Pixelpusher

Nowadays, you can buy many very strong computer programs for your PC. The newest version of Rebel is challenging grandmaster and nearly world-champion Anand. Programs have ELO-ratings, much higher than most of us can even dream to get close to. The Pixelpusher program takes a step in the other direction: it is might well the weakest playing chess program in the world! If you are again beaten up badly by your commercial chess playing program, try Pixelpusher!

There are now webpages for chess, and some variants of chess:

Chess.
Almost Chess.
Amazon Chess.
Centerless Chess.
Chancellor Chess.
Paulowich's Chancellor Chess.
Paulowich's Amazon Chess.
Chess on a Board with 37 squares.
Demi Chess.
Dunsany Chess.
Los Alamos Chess.
Modern Chess.
TryThis Chess. You have a normal set of pieces, and the computer has seven queens.

How to use the applets

To make a move, first (left) click on a piece, and then on its destination square.
To deselect a piece, (left) click again on the selected piece.
To castle, (left) click on the king and then on its destination square. The rook moves automatically with it.
To go back to the original setup, double-click with the right mouse button on the board.
To take back your last move, click once with the right mouse button.
The applet checks legality of the moves, including check. It follows the chess moves precisely, except that it does not allow you to promote a piece to something different from a queen, and:
The applet does not determine stalemate or mate, draw by repetition, or draw by the 50 moves rule.

Pixelpusher plays variants of chess

There are actually two versions of the applet: one that plays chess, and one that plays chess or its variants. By calling the applet with choices of parameters, the applet can play variants of chess:

boards of different sizes. The columns parameter is used to give the number of colums. The rows parameter is used to give the number of rows.
Different setups. These are given in FFEN (with limitations.)
squares that may not be used or passed (except by knights). These are given in the FFEN as a -.
Chancellors: pieces that move like bishop or rook.
Bishops with the Bishops Conversion Rule.
Marshalls: pieces that move like bishop or knight.

Known bugs

Promotion is automatically to a queen. Promotion to different pieces is not possible.
Counterplay of the computer is very weak.
The computer only plays black.

The name

I named it Pixelpusher, after the name `woodpusher' for a chess player that actually do not think when they play a game of chess.

Comments?

Comments are appreciated. Send email to Hans Bodlaender. You can download all files from this directory, as of May 14, 1998:

Download all files, in zipfile.

See the chess-only applet for downloading the files of a version that plays only normal chess.

Version

This is version 0.3. Version 0.1 was made by Hans Bodlaender. Improvements on it were made by Eli Bachmupski. It uses the event model of JDK 1.1, which means you probably need Netscape version 4 or higher or Internet Explorer version 4 or higher.

WWW page and applet made by Hans Bodlaender and Eli Bachmupsky.

WWW page created: May 14, 1998. Last modified: September 30, 1999.