Make 'gloss of danger' saner about scid

[marcin-rzeznicki]

Ah, one more example - hope it is going to be helpful in assessing what to do.

In this position the b5-pawn is labelled yellow, as sufficiently defended. Obviously, it's misleading. If it is White's move then 1.Rxb5 simply wins this pawn - Black would not be able to recapture with the queen - if he had recaptured, he would have lost a queen for a rook and a knight = bad. Therefore yellow label is simply misleading

[benini]

It is indeed a simple feature (not authored by me).
As you mentioned, it operates by highlighting specific chess pieces based on the number of attacks and defenses they possess.

For more comprehensive analysis it is necessary to use a chess engine.
For me, I found that playing a null move (king takes king) can be valuable in revealing potential threats within a given position.

[marcin-rzeznicki]

Yes, I am aware of that. But I'm not advocating for making it "analyze" anything (i.e. to assess tactical soundness of the capture), but for taking into account not just the number of pieces attacking, but their (even simplified) values; for example - pawn < knight <= bishop < rook < queen. This way, it would help to quickly assess the situation when browsing a game, rather than distract by showing absolute nonsense.
And there is precedent - the feature correctly identifies pins and batteries

[marcin-rzeznicki]

Well, actually I can try to make it work myself, though it's been ages since I touched tcl. Could you please point me where to look at?

[benini]

Sure:

• https://github.com/benini/scid/blob/github/src/position.cpp#L1113
  which is called by:
• https://github.com/benini/scid/blob/github/src/tkscid.cpp#L4731
  which is called by:
• https://github.com/benini/scid/blob/github/tcl/board.tcl#L1653

[marcin-rzeznicki]

Thanks!