Deadpos Analyzer 2

Tool for designing, analyzing and solving chess compositions based on dead reckoning.

Installation

Make sure you have opam and python-chess, which you can install with:

• sudo apt install opam && opam init -y
• pip3 install python-chess.

Then, after cloning the repository and from the src/ directory:

1. Run make get-stockfish to download and compile Stockfish. Then install Stockfish with sudo make install-stockfish.

2. Run make get-cha to download and compile CHA. Then install CHA with sudo make install-cha.

3. Run make get-sherlock to download and build our retraction and legality engine.

4. Compile the tool with make. (You may need to enable shared libraries with sudo /sbin/ldconfig -v first.)

5. Make sure everything worked fine by running make test.

Usage

After completing the installation steps, run the tool with python3 deadpos.py from the src/ directory. This will start a process which waits for queries from stdin. A query must be a valid FEN, followed by a list of commands separated by >>=. (Input lines starting with // are ignored.)

The following commands are supported. They are all functions applied to a position, which return a list of objects (typically, positions).

• retract (or r for short): retracts all possible moves.

• move (or m for short): performs all possible forward moves.

• legal: analyzes the legality of the position and its history. This may label the position as:

  • illegal (FIDE illegal), when the position is unreachable from the starting position via a sequence of legal moves (this does not considering FIDE Article 5.2.2 about "dead positions").
  • zombie, when it is FIDE legal, but all possible legal retractions are from dead positions.
  • No label if FIDE legal and non-zombie.

  This command also analyzes whether a position is alive/dead when the position is the result of a retraction or it is part of a longer sequence of moves, possibly labeling the position as "dead".

• DP : labels the position as "DP" (dead position) or "alive".

• flip: flips the turn. This also resets the halfmove clock, and the en-passant flags to ? (but preserves castling rights). The position(s) after a flip become the "game array", i.e., they are legal by default.

• turn: returns the turn of the given position.

• castling : returns the castling rights of the given position.

• ep : returns the en-passant privileges of the given position.

• A solve command. The following solve commands are supported:

  • #[0-9]+[.5]?: forced mate in the given number of moves.
  • h#[0-9]+[.5]?: help mate in the given number of moves.
  • h=[0-9]+[.5]?: help stalemate in the given number of moves.
  • hdp[0-9]+[.5]?: help dead position in the given number of moves.
  • h~=[0-9]+[.5]?: help draw (stalemate or dead) in the given number of moves.

  This transforms the position into the final position of every solution. (The monadic chain >>= may continue from those.)

  A solve command can be succeded (after a blank space) with a piece type in round brackets (to choose from p, n, b, r, q, k). This will constrain the last move to have been performed by a piece of the indicated type.

  On every query, the tool will produce one line output per solution found. If there exist shorter solutions that make the composition unsound, the tool is guaranteed to display at least one (but not all).

For example:

// Julio Sunyer, 1923 (The Chess Amateur)
>>> 4k3/8/8/7K/8/8/8/8 b - - >>= r >>= r >>= h#1
↶Kg6xRh5 ↶Rh8xQh5 O-O Qh5-h7# 5rk1/8/6K1/7Q/8/8/8/8 w - - 1 2
nsols 1

// Andrew Buchanan, 2001 (1 Retros mailing list 24th Jan)
>>> k7/8/2K5/8/8/8/8/8 ? >>= legal >>= turn
b
nsols 1

Further details

• Our routine considers all possible retractions leading to well-formed positions (exactly one king per side, no pawns on 1st or 8th rank, etc) even if they are illegal. Furthermore, in virtue of FIDE Article 5.2.2, all positions preceeding a dead position should be alive. Our retractor still displays those that are dead, but it labels them if the command legal is used.

• We perform minimal legality checks on a position, by checking whether it admits at least a retraction. This means at the moment our legality analysis is a semi-decision procedure. If a position is labeled as "illegal", it is definitely illegal. However, non-labeled positions could be illegal and escape our current logic. We are working on making this legality check more complete.

• Even though we display illegal and dead (retracted from dead) positions, they do not carry on to the next command. For example, 6 possible well-formed retractions are shown after the following command:

  >>> 8/8/8/8/2Q5/k7/1pP5/K7 w - - >>= r >>= legal
  ↶b3-b2+ 8/8/8/8/2Q5/kp6/2P5/K7 b - - ? 0
  ↶c3xPb2+ illegal (unretractable) dead 8/8/8/8/2Q5/k1p5/1PP5/K7 b - - ? 0
  ↶c3xQb2+ dead 8/8/8/8/2Q5/k1p5/1QP5/K7 b - - ? 0
  ↶c3xRb2+ dead 8/8/8/8/2Q5/k1p5/1RP5/K7 b - - ? 0
  ↶c3xBb2+ dead 8/8/8/8/2Q5/k1p5/1BP5/K7 b - - ? 0
  ↶c3xNb2+ dead 8/8/8/8/2Q5/k1p5/1NP5/K7 b - - ? 0
  nsols 1
  

  However, 5 of them were labeled as either illegal or dead. If we then apply another command, e.g. >>= h=1.5, these 5 will not be considered in the analysis, only the very first one 8/8/8/8/2Q5/kp6/2P5/K7 b - - ? 0.

• In case our dead position subroutine fails to determine whether a position is dead, the following error message will be raised:

  >>> B2b4/8/4k3/8/1p1p1p1p/1PpP1P1P/K1P4b/RB6 b - - 0 1 >>= DP
  RuntimeError: CHA failed on B2b4/8/4k3/8/1p1p1p1p/1PpP1P1P/K1P4b/RB6 b - - 0 1
  

  In a successful execution, every computation regarding dead positions is sound in the sense that the tool either finds a helpmate (proving the position is alive) or definitely proves that the position is dead.

• FEN tokens can be unspecified with ?, in which case, the tool will consider all plausible values of that token. For example, the following considers that the en-passant flag takes values - or g6.

  >>> 6br/4Bp1k/5P2/5PpK/4B1P1/8/8/8 w - ? ? 100
  6br/4Bp1k/5P2/5PpK/4B1P1/8/8/8 w - - ? 100
  6br/4Bp1k/5P2/5PpK/4B1P1/8/8/8 w - g6 ? 100
  nsols 2
  

• Not all 6 FEN tokens are necessary. If fewer tokens are specified, the remaining will be filled with ?.

• When the halfmove clock is specified, it will be considered in the computation of retractions. That is, if it is specified to be 0, the last move must have been a capture or a pawn move. Analogously, when it is strictly positive, all retractions will be officer non-captures. For example:

  >>> k7/8/2K5/8/8/8/8/8 b - - 0 50 >>= r >>= legal
  ↶Kd7xPc6 k7/3K4/2p5/8/8/8/8/8 w - - ? 50
  ↶Kd7xQc6 k7/3K4/2q5/8/8/8/8/8 w - - ? 50
  ↶Kd7xRc6 k7/3K4/2r5/8/8/8/8/8 w - - ? 50
  ...
  nsols 21
  

  but

  >>> k7/8/2K5/8/8/8/8/8 b - - 1 50 >>= r >>= legal
  ↶Kd7-c6 dead k7/3K4/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 50
  ↶Kd5-c6 dead k7/8/8/3K4/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 50
  ↶Kb5-c6 dead k7/8/8/1K6/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 50
  ↶Kc7-c6 zombie k7/2K5/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 50
  ↶Kc5-c6 dead k7/8/8/2K5/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 50
  ↶Kd6-c6 dead k7/8/3K4/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 50
  ↶Kb6-c6 zombie k7/8/1K6/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 50
  nsols 0
  

• The convention on solve commands is that White should make the last move. Thus, one of the two players is expected to perform the first move. For example, Black is expected to make the first move on h#3. Positions whose turn does not match the expected turn are discarded without further analysis. However, the expected turn can be flipped by including the term half-duplex next to the specification. For example:

  >>> 8/8/2B5/5Q2/8/4p2P/4k2K/8 w - - >>= h#3 half-duplex
  Qf5-b1 Ke2-f2 Bc6-h1 e3-e2 Qb1-f1+ e2xf1=N# 8/8/8/8/8/7P/4pk1K/5Q1B b - - 1 3
  nsols 1
  

  Furthermore, if the term duplex is specified, both WTM and BTM positions will be considered.

• For the impatient folk, you can run Deadpos with flag --fast to significantly speed-up the analysis of dead positions. This means the analysis may miss some complicated dead positions and there is no way to know about it. Use this flag if you want to find cooks (if they exist, they will probably be found with this method) or you are designing a problem. However, in order to mark a problem as C+ (computer tested) you should run the program without this flag.

• You can disable the progress bar with --no-progress-bar.

• Use --uci to display moves in UCI notation (the default is LAN).

• Use --sherlock to enable futher (and computationally more expensive) legality checks, via Sherlock, when using the legal command.

Feedback

Please, open an issue if you have any suggestions.

Enjoy!