PROBLEMBOT

***** ProblemBot *****

ProblemBot is similar to TrainingBot (see "help TrainingBot"), except
that it is for chess compositions.  While TrainingBot has fairly
practical positions often adapted from real games, most ProblemBot
puzzles are unusual-looking positions with surprising, subtle and
often quite beautiful answers.  Also, some of the ProblemBot puzzles
have stipulations or unusual goals, so be sure to read the problem
statement.  As with TrainingBot, the problems have all be submitted
by ICC users.  

ProblemBot will kibitz what the goal is, the category, who submitted
the problem, any specific stipulation, and the difficulty level (from
one to eight stars).  If you don't see this message, perhaps you have
kibitzes disabled.  You can enable kibitzes with "set kibitz 1" or via
the Options menu.

You can use "say hint" to get a hint, if the problem author put one in.
Or "say give" and ProblemBot will tell you the next move.  Or "say skip"
if you just want to skip this problem.  After completing or skipping
the problem, you can use "rematch" or "play problembot" to get the
next problem.  

If you only want problems in a specific category, you can use
"tell problembot category " before doing "play problembot".
Categories are:
        
   Two-movers   
   Three-movers   
   More-movers   
   Studies   
   Helpmates   (not implemented yet, but you can submit them)
   Selfmates   (see below)
   Retros      (see below)
   Unorthodox  
   Compositions  (miscellaneous)

In Selfmates, you are to FORCE Black to checkmate the white king in N
moves (avoiding checkmating the Black king).  If the problem is designated
as a Reflexmate problem, then both players operate under the additional
constraint that they must play mate-in-one whenever possible. 

Retros are problems requiring retrograde analysis, i.e. requiring
that you deduce something about the past moves that led to the
position, which is guaranteed to be a position reachable by a legal
sequence of moves.  You may castle unless it can be proven that castling
is illegal.  But you may capture en passant only if you can prove that
Black's last move was the appropriate two-square pawn advance.
(Occasionally these two conditions are co-dependant, e.g. in some
positions one can prove that en passant is legal if and only if
castling is also legal!  In such a case, if the problem specifies the
"A Posteriori" rule, you may capture en passant only if you later
validate it by castling.  The problem might instead specify that you
should find a solution for each possibility.)

Other commands you can give ProblemBot before doing "play ProblemBot":
"tell problembot category All" if all problems are okay.
"tell problembot erase my record" to make it forget which problems
you've already solved.
"tell problembot number " to request a particular problem.
"tell problembot progress" for a count of the problems remaining.

See "help TrainingBot" for information about how to submit a problem.

See also: TrainingBot, examine