Get a quick Sudoku fix on the iRex iLiad

[Bob Russell]

Heh.. I guess you didn't press submit fast enough, igorsk.
Great minds think alike! ;-)

[Devlar]

Originally Posted by tribble

chess on the other hand is a multiplayer game, which offers a totally different level of difficulty. You simply can not calculate all possible moves and choose the best one there is in a reasonalbel amount of time. Thats why computers still loose against human beeings.

Indeed they do, because the games are usually based on brute force tactics. In a few years though, with processing power accelerating it is unlikely that many humans will still triumph.

That being said, there are several chess puzzles that could be manufactured easily by a computer:

• Forced Mates (Mate in 2, 3, 4, ...)
• Find Forks
• Find Skewers
• Find Hung Piece
• Pin Pieces
• Avoid Mate

Probably several more.

[k2r]

Originally Posted by Devlar

I'm not totally certain, but I'm wondering if a similar program exists for generating chess problems as does for the Sudoku puzzles?

How would you solve these problems? Would you just need a way to present the setup board and find the solution in your head or would you need a digital board you can move the pieces on?

#!chris

[doctorow]

Uhm, I think I'll stick to my trial & error approach. Don't get me wrong, I like the mathematical solutions, but, heh, where is the challenge in using some simple formula to solve a puzzle?

[Devlar]

Originally Posted by k2r

How would you solve these problems? Would you just need a way to present the setup board and find the solution in your head or would you need a digital board you can move the pieces on?

#!chris

Well the former would be easier since there is no SDK, and no real way to set up a digital board. I'd just like to find a piece of software that can randomly generate these puzzles.

If there were an SDK we could try to get xboard working and import the puzzles through pgn files. (Granted I'm not sure how the lack of root would effect compiling something like that)

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Devlar

Indeed they do, because the games are usually based on brute force tactics. In a few years though, with processing power accelerating it is unlikely that many humans will still triumph.

That being said, there are several chess puzzles that could be manufactured easily by a computer:

• Forced Mates (Mate in 2, 3, 4, ...)
• Find Forks
• Find Skewers
• Find Hung Piece
• Pin Pieces
• Avoid Mate

Probably several more.

This could be helpful: http://chesstask.sourceforge.net/
We'll be working on adding all sorts of games that you can find in newspapers for Feedbooks, chess will be included somehow sooner or later.

Right now we can already generate random sudokus, here's an example for the iLiad: http://download.feedbooks.com/Random%20Sudoku%20(4-4).pdf

Still got some issues with the generation speed but the rest is ready. Multiple RSS feeds + games should be available as soon as we have a better % of supported RSS feeds.