Yet another on line chess program

Hello Mike

I am starting a new chess class this Thursday for 4, 5, and 6th grade kids. So I am going to send 30 to use your Chess and they will tell me what they find.

Bye for now

Here's another game:

EminenceGrise : You might want to fix the opening book in the caro khan. I found I can trap the bishop every time with basic theory.
Some of the openings in the opening book are marked as being ones not to play and I suspect the program is still playing them anyway. I'll try and get a quick bug fix out for this before fixing the issue completely. At least I hope that's the issue.

browni3141 : I set up the same position and it still lost on level 6. Strangely, if I set up the position 1 ply before and play Kh2, it plays Kxh6.
I'll admit defeat then and look deeper into the problem - can you say on which move you felt it went wrong, approximately why and what would be a better continuation?

Jordan_G : I think it still have a problem with pawns, it doesn't understand the passed pawn power
I'll go through your game and see what it was thinking - it should understand passed pawns but perhaps still isn't rewarding them highly enough.

Jordan_G : and also seems to "lack a plan" in the end game.
sadly it's a computer program

Jordan_G : I LOVE the new layout!
At last someone noticed !

DENVERHIGH : I am starting a new chess class this Thursday for 4, 5, and 6th grade kids. So I am going to send 30 to use your Chess and they will tell me what they find.
They'll probably tell you it's just not as interesting as facebook. If any do play then I'd be interested in what they say.

Just released Fun Chess 19.1 (same oold URL).

It has sliding pieces, a few more options and a slightly better engine. I look forward to your comments.

Mike

Just done a bunch of bug fixes and released Fun Chess 19.2

Any feedback? anything?

Sorry mike I've been pretty busy lately and I read your update, but then forgot to come back here! I will try to look at the program and play a game or two this weekend and write back. :)

The program looks good mike, I think you've done a great job! I think you have good customization options on appearance, the skill level options, timers, ect. The only things I can think of that could improve it even more is if you had a better option to save the games played, either on a bigger screen size on the bottom or off to a side, just so people can more readily see the notion and know they can copy it. A system to be able to email the games to themselves would be excellent, but I have no idea if that is even possible for you to do. Just the ability to see the whole notion easier in a "chat box" would be fine.

 I think the engine strength is good enough, you can always improve it but it isn't necessary in my opinion. It is strong enough to challenge the average player (like me) that plays it I think and beat them at least once in awhile. It doesn't seem to play closed positions that well but that is normal for computers I think.

I'm very impressed with your program! I'll recommend players play it. :)

You can copy the game notation at the bottom of the screen. I'm not sure whether people like to enter their email address into anything these days. Perhaps I could have a save button to store the game settings and current position - would that be useful?

I wondered about adding some helpful hints options ie

• the best piece to move
• your best move as it sees it
• show any vunerable pieces
• comment if you play a bad move
• as well as the current option of showing all legal moves
• an analysis of the whole game
• an evaluation of the current position

It's much appreciated if you do recommend it to others - it's quite nice for me to see people playing it. I know what you're saying about playing strength - it beats me already so it's difficult knowing whether I'm making stronger or not - and the other question is who am I making it stronger for. I'd like to get it to 2000 ELO as it seems like a nice round number.

Mike

Yeah I know you can copy it from the bottom of the screen but I found sometimes i missed a few of the moves because when it scrolls to the side as you copy it you can't easily see if you got all the notation. Maybe I am just using the wrong way to copy it and their is an easier way to avoid that. I just thought I more noticable notion box might be helpful but I'm not a programmer so I wouldn't know how easy it would be to do that or even if it is necessary like you said. The save game position and settings could be useful, especially if someone can't complete a full game at one time. I'm not sure all the ins and outs that you could do, but that could be a useful feature.

Those suggestions you have would be nice, especially if you put them under a coaching feature!

I probably would focus on the feature stuff for now and maybe go back to the strength of the engine later, perhaps if you get requests or complaints about its playing strength. But as is, I think the average player will get a challenge from it. Higher rated players, like 1900+, probably will play against Fritz and other such programs if they play against an engine anyway, so I can't imagine you'd ever need to get the engine strength over a 2000 ELO anyway. I'm pretty sure it has at least a 1600+ ELO strength right now. Maybe someone can test your engine against another engine with a measured ELO, like the ChessMaster software or Fritz, one's that you can lower and raise to a certain estimated ELO like "1600" ELO or "1800" ELO ect, and get a more accurate measurement for its current estimated ELO.

Those Coaching features you listed would be my suggestion to work on. It is doing great! You should begin thinking of a name for it, and if you get it polished enough as you want it maybe you could eventually make it into a downloadable program! I'd buy it! :)

First of all, I really like the new interface. It looks much better, less cluttered, and easier to understand. Well done.

I usually play blitz against it, but decided to go for one game with no time controls (highest level of course). Here are some highlights from the game:

- It played through the opening stage well. The moves had a purpose, no strategical errors as far as I can tell.

- In the middle game it seemed to have concrete attacking plans - it tried to create ideas in the position, rather than playing passively. That's very good.

- Eventually the position became quite sharp, as I was trying to create counter-attack on it's king. It made a questionable move, grabbing a pawn and wrecking it's pawn structure around the king. Perhaps it underestimated my attacking chances? Anyway, I managed to keep pressing forward, and at some point, my attack did prove to be fatal. To it's defence, however, it did defend quite vigorously to the end - and while it had a maximum of one minut per move, I sometimes took the liberty of analysing a little further - but, well, he's the computer after all!

In summary, it gave a good fight and the game was very enjoyable. I could crudely estimate it's playing strength around 1700-1800. I added the game with some annotations:

I also tried playing against it today :)

It was actually ok, it played the French, I was attacking, but I couldn't get through in the end and I had to enter a rook endgame a pawn down... but I won ;) so I guess it ought to improve its endgame play, the middlegame is not so bad.

Hm...All I got was an error message.

Jordan_G : Those Coaching features you listed would be my suggestion to work on. I've just released a new version with coaching features (Fun Chess 19.2). I've no idea what you'll make of these features but hopefully they'll be useful to those still learning the game.

Shoopi : In summary, it gave a good fight and the game was very enjoyable. I could crudely estimate it's playing strength around 1700-1800. I added the game with some annotations. Thanks for your feedback - I'll play through the game and see where it can be improved. My main aim is to make the program fun to play against while slowly improving it's strength. All suggestions are welcome.

the_cheradenine : I guess it ought to improve its endgame play, the middlegame is not so bad. Your 2000 ELO is still a little strong for it at the moment. You might have a more even game if you use time controls - say 5 or 10 minutes a side. Any feedback on improving it's strength is welcome.

chessisgood : All I got was an error message. It's just a java applet so it should run fine. It is a little larger than many applets though at half a MB so it might be best just to wait a short while for it to load. If the problem persists then please advise what type of OS etc you're running.

Thanks for playing it everyone.

just played a game, to lazy to annotate right now, improve its kings gambit

Just upped the level to Level 7, it played well, but it went to the defencive after it made a mistake early on

Over all the computer did well, but maybe you should work on teaching it about tempo

I don't see a loss of tempo there. I think the computer's biggest mistake was allowing you to advance your f-pawn on 16...Nd7

I thought that capturing the c3 pawn and then moving back to c7 was a tempo loss, but then again thats why I am 1250 somthing and you are in the high 1700s

You actually seem fairly underrated to me based on the games you've posted here if you play that well all of the time. Most 1200's I've played seem to blunder all over the place.

Also, I looked back and yes black did lose a tempo, but a pawn is almost always worth a single tempo. The 'rule' here is that a pawn is worth approximately three tempi. My personal style tends to prefer material also.

I prefer initiative, but yes sometimes material is worth that loss of tempo, or some other comparable thing, I am actualy suprised at how quickly I beat it with both of the open (fairly) games I played it in The KG one, I was half asleep so I blame that for how long it took me to finish it off.