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Subject: Three engines that play FRC

Author: Slobodan R. Stojanovic

Date: 13:52:47 06/02/03

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For now there are three engines that play FRC:

1. Betsy
2. Chispa
3. Baron (The Baron)

but there are still some problems with castling rules.

For me two points were very importante to understand the FRC castling rules:

a) squares between King and Rook must be empty, like in classic chess
b) destination squares must be empty as well (it is obvious) - g1&f1 (g8&f8) for
H castling, c1&d1 (c8&d8) for A castling
c) but squares between H castling rook and H castling destination squares (f1g1
- f8g8) MAY BE FILLED; or squares between A castling rook and A castling
destination squares (c1d1 - c8d8) MAY BE FILLED.

For example: If we have a white position
rook on a1
king on b1
rook on d1
after H castling we´ll have king on g1 and rook on f1.

Conditions for H castling realization:
a) C square, the square between king and H castling rook on D square, must be
empty, and not attacked (king musnt be under check ...)
b) F1 and G1 squares must be free.
c) E square, however MAY BE OCCUPIED BY ANY WHITE PIECE WITHOUT PROBLEM.

In these kind of cases we have some kind of MAGIC move.

It seems that Chispa handles well these situations, but Betsy and Baron admitt
castling only when all squares between king rook and destination squars are
empty.

All three engines, however, don´t habdle well the illegal castling, which is
allowed by Arena GUI:

Arena allows user to performe castling transporting King and Rook on their
destination (emptied) squares, without considering other conditions. THe three
engines stop playing, instead of rejecting invalid entry move and expect a valid
one.

SL.









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