05 PM:

The short story is that black has just captured an chancellor on h10 and white is to move. The version that I have (I think is the last one published) gives now a stalemate. The long story is that any piece moved by white leads to a king capture by black in the next move. Here actually the black chancellor on e2 has a role to play. The difference from the studies we already have is that a role is played by the white joker who inherits and transmits a king (more actually a man I think) power. Is that in the second case a checkmate or a stalemate? It looks like ChessV as white has sacrificed it's chancellor for an easy draw, but is this a way for black to checkmate the opponent? And most important how should it be? I am confused by this myself. Depending on what you can do Greg, I am ready to adjust the rules in these rare cases. The most important thing is though, that the rules are clear for everybody.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 02:47 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 01:53 PM:

And c is a chancellor, but this actually has no importance!


📝Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 02:05 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 01:53 PM:

This should be close enough for discussion:

diagram

Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 01:53 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 10:02 AM:

The fen of the position, as is found in chessV, is this:

3J3k1w/10/10/8p1/2P5Pp/1S7P/5s4/10/4c4j/7BK1 w - - 0 78

but I did not manage to do it. Here J stands for joker, w stands for wizard, s stands for maasai pawn. The rest are self explanatory.


H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 10:57 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 10:38 AM:

Indeed, it automatically invokes the Diagram Designer, with default settings. For a static image that should be good enough. You can also use the Interactive Diagram as a game viewer, by including a parameter moveList= , followed by all the moves of the game. This preloads the game in the Diagram, and you can then use the buttons in the AI panel to navigate through it.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 10:38 AM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 10:02 AM:

Oklh, that is using the diagram designer, isn't it?


H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 10:02 AM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from 06:30 AM:

You just write a FEN of the position between [ fen] and [ /fen] tags, somewhere in the text of your comment.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Mon, Jan 30, 2023 06:30 AM UTC:

I think I have encountered a new situation involving the joker. I want to post a png with the position but I don't know how. Can someone tell me how to add a picure in the comments?


H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Jan 8, 2023 07:05 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 06:34 PM:

Ah, I see. That is 79%, which is way outside any statistical error bar.


Daniel Zacharias wrote on Sun, Jan 8, 2023 06:34 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 09:05 AM:

So for 106 games it would be around 4%, so that the 62/106 (=58.5%) score is about two standard deviations above equality

What I meant was that white won 62 games more than black. The actual numbers were 80 white wins, 18 black wins, and 8 draws. This was very different from the first test, where black won more, but with a much smaller margin.


H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Jan 8, 2023 09:05 AM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 12:24 AM:

This is an anomalous result; if the games were really independent, the statistical error should decrease as 1/sqrt(numberOfGames). So for 106 games it would be around 4%, so that the 62/106 (=58.5%) score is about two standard deviations above equality, while the other score pointed to equality with a 3% standard error. The standard error in the differens of the two results should be about 5%, so the 58% is off a bit more than you would expect, but not extremely so.

What I often did to make the games more independent is play them as shuffle games. If you shuffle white and black independently (as seems natural for CwDA) you can create a lot of starting positions even when you leave King and corner pieces in place.


Daniel Zacharias wrote on Sun, Jan 8, 2023 12:24 AM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from Sat Jan 7 11:24 PM:

How many is a lot? I did one set of 200 games and had a final score of -2, but then I tried a second set and by the time it got to 106 games the score was 62.


📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Jan 7, 2023 11:24 PM UTC in reply to Daniel Zacharias from 09:23 PM:

What would be good settings for evaluating the balance of a different armies variant? I've tried some tests with 0:30+10 and Medium variation but got conflicting results.

Your results are understandable.  Although the armies are not balanced, they are close, so you need to play a *LOT* of games to get valid results that are not swallowed up by noise.  At a time control of 30+1, you can't play many games.  And such long controls aren't necessary since with games on an 8x8 board ChessV can reach a search depth of 10 in a fraction of a second on a modern computer.  But the other thing to watch out for is that you aren't playing the same game over and over.  The search variation setting helps, but I also use different pre-calculated opening lines.  I will post more about this soon ...


Daniel Zacharias wrote on Sat, Jan 7, 2023 09:23 PM UTC:

What would be good settings for evaluating the balance of a different armies variant? I've tried some tests with 0:30+10 and Medium variation but got conflicting results.


Aurelian Florea wrote on Wed, Jan 4, 2023 03:56 PM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from 03:04 PM:

Thanks!


📝Greg Strong wrote on Wed, Jan 4, 2023 03:04 PM UTC in reply to Aurelian Florea from Tue Jan 3 06:27 AM:

May you specify if the new version is ready? I am on the tip of my toes for that!

I'm sorry, I know you're anxious.  I will post as soon as it is ready, but I can't say when exactly that will be.


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