Dealing with the Scourge of the DGT Board

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Ian Thompson
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Dealing with the Scourge of the DGT Board

Post by Ian Thompson » Sat Jul 30, 2016 11:45 am

I frequently find games in my downloaded database that are really duplicates, but where one of the two games has an extra move at the end of either Kd4, Ke4, Kd5 or Ke5. That's almost certainly caused by the game being played on a DGT electronic board. There seem to be a few of these in TWIC every week.

Can anyone suggest a search that can be done in Chessbase to find such games, i.e. where the last move of the game is one of Kd4, Ke4, Kd5 or Ke5?

Angus French
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Re: Dealing with the Scourge of the DGT Board

Post by Angus French » Sat Jul 30, 2016 12:14 pm

Perhaps this can be done using the Chess Query Language. I've not tried it but an archived (Windows command line) version appears to be available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20140130143 ... n.com/cql/

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John Upham
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Re: Dealing with the Scourge of the DGT Board

Post by John Upham » Sat Jul 30, 2016 12:27 pm

Ian,

I have used

http://help.chessbase.com/Reader/12/Eng ... 000071.htm

to hunt for themes such as Greek Gift sacrifices, stalemates and the like.

I would guess you could use this for what you seek?
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E Michael White
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Re: Dealing with the Scourge of the DGT Board

Post by E Michael White » Sat Jul 30, 2016 2:45 pm

Ian Thompson wrote:I frequently find games in my downloaded database that are really duplicates, but where one of the two games has an extra move at the end of either Kd4, Ke4, Kd5 or Ke5. That's almost certainly caused by the game being played on a DGT electronic board. There seem to be a few of these in TWIC every week.
Hello Ian, do you have an example TWICS number where this occurs so I can see if my methods trap these?

Ian Thompson
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Re: Dealing with the Scourge of the DGT Board

Post by Ian Thompson » Sat Jul 30, 2016 5:13 pm

E Michael White wrote:Hello Ian, do you have an example TWICS number where this occurs so I can see if my methods trap these?
This file
TWIC-Dups.pgn
contains 16 games from the last 5 TWICs where there is pretty obviously a spurious last move in the game. The first 12 are detected as duplicates if the last move is removed. The last 4 are not.
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Joey Stewart
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Re: Dealing with the Scourge of the DGT Board

Post by Joey Stewart » Sun Jul 31, 2016 9:36 pm

What I find most baffling is that they are still using such a primative method of reporting the result in the 21st century. Surely it would not be too much to ask for a win/loss/ draw button to be added to future dgt models.
Lose one queen and it is a disaster, Lose 1000 queens and it is just a statistic.

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John Clarke
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Re: Dealing with the Scourge of the DGT Board

Post by John Clarke » Sun Jul 31, 2016 11:09 pm

Joey Stewart wrote:What I find most baffling is that they are still using such a primative method of reporting the result in the 21st century. Surely it would not be too much to ask for a win/loss/ draw button to be added to future dgt models.
And while they're at it, something to indicate when a loss was through exceeding the time limit.
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MartinCarpenter
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Re: Dealing with the Scourge of the DGT Board

Post by MartinCarpenter » Mon Aug 01, 2016 9:27 am

You'd have to be quite careful that the button isn't something that could be pressed accidentally (or with malicious intent, but I doubt that'd be common.). Hence arranging the kings I guess.

E Michael White
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Re: Dealing with the Scourge of the DGT Board

Post by E Michael White » Mon Aug 01, 2016 9:36 am

I don't know much about DGT clocks but wouldn't placing the king, belonging to the player who does not have the move, on the central square first be recognised as an illegal move and then as a result indicator when followed by the other king. If not why not ?

Alex McFarlane
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Re: Dealing with the Scourge of the DGT Board

Post by Alex McFarlane » Mon Aug 01, 2016 11:09 am

DGT has 'invented' acube that you can put on the board to record the result. No indication of the additional cost but the fact they were talking about having one per arbiter rather than one per board might be an indication that they will not be cheap.
The idea of one per arbiter was dismissed by those present so this might explain the lack of progress in the 10 months since the announcement.