Yet another on line chess program

I've just released a new version (19.4) with the aim of improving it's pawn play. Hopefully it will fair a little better against you guys.

I planning on storing the current settings for a user and their current game.This means you could set up the board appearance and level and then epect it to do this automatically for you from then on. You'd also be able to stop a game half way through and then continue it another day. You'd need to press a save button to save everything though. I can do this by IP address but this means the above will only work if you're on the same computer.

Questions: Would people find this useful? Would people want to continue playing a game or keep their settings on more than one computer ie if you were playing a game at home then might you want to finish of the game during your lunch break at work? Would people find it intuative to type in something like "I am Mike" and then press save which would save your settings against your name rather than your IP address. On a new computer you could again type "I am Mike" and it will just load your settings and the state of the current game. Would people want a password and all the other stuff?

PS You might need to have a slightly more unique name than Mike though.

It played two good games against me, but uh... I found a sacrificial attack while playing as Black that won the game

They looked like good games. Must admit I'm not keen on sacrificing that much material unless I have a very clear win. If the program pushed your queen away or tried to exchange it then you'd of been left a rook and 3 pawns down plus 2 of the program's pawns were connected passed pawns. Even in the 2nd game you appeared to be down a pawn and had a pair of isolated doubled pawns. In any case you played very well to win and you're certainly stromger than your ranking suggests.

I've released a new version (Fun Chess 19.6) (same old URL) which has :

• improved king safety.
• a reduced desire to grab pawns when well ahead.
• a save button that saves your settings either when you press save or when you get to the end of a game. This means you can safely spend the time to set up an appearance that you like and know that it will keep this appearance the next time you visit. If you type "I am Fred" in the field at the bottom of the screen then it will later save your settings as user Fred. Now If you go to another computer and enter "I am Fred" again then it will load the game from where you last saved it. I'll try to think of a better way of doing this but for the moment I'm not sure if it's useful or not.

It's all a bit experimental so lord knows how it will work. It wins alls it's games against the old version of the program and also beats me but then it already did that before. Look forward to your comments.

Mike

Great! Will give the program a run or two in the next few days. Great work on the program Mike!

I don't reall like the idea of using IP addresses, since many aren't static. I know that mine isn't always the same.

I played fairly poorly in this game, but still beat the thing.

You really need to work on it's tactics.

No, I'm playing it at level 6. I'm not patient enough to let it have 1 min. per move. Level 6 is 5 seconds per move, which should be plenty of time to see 4 move tactics.

I've introduced a new version (Fun Chess 19.7) at the old URL.

It plays better and avoids pawn grabbing when ahead. I fixed a lot of bugs and also added a few small features. I'm hoping this will fare better against you guys. I aim to have a look at how user settings are saved next.

Feedback is much appreciated as always.

Mike

Not bad, good try.

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Bb5+ Bd7 4. Bxd7+ Nxd7 5. c4 e6 6. Nc3 Be7 7. d3 Bf6
8. O-O Bxc3 9. bxc3 Ne7 10. Qb3 Rb8 11. a4 Ne5 12. Nxe5 dxe5 13. Rd1 O-O
14. Be3 Qa5 15. Qb5 Qc7 16. Bxc5 a6 17. Qb6 Qxb6 18. Bxb6 Rfc8 19. Rab1 Ra8
20. Rb2 Nc6 21. Kf1 f5 22. f3 fxe4 23. fxe4 Rf8+ 24. Rf2 Rf6 25. Ke2 Rh6
26. h3 Rf6 27. Rdf1 Raf8 28. Rxf6 gxf6 29. d4 Kf7 30. d5 Nb8 31. Kd3 Nd7
32. Rb1 exd5 33. cxd5 Rg8 34. Be3 b5 35. axb5 axb5 36. Rxb5 Rxg2 37. c4 Ke7
38. c5 Kd8 39. c6 Rg3 40. cxd7 Rxh3 41. Rb7 Ke7 42. Ke2 Rh2+ {can't stop Bb6 with queening so I quit}
*

Level 10... took forever :p   Moves 11 and 14 were not good.  During the game I thought 8...Bxc3 wasn't very good, but my computer thinks it's fine.  After that it's just converting advantage.

14...b6 is the sensible move.  I play a5 and have all the fun, even if black is more or less solid.

34...b5 was very odd.  At first it was going to play b6, but then at the end made this move which is worse.

I misread it first; "Yet another one line chess program"

I'm sure it's possible depending on the language. In C/C++ you could put everything on the same line except for compiler directives. I'm sure there are some languages where you can put everything on one line. This would be terrible for readability, as you could probably imagine.

Twobit: Not bad, good try. Ahhh, to damn with faint praise.

chubbychocobo : btw it's no longer 48 hour chess, is it ? ;-) My original 48 hour chess program is still available but obviously when I contuinued working on the program then I had to change the name of it, I chose "fun chess" because I knew the program would never be as strong as some (probably most) other programs but I hoped to make it a bit more fun. I personally don't really enjoy playing Fritz etc because they are just too strong for me but I actually enjoy playing my program because it does have weaknesses that I can try to exploit.

Twobit : I misread it first; "Yet another one line chess program" It's roughly 8000 lines long and written in Java which means you can play it in your browser without installing anything. C/C++ would give a reasonable speed  gain and hence improve the strength but, because it would need to be installed, most people wouldn't play it. If you are familiar with programming and want a "moderately difficult" challenge then try writing a function that will just list all the valid moves in a given position.

wafflemaster : ... Thanks for the game commentary, I'll work my way through your comments and try to see if I can improve things.

If players are moderately strong (>1800) then I'd suggest playing a timed game, ie set the timer to 5 minutes a side and have a blitz game. I'm not sure how much stronger the program is when it thinks for a minute rather than 5 seconds - I suspect it doesn't make a huge amount of difference.

Hope you guys enjoyed your games and thanks for playing it

I did not mean "faint praise". For a dumb user like me, the interface is everything; there are many commercial computer programs, apps out there (my favorite is "Chess Genius") and to have one program emerge from the pool as exceptional, the bells are whistles are perhaps more important than the strength itself. Here I felt some need to beautify. I have no idea about the programming going into this or the playing strength. So, by no means was I trying to "give ya an attaboy"...

Apologies for not providing any new versions etc. I'm currently out in Greece and, while hiding from the heat, I've been making some improvements. The new version (same old URL) is a Java web application which means you should be able to install it locally and it should load much faster on subsequent runs. You do have to click the launch button though. I've also fixed a number of small issues which should make it play better.

Feedack is much appreciated as always.

Mike

I've just released yet another new version. It offers:

• A better opening book
• It names openings as they are played
• You can enter the name of an opening ie Benoni or A67 and it will layout that opening.
• You can step forward and back through games
• Various other small bug fixes

Has anyone tried it yet?

Mike

I will try it when I get home tonight. :)

Well, after 19 months I thought I better do a bit more to my little chess program

Fun Chess

• One big addition is that it now plays a number of chess variants - go to "options > variants". I'd never played a chess variant before but actually quite enjoyed the ones I tried. I wouldn't mind hearing some feedback on this (or any aspect) as it's sometimes a little tough to fully understand the rules and then it's also difficult teaching the program the best way to play.
• The program will now remember your settings and where you are in the game. You can now stop the program and resume at any point.
• The "coach > comments" has been improved and hopefully gives people a moderate understanding of how the game is progressing.
• It no longer runs as an applet because Java has stopped supporting these. I'll aim to tuen it into a windows installable program at some point.

Thanks for reading and sorry for not having kept more in touch.

Mike