<Stephen>

On "null move" games- it strikes me as a bit frustrating that my Shredder III chess engine, which is 40 years old, has no trouble parsing and playing through a game containing null moves, but our default pgn player can't do that. This is a serious design flaw that needs to be fixed, for OLGA/ARIA's own sakes, let alone ours. The fact that the designers seem to have overlooked this issue prompts me to wonder if they even know what they are doing? Do they have the requisite chess knowledge required to build a new chess program? At present, I would say "the jury is still out" on that.

<Chessbase> has all manner of null move and stub games that begin from some move after the first move, and they have no trouble providing a default pgn player that can handle this.

More- I understand that we have pgn players available here at cg.com that can do this, but in order for that to happen, a person needs to know that the "defualt" OLGA/ARIA player has to be de-selected first. I doubt many people will necessarily know how to do this eh?

Finally, the main reason I bring this up again is that I have another test case for our data collection.

This is the score for a null move game in which Black has the first move- but unlike other null move games that I have previously submitted (and subsequently deleted because OLGA/ARIA can't play them), the Editor page says

< " SUCCESS!
***
Processed 1 games (0 skipped)>

and yet the game has not in fact been processed. It is not in the database. Here is the raw pgn score:

[Event "Move Odds game"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "1856.12.13"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Friedrich Amelung"]
[Black "G Schneehagen"]
[Source "Baltische Schachblatter No.2 p.101"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "

click for larger view

"]

<Stephen>

Potential workarounds:

To sum up, at present there are two problems:

1. Some null move scores do not get processed (see post above)

2. Some null movie scores do get processed into game pages- but the moves cannot be played with OLGA/ARIA.

===========

1. Can you rig something up that will ensure all null move scores get processed?

------

2. Can you rig something up that automatically changes a processed null move game to default to one of our pgn viewers that can actually play through the moves? I guarantee you that if an average customer finds a null move game and tries to play through it, he's not going to go to the viewer menu and look for a viewer that might play through it. He's just going to click to some other game, or some other chess website.

=============

<<Chessbase> has all manner of null move and stub games that begin from some move after the first move>

<MissScarlett> aha I was indeed tweaking the FEN and setup until I found a jury solution that my Shredder III would accept and play.

When I found a way to make Black move first, that is the configuration I tried to process. As <Stephen> points out, the game <was indeed> processed. That said, it was not processed without at least a 10 minute delay, because I checked right after I sent it in, and 10 minutes later it was still not in the database. Normally my uploads are processed instantaneously and appear immediately in the database.

The player in my <Chessbase 14> *can* handle null moves, technically speaking. I didn't find any games there that were actually historical null move games. But it has a feature which led me to the jury-rigged solution to writing the FEN and score for the null-move game I sent in to cg.com. Chessbase can handle stubs in which the score is incomplete- that is, scores which begin some time after the opening moves. That is the technique I copied in order to publish F Amelung vs G Schneehagen, 1856 .

<Stephen> That RED LETTER system seems to be a fine workaround for now.

That said, are we sure we want <OLGA/ARIA> as the default viewer? How sure are we about that? If Shredder III and the viewer for Chessbase 14 and pgn4web can handle null move games, why can't <OLGA/ARIA>?

<MissScarlett>

I should elaborate- the FEN has all the pieces White and Black because all I had to do in order to make the score play on Shredder III was to Edit the game.

If I select "Edit game", a window pops up. In the window, I checked "Black moves 1st." Then I started the actual game, and indeed, Black moved 1st.

Malcolm Farron vs Y Gruenfeld, 1980

but there are only some moves missing at the end.

It seems we should represent null moves with a "--", the ".." syntax can mean more than just a null move ( D Byrne vs Fischer, 1956 , see move 11 ).

We are currently looking for "--", that are not within comments, to signify a null move game.

Let me know if you run into any other cases where we would need to update the search pattern.

Can you please upload:

[Event "Dortmund-B"]
[Site "Dortmund GER"]
[Date "1991.03.??"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Vogt, Lothar"]
[Black "Geller, Efim"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "2510"]
[BlackElo "2525"]
[ECO "C91"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 O-O 8. d4 d6 9. c3 Bg4 10. d5 Na5 11. Bc2 c6 12. h3 Bxf3 13. Qxf3 cxd5 14. exd5 Rc8 15. Nd2 g6 16. b4 Nc4 17. Nxc4 Rxc4 18. a4 Nh5 19. axb5 axb5 20. Bh6 Re8 21. Ra7 Rc7 22. Rea1 Bf6 23. Bd2 Rxa7 24. Rxa7 Rf8 25. Bd3 Nf4 26. Bf1 Bg5 27. Be3 Qc8 28. c4 bxc4 29. g3 c3 30. gxf4 exf4 31. Bc1 Re8 32. Ra3 c2 33. Rc3 Qb7 34. b5 Re1 35. Rxc2 Bf6 36. Bd2 Rb1 37. Rc1 Rxc1 38. Bxc1 g5 39. Qe4 Qb6 1-0

[Event "Dortmund-B"]
[Site "Dortmund GER"]
[Date "1991.03.??"]
[Round "8"]
[White "Vokac, Marek"]
[Black "Geller, Efim"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "2455"]
[BlackElo "2525"]
[ECO "A14"]

1. Nf3 d5 2. c4 e6 3. b3 Nf6 4. Bb2 Be7 5. g3 c5 6. Bg2 Nc6 7. O-O d4 8. e3 e5 9. exd4 exd4 10. d3 O-O 11. Na3 Bf5 12. Nc2 a5 13. a3 Qb6 14. Nh4 Bg4 15. Qd2 Rfe8 16. h3 Bd7 17. Rab1 Bf8 18. Ba1 Qc7 19. b4 axb4 20. axb4 Ra2 21. bxc5 Bxc5 22. Rb2 Rea8 23. Rfb1 b6 24. Nf3 h6 25. Qd1 Qd6 26. Nd2 Rxb2 27. Bxb2 Ra2 28. Ne1 Nb4 29. Ne4 Nxe4 30. Bxe4 Bxh3 31. Ra1 Rxa1 32. Qxa1 Bd7 33. Nf3 Bc6 34. Bxc6 Nxc6 35. Qa8+ Kh7 36. Qe8 Qf6 37. Kg2 g6 38. Bc1 Nb4 39. Qe4 Qc6 40. Qf4 Kg8 41. Qb8+ Kg7 42. Qe5+ f6 43. Qe2 g5 44. Kg1 Qd7 45. Bb2 Nc6 46. Qe4 f5 47. Qe2 Kf6 48. Nd2 Qe6 49. Qd1 Kg6 50. Kf1 g4 51. Nb3 h5 52. Nc1 Ne5 53. Ne2 Qc6 54. Nf4+ Kf7 55. Nd5 b5 56. Qe1 Nxd3 57. Qd2 bxc4 0-1

<URS-ch sf (1945)> needs to be changed to <URS-ch sf (1956)>.

It has something to do with untangling a tid (different tournaments with the same name under one tid).

<Stonehenge> I'm not sure how wise it is to be going whole hog on the new <tid> regime without first checking all of the many thousands of variant event titles in millions of games?

Shouldn't the unification of event titles come before instituting a <tid> regime?

I don't see why it can't be the other way around.

Chessical has been waiting for over two months now, to get his tournament voted in. Clearly this system isn't working.

<Steve>

another problem

Dortmund (1985)

I'm happy to see e. g. Dortmund (1985) in the TI, it's also a good starting point for an eventual "bio". However, things like Italian Championship semifinal (1970) does not belong there yet IMO. It's not a top event, and it's <very> incomplete. There's enough crap in TI as it is.

Italian Championship semifinal (1970) is a good example. That doesn't belong in the TI. But having all games together thanks to the clickable link can't be bad. 365chess for example has Rovigo op which is wrong https://www.365chess.com/tournament....

I left a link on that tournament as a source.