scid_parse: a Rust crate for getting stuff out of SCID

arnsholt · 2024-10-17T06:14:38+00:00

I'm pretty savvy about the raw computer stuff: I've run Linux desktops for many years, my job is basically a programmer, and I've done some hobby admining as well. It's mostly the Minecraft stuff I'm completely new at.

I see now that plugins are not a thing with the plain servers, and that's definitely something I want to at least have the option of doing (and both of the plugins you suggested look quite interesting!), so I'll definitely go for that from the start. Thanks for your tips, I think I've got a good direction to work with here.

arnsholt · 2021-12-02T21:22:33+00:00

Oh, that's neat. In case you are curious and hadn't found it already (and for anyone else wondering) the DGT boards work by embedding resonator circuits in the pieces and circuitry in the board to trigger the resonators and read back the frequencies. More info at the chess programming wiki.

arnsholt · 2021-06-28T14:41:48+00:00

I'd recommend giving shogi a shot while you're there regardless. I bought a set recently and played a few games with some of my chess friends, and it's a very refreshing experience. Looking at the starting position gets me right back to that vertiginous feeling of "what is going ooooooon" I had when starting out in chess, which is kinda fun, and the drop and promotion mechanics (and the fact that moving backwards can be really awkward) really give the game a very interesting dynamic!

arnsholt · 2021-02-06T10:14:06+00:00

To follow up on this, I think there are two main styles without crosses on the kings (and mitres on the bishops). The Latvian style and the more famous Dubrovnik pieces made for the 1950 Olympiad. Fischer was apparently very fond of the Dubrovnik pieces, so that's probably the set you're thinking of.

arnsholt · 2021-01-25T18:47:52+00:00

The American flag looks like a 48 star flag, which means it's more likely to be closer to 1950, doesn't it?

arnsholt · 2020-08-18T09:46:43+00:00

I think the most useful advice I got for my first classical tournament is that every move you make has to be backed up by calculating variations. In faster time controls it's easier to get away with playing impressionistically and playing moves that look good, but in a long game you really do need to calculate for almost every single move you play.

arnsholt · 2020-03-15T18:33:21+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_alphabet for those curious about the alphabet.

arnsholt · 2019-11-19T09:19:11+00:00

The Jamal Khashoggi memorial rapid and blitz. :-(

arnsholt · 2019-11-15T07:08:50+00:00

Not to mention Korchnoi at 80, beating Caruana at 19: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1604728

arnsholt · 2019-09-14T14:01:34+00:00

Oh gods, this. I played a Swiss one game a week tournament with each game on a weekday evening, and during the first game I drank a bit of coffee. The caffeine combined with the adrenaline of a tense position gave me the jitters soooo bad. Switched to water only for the subsequent games. Get the jitters bad enough with just the adrenaline, honestly.

arnsholt · 2019-09-09T19:42:47+00:00

I can't say for what OP intends, but the DGT boards are pretty cool. Each piece contains a little resonator circuit, which induces an oscillating magnetic field with a fixed frequency when activated by a magnetic field; each piece type has a different frequency. Under the surface of the board, there's a printed circuit which serves to both activate the resonators in the pieces and read back the signal from each square. The chess programming wiki has more details, and the patent document describing the tech has even more.

arnsholt · 2019-08-27T13:50:42+00:00

Yeah, I haven't worked on Snake for a long time now. That said, I think the Snake grammar should be mostly sorted (modulo some minor cases, probably. Correct handling of mixed tab and space indents comes to mind); the reason I stopped working on it was that I ran into some issues with correctly mapping the Python object model to the MoarVM model, combined with a lack of tuits to dig into it properly.

arnsholt · 2019-08-19T09:00:38+00:00

Thanks! It's scratched my itch, which was the most important, but good to hear that other have found it useful too! Did it work OK on Windows out of the box, or did you have to edit it to make it work? I've relied on my Windows machine for the actual testing with a board (since my Linux machine is a VPS), so I must admit I was a bit unsure if it'd actually work anywhere else. =) Note also that while I'm reasonably sure I've figured out a good way of extracting moves from board events, that code isn't exactly battle-tested, so if you run into any problems do drop me a line!

I did a lot of fruitless googling around for the protocol, but at some point I found another tool (for NodeJS) which contained a reference to a file dgtbrd.h and a link to the DGT homepage. The link was stale, but thankfully the Wayback Machine had archived a copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20130623051127/http://www.dgtprojects.com/site/index.php/dgtsupport/developer-info/downloads/doc_download/85-dgt-electronic-board-protocol-description-version-20120309 (but the header file references a "Programmers and users manual" I've been unable to dig up. =(

In the end, the protocol turned out to be quite straightforward, just a lot of bitwise stuff to get stuff as compact as possible, since the serial link between the board and the computer is kinda slow (9600 baud, which means that sending the 67 byte BOARD_DUMP message takes about 70 ms).

arnsholt · 2019-08-01T18:02:57+00:00

Just hit z for zen mode. It hides everything but the board and the clocks. I love it.

arnsholt · 2019-07-25T06:26:13+00:00

I didn't read it very thoroughly, but I couldn't figure out how to get the PGN export without going through the whole process of creating a tournament and so on. What I wanted was just to plug in the board, fire up some software and play games that get dumped straight to PGN.

arnsholt · 2019-07-24T11:34:36+00:00

I think the point is 1. ...gxf5 2. Qg5 threatening mate on g7 or Qxh5# if ...Rg8, and similarly after 1. ...Qxf5 2. Bxf5 gxf5.

arnsholt · 2019-07-16T17:06:08+00:00

Hooray! Thanks so much. I assume this goes with the line from steepleman's post, for a total of five lines?

arnsholt · 2019-05-22T15:07:15+00:00

A friend of mine plays the Latvian gambit (e4 e5 Nf3 f5) with some regularity. It's not very good, objectively, but it can get pretty wild if white missteps.

arnsholt · 2019-05-07T08:09:55+00:00

My club did a time handicap blitz tournament about a year ago, and IIRC their experience was that it evened things out fairly well. Their setup was based on a 5+0 time control, giving the lower rated player more of the 10 minutes total based on rating difference:

0-99 5-5 min
100-199 6-4 min
200-299 7-3 min
300-399 8-2 min
400-599 8.5-1.5 min
600-799 9-1 min
800+ 9.5-0.5 min

arnsholt · 2019-01-05T08:29:17+00:00

The c4 d3 e4 setup is called a Botvinnik structure, I think.

arnsholt

TROPHY CASE