/ 
Games-Chess-Coverage-0.0101
/ Games::Chess::Coverage

NAME

Games::Chess::Coverage - Expose the potential energy states of a chess game

VERSION

This document refers to $Revision: 1.17 $ of $RCSfile: Coverage.pm,v $ last revised by $Author: gene $ on $Date: 2004/05/09 23:33:11 $.

SYNOPSIS

use Games::Chess::Coverage;

$g = Games::Chess::Coverage->new;
$g = Games::Chess::Coverage->new( fen => $fen_string );
$g = Games::Chess::Coverage->new( game => $games_chess_object );

$pieces = $g->pieces;
$states = $g->states;

DESCRIPTION

A Games::Chess::Coverage object represents a chess game in terms of move and capture states by location.

A piece's coverage extends within it's limit of mobility or until a collision occurs with another piece.

In my mind this module:

  • Is a chess analysis laboratory

  • Measures potential energy

  • Represents tension as a landscape

  • Shows footprint interference patterns (trends?)

  • Delineates power stuggle

  • Looks cool when visualized :-)

Note: This is not a chess playing module. It simply returns the state of a chess board. If you want to know what the coverage might be in say five ply, you must generate the FEN (or Games::Chess object) first. Please see "TO DO" for more details.

PUBLIC METHODS

CONSTRUCTOR

  • new

    $g = Games::Chess::Coverage->new( %attributes );

    Create a new Games::Chess::Coverage object based on the following optional attributes provided to the constructor as named parameters:

    Key      Default
________________
verbose => 0
game  => new Games::Chess::Position
fen   => rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1

    That is, calling the constructor with no arguments creates a new Games::Chess object with the traditional starting board position.

ACCESSORS

  • pieces

    $pieces = $g->pieces;

    This method returns a hash reference of the game coverage object's Games::Chess::Piece's keyed by their location.

  • states

    $states = $g->states;

    This method returns a hash reference of board location states.

CONVENIENCE METHODS

  • warp_spacetime

    $g->warp_spacetime( $manifold );

    Warp local space-time.

EXAMPLES

Coming soon to a theatre near you...

Until then, take a look at the eg directory in this distribution.

TO DO

Represent pawn promotion.

Make this tiny and fast with bit vector matrix calculations.

Use Chess::PGN::Filter and build a list of coverages for entire games in PGN.

Output ChessGML.

SEE ALSO

Games::Chess

This is a great site:

http://www.chessclub.demon.co.uk/tutorial/beginner/intro/intro.htm

Of course there is also

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Chess.html

This is a related (possibly mathematically equivalent) concept:

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~perry/maths/chessgraph/chessgraph.htm

Here is a chess glossary with many analysis terms:

http://www.jeremysilman.com/chess_glossary/glossary_chess_terms_a.html

What document on visualization would be complete without references to Edward R. Tufte?

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00013l&topic_id=1&topic=Ask%20E%2eT%2e and http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000Mn&topic_id=1&topic=Ask%20E%2eT%2e

And what chess module about analysis would be complete without a reference to the Canon of educational chess games?

http://www.ex.ac.uk/~dregis/DR/Canon/canonidx.html

DEDICATION

My chess playing Brother, Aaron. Hi Aaron. :-)

AUTHOR

Gene Boggs <gene@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2004, Gene Boggs

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.