A. CHESS PROBLEMS PUBLISHING.

Historically, problems were shown on printed paper in books or magazines. They consisted of a black and white board with a certain position of pieces, stating who to move black or white and either a mate in n moves or to find the winning move. A solution was given in algebraic notation in an another page of the book or to be found in a next issue of a magazine.

This experience has been transferred to the web page presented via internet. Still today a black and white picture of the board with the pieces is shown in several circumstances and the algebraic solution to be found is by clicking to open a different web page. The same mentality of chess publishing on the usual printed paper document.

However, technology has brought chess at you directly on your PC and new software programs have been developed to assist chess players. On the other side, time is often short and a player in front of his PC wants something more immediate rather than setting aside a wooden chessboard and trying to put his wooden pieces there, while looking to the PC screen.

To improve this situation the first simple method for Publishers is to create a colored chess board picture together with its FEN (position notation) as you have probably seen in an example in the Home Page of this site:

........In the mean time a puzzle here with its FEN below! (constructed by the webmaster, Feb. 2003)   White to move and win - Mate in 6  r3nrk1/p1qp1b1p/6pp/2b3P1/1QP2P2/2BP2P1/P1N2N2/1K3R2 w - - 0 1 This is the FEN position. Copy and paste it in your Chess Software Program. You can try it in ARENA or WINBOARD.

The white circle at the left bottom or black on top
shows who to move. The reader and at the same time user of a PC, can immediately load or paste the FEN in his chess software program, try the moves, check the solution with his chess engine and finally save the puzzle with its solution (or alternative ones) as a PGN file. Nothing of these can be done reading a puzzle in a printed paper magazine.

Of course if you like to spend some time with the nice old style to use your wooden chess board no one  prevents you from doing that. Many others however, would like to use their PC. Why not give them this possibility? Besides the software to create diagrams, as the above, is free and of unlimited use. A detailed description on how to make these diagrams is given in the HOW TO pages.

A second nice method to publish on the same window and at the same time multiple problems is to use the following free program called PGN2JS, that was briefly described in our page HOW TO - II. It frees also the Reader from the use of a separate chess software with chess engines (suppose the Reader is in an Office with a PC where no chess program with engines exists)

NOTE: In this HTML page you can hide the solution moves to the reader and disclose each move in series one after the other. It offers to the Reader a separate little board to try his moves while he examines the puzzle and in more offers to the reader ('built-in' in the HTML page) a chess engine (MiniMax) to help the reader calculate to find the best move. All this in one web page.

You may say that freeware  is OK, but how can I use it? Fine. See here some details on the HOW TO deal with it for your chess problems. Just follow the steps.

Step 1: Prepare your problem(s) to be in the pgn form to be read by PGN2JS. The new version of this program accepts PGN, EPD and FEN files (or a list of fen in a file). It converts all of them in PGN format. If your problem exists on a paper, to transfer it in the PGN2JS, open in it the Game Editor using also copy-paste of the fen (see it below) or setup the position, edit the moves till the checkmate (puzzle solution) and save it as a pgn file.

It is advisable that you check with a chess engine the validity of your chess puzzle. If you have the problem in one or more FEN, EPD or in PGN form you can enter them in a chess software as Arena or the Winboard and make your trials. In Arena all positions loaded are seen in a separate window at left (see the picture at left). FEN and EPD are equally loaded there).

To check if your solution is correct with the Arena GUI and an Engine, set the position on the board and press "Analyze", as in the picture at left, to check the right moves till the checkmate.

The chess engine can also show to you that perhaps there are some other alternatives to checkmate or even that there is no checkmate, as for such it was assumed by problem's author a human mistaken move (e.g. the easy capture of a Queen) which the computer refuses to do (does not accept the gift).  

It is worth to remind here that also EPD2Diag converts FEN or EPD files in PGN format, while it can load also a chess engine for trials. This Software is descibed in detail at the page of Additional Utilities.  

Step 2: Load your pgn as prepared in above Step 1  in the PGN2JS software. Drag and drop is possible. The main window of this is:

Press Tools and click Game Editor.

An example of the Game Editor is seen below where a recent game is presented. In the Editor you can introduce/write your own comments.

Now press on Game Editor the 5th icon from left named 'show game information' . There in place of White write Problem Nr XY (use also Black's space to write).  Delete all the rest and Result: Nr the result. Press OK.  Now make any changes you want with the game editor, insert comments or whatever and click the save icon to save it. You shall repeat it with all the games of your pgn file to publish.

Now you are ready to create your HTML page to upload.

Step 3 : How to create your HTML page with the puzzles or problem(s):

First you have to prepare the settings of PGN2JS for this particular puzzle application. Go now to the main window and click  Convert>Settings or the tools icon top left. The settings window opens. Now you have to make some settings of your own. Of course you have to make some trials. The HTML games you shall see below are made with these setting. Look the Tabs:

Tabs:
Layout: Checked: For each game a new page, Diagram :Left Border:2, Diagram with scrollbar
Advanced: all unchecked
Diagram: Pieces: F33, Border : 1, Coordinates Yes.
Notation: Checked Hide Moves and Icon for start.
Options: Buttons: Checked Board rotation, Analysis button, Analysis Applet.
              Button Captions changed see picture at left: 
              Miscellaneous: Capture sign: x all rest as default.
Custom HTML check only Player. As an option.... all unchecked.
Upload and Problem Chess: all unchecked for the time being.

Within the "move comments" window of the Editor you can also insert a diagram of another position to show a variation. You can try it. The comments window has a large capacity and can each include  more 16,000 words or 113.000 char. with spaces. Also variation moves in the comments, written with different fonts, can be active, so you can click them, see the alternative moves on the board and then return to the position of the current game. There are many relevant details to see for this software at its Home Page at: http://www.mailchess.de/pgntojse.html .

Back to the main window: On top at left there is an icon of the profiles. Save this profile as Puzzle-A. Now, you see all games in the main window of PGN2JS, where the first of them  is selected. Drag down the selection to as many games you want to include in the HTML page. You have to name and set the output folder of the HTML page above this. Now press the button right top "Create HTML/JS". Note that you can load in PGN2JS practically thousands of games, but you if you have limited disc space note that each game in the HTML folder occupies 18-24 KB.

What it comes out is shown here below.

As you can see the moves in the right window are hidden. The empty move 1... shows that white is to move (you could also write in the pgn comments who to move). Now, to move forward one step hit Solution Steps. To go back hit: <<, to flip the board: Flip. The arrows  <--  and  --->  show to pass to another puzzle. The button 'analyze' opens a small board where you can do your trials. In this, the Minimax engine starts also to analyze the positions. This small board is seen here:

Ending, it worth to note that in the above detailed description all software used is freeware.

Pay attention that when you upload the HTML files to internet you have to keep in the Server the same folders as in your PC. The chess figurines and minimax are uploaded once and are used for all the games of the same folder you intend to upload.

To see this better you can download here an HTML page with 30 puzzles (zipped folder: 211 KB. Unzip it to a new Folder e.g HTML-Puzzles and click the file play.html ). Here you can download the relevant PGN (8 KB). Make your trials and let me know. Maybe we can add something of more interest here.

This option used off-line at your PC is good for exercise. You can load many puzzles and you can train a little. To watch regular games, you can activate in the settings to get an autoplayer button,  where you can also set the speed of the pieces to move.

Other free chess JAVA/JAVA Script programs are mentioned HERE.