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Subject: Re: Mate in X during thinking output

Author: F. Huber

Date: 09:25:53 12/27/04

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On December 26, 2004 at 16:27:08, Eric Oldre wrote:

>what is the proper way in the winboard protocol's thinking output section to
>value a mate score?
>
>if there isn't a standard way, then does anyone know what arena uses?
>
>right now i just print very large numbers, arena can tell i'm trying to print a
>mate in x. but gets the x wrong.
>
>Thanks,
>Eric

Hi Eric,

there are 2 usual ways to report a mate value to a Winboard GUI:

1) according to the PGN/EPD standard (see ´ce´ values):

for "Mate in x"  send the value ´32768-2*x´
for "-Mate in x" send the value ´-32767+2*x´

2) the ´King´ engine uses the following values (and some other WB-engines
are imitating this method):

for "Mate in x"  send ´10001-2*x´
for "-Mate in x" send ´-10000+2*x´

If you use the 2nd (King) method, there´s however a problem under Arena:
Arena doesn´t interpret these values correctly and shows a mate value
being wrong by 1 (if the engine is configured as a WB-engine)!
Although I´ve reported this bug already months ago, it´s still not fixed
in the latest Arena version 1.1.
(however such an engine as an UCI-engine by the WB2UCI-adapter works fine,
because this adapter translates these values correctly)

So IMO the first method would be the better and safer one.

Best regards,
Franz.



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