Lucas Chess

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smaragdus
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Lucas Chess

#1 Post by smaragdus »

Some days ago in another thread JohnW mentioned a very capable chess program- Lucas Chess, which, to my surprise, hasn't been discussed in this forum. Since I find Lucas Chess to be an excellent piece of chess software I would like to introduce it here.

About Lucas Chess:
Play
The program has 36 engines prepared to play from the start, and with very different levels, from 1300 to 3000 elo.
This list of engines is not closed and you can add other ones with the only limitation that they use the UCI protocol.
The game can be set, limiting the depth of analysis of the motor or the time used to think, or by modifying the way in which it decides. You can also choose the opening, or start in a certain position, or that the engine uses a book of openings or more or less aid.
Younger children will be able to begin their apprenticeship with special engines that know little more than moving the pieces, and this will enable them to win against the engines from the very beginning.

Train
You have an extensive list of trainings with which to try to improve your chess:
- Training positions
- Play like a grandmaster
- Training mates
- Find best move
- Learn openings by repetition
- Training with a book
- Your daily test
- Resistance Test
- Learn tactics by repetition
- Check your memory on a chessboard
- Find all moves
- Becoming a knight tamer
- Moves between two positions
- Determine your calculating power
- Learn a game

Compete
In Lucas Chess there are several competitions, and in two of them you can publish the results.
The first is a one-to-one competition against all the engines, starting with the weakest, initially in each engine many hints are available, and as you change level, the hints will be reduced.
And in the second, Lucas-elo, where you can deal with all the engines in your range of score and add or subtract points according to the results of the games.
Lucas Chess links:
http://www-lucaschess.rhcloud.com/ - Lucas Chess web-site
https://github.com/lukasmonk/lucaschess - Lucas Chess project page
https://github.com/lukasmonk/lucaschess/releases - Lucas Chess download page
http://www-lucaschess.rhcloud.com/screenshotsBase - Lucas Chess screen-shots
http://www-lucaschess.rhcloud.com/docs - Lucas Chess documentation
http://portableapps.com/apps/games/lucas-chess-portable - Lucas Chess at PortableApps
http://sourceforge.net/projects/portabl ... 0Portable/ - PortableApps package download page
http://alternativeto.net/software/lucas-chess/ - Lucas Chess at AlternativeTo

Lucas Chess screen-shots:
-1- Lucas Chess main window:
Lucas Chess 9.07d - 2015-12-07 - 001.png
-2- Lucas Chess analyzing mode:
Lucas Chess 9.07d - 2015-12-07 - 008.png
-3- Lucas Chess playing mode:
Lucas Chess 9.07d - 2015-12-07 - 010.png
Lucas Chess portable:
Lucas Chess has a native portable version- download Version portable (it is a 7-Zip self-extracting archive), run the SFX file, extract it to a folder of your choice and run Lucas.exe- all data and settings are saved in dataDB and UsrData sub-folders.

Lucas Chess license:
Lucas Chess is open-source

Lucas Chess notes:
Lucas Chess offers lots of GUI customizations and different analyzing, playing and training options. Lucas Chess comes with 36 engines but other engines can be easily added (the user can even set up tournaments between engines). Lucas Chess can import from and export to PGN files. Lucas Chess is in active development and the developer responds to bug reports. I suppose that Lucas Chess can be a valuable tool for anyone interested in chess.

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smaragdus
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Location: Aeaea

Re: Lucas Chess

#2 Post by smaragdus »

Lucas Chess version 9.08 has been released, changes:
Bugs fixed:
- Databases of complete games, the number of games reported is always off-by-one (Pawel Stolowski)
- Personal opening guide, not obvious start icon, added a new one(Pawel Stolowski)
- PGN reader, problem creating tactics when there is mixed complete and positions games. (Corwin)
- Saving FEN positions when there isn't exist the file (smaragdus)
Komodo updated to 7a
And some corrections in the translations of Czech, French, Polish and Spanish.

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h3kt0r
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Location: France
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Re: Lucas Chess

#3 Post by h3kt0r »

Version 10.04 is out !
Homepage : https://www-lucaschess.rhcloud.com/index.html
Portable version : https://bintray.com/artifact/download/l ... le1004.exe
Version 10: summary of changes

Long term trainings:

- Trans Siberian Railway: is a long run training with a train travel as an excuse.
- Expeditions to the Everest: the idea is to play against a collection of games, "Play like a GM" style. All moves are valued and compared with the move of player in the game.
- Turn on the lights: it is other way to study tactics, with a velocity component. Divided in levels, all levels works with the same block of positions.
- The Washing Machine: done against all engines with an elo less than 3000, creating a game-puzzles-repeating the game will be repeated until no errors.

Start positions:

Scanner of a position: read of start positions images.

Training positions:

Tactics by UNED chess school, included in Training positions and Learn tactics by repetition. Thanks to Juan Carlos Antón, head of UNED chess school that allows to include the positions in the program.

Engines:

- Updated:
Stockfish updated to version 7
Cheng updated to version 4.39
Komodo updated to version 8.
DiscoCheck updated to 5.2.1.
Rethoric updated to 1.4.3.
Updated Deepfish 7 (Marco Zerbinati).
New RodentII (Pawel Koziol).
- New:
Acqua (844 elo) by Giovanni Di Maria.
Irina v. 0.12 (~1200 elo), it includes program beginners personalities: Monkey, Lion, .... Irina is a weak adaptation of chess engine Winglet of Stef Luijten. Added Steven as a new personality to beginners.
Gull 3 by ThinkALot.
External engines, added option Import of internal engines.
Included 64 bits-BMI2 versions to: stockfish, komodo, deepfish. In Configuration/Engines can be activated.

Play against any engine:

Added Irina personalities to engine selection.
Added Lucas-elo engines to engine selection.

Database :

Changed internally to allow to change/save more information. With more filters... a work in progress.

New translations:

Greek by Nick Delta

Pieces:

kidsdraw, a beautiful new set of pieces to children created by Marc Graziani

Resistance training:

Added "Lost points in a move" as another limit (idea by Michele Tumbarello).

Kibitzers:

Indexes: Rodent II is always used, as stablished by author of formulas, Michele Tumbarello.

Analysis:

Improved the graphics, now interactives. (Remes proposal and maybe others too)

Others:

Clicking on the letters of the board moves forward or backward (PeonPasado)
Removed, voice recognition and database of positions.
Added a new option in Configuration, to reduce the work of engines in background in some trainings (JoJoB proposal)

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smaragdus
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Location: Aeaea

Re: Lucas Chess 10.04

#4 Post by smaragdus »

@h3kt0r
Thanks for the notification. I haven't yet tested the latest version of Lucas Chess but I find it to be an excellent program and it is in my submission list.
Lucas Chess was reviewed at Softpedia and was awarded a rating of 4.5/5 by Alexandru Dulcianu.

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smaragdus
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Re: Lucas Chess 10.10

#5 Post by smaragdus »

Lucas Chess at version 10.10, changes since version 10.04:

10.06:
Bugs:
  • Bug in engines processing is some PCs (thanks to Phillip Watts).
  • Tactics by UNED chess school, Pin missing (thanks to bolokay).
Updated Italian translation (thanks to Michele and Maurizio).
10.07
News:
  • Updated stockfish to version 8.
  • Play like a GM, new option in its configuration window: "Show all evals"
  • Training openings against a book, added traceback and help options (remes)
Bug:
  • Chess your Memory in a chessboard, Beginner don´t works (nick delta) - version updated to 10.07.1
  • Removed bad analysis messages from stockfish 8 (vga) - version updated to 10.07.2
  • Playing against low rated engines, added take back again (HB) - version updated to 10.07.2
10.08:
  • 1. Main toolbar can be configured, there are four options
  • 2. Non distract mode [ALT-N], when playing, only the board is visible (johan)
  • 3. Keys actives in each moment can be consulted pressing ALT-K
  • 4. Competition and Elo-Rating are now in the "Play" menu.
10.09:
Bugs fixed:
  • Mat in 1/2 freezes (alexxelaart+RU)
  • Analysis, adding variants, bad num move.
  • Kibitzers with non english symbols. (massivfat)
  • Database, edit, paste, read PGN (Tobi)
  • Information links, don´t works in Linux (Coyote112358)
Changes:
  • Information panel in a game, added splitter to accomodate sizes between variants and comments
  • Engines:
    • Updated Rodent II (Pawel Koziol) to 0.9.64
    • Updated Stockfish to version 8 in Linux engines.
  • Updated translations: Greek(Nick Delta), Vietnamese(Toan Luong), French(Max Aloyau)
10.10:
Bugs fixed:
  • Turn on the lights: don´t save to pgn (Alfonso L)
  • Albums, Adjourn doesn´t work (Rianer U)
  • Lucas-Elo in Russian( and others), first engines don´t work (dtz)
  • Training positions, an engine is open and not closed each position (dtz)
  • External engines, better handle for UCI "type string" (fixed by tico-tico in https://github.com/lukasmonk/lucaschess/issues/18)
News:
  • Windows EXE, added "check for updates at startup" option in Configuration/General. (alexxelaart)
  • New option in Configuration/Boards to hide/show cursor when engine is thinking.(GB)
  • New Tool: Save positions to FNS/PGN (Remes+peonpasado)

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smaragdus
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Re: Lucas Chess 10.10.1

#6 Post by smaragdus »

Lucas Chess at version 10.10.1, changes:
Version 10.01: three bugs fixed
  • Tourney elo, the personalities don´t appear. (detected by nalbouki and PeonPasado)
  • Transsiberian Railway, some problems in the end game training (detected by Will H.)
  • The update system is not working, there is not option to pass from 10.00 to 10.01 via Information/Search for updates.

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smaragdus
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Re: Lucas Chess 10.10.3

#7 Post by smaragdus »

Lucas Chess at version 10.10.3, changes:
Version 10.10.3: save positions to FNS/PGN

New update:

Bugs fixed:
  • Turn on the lights: don´t save to pgn (Alfonso L)
  • Albums, Adjourn doesn´t work (Rianer U)
  • Lucas-Elo in Russian( and others), first engines don´t work (dtz)
  • Training positions, an engine is open and not closed each position (dtz)
  • External engines, better handle for UCI "type string" (fixed by tico-tico in https://github.com/lukasmonk/lucaschess/issues/18)
News:
  • Windows EXE, added "check for updates at startup" option in Configuration/General. (alexxelaart)
  • New option in Configuration/Boards to hide/show cursor when engine is thinking.(GB)
  • New Tool: Save positions to FNS/PGN (Remes+peonpasado)

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giulia
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Re: Lucas Chess

#8 Post by giulia »

hi
why don't add in the database if it's portable?
thanks

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Cornflower
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Location: Canada's capital

Re: Lucas Chess

#9 Post by Cornflower »

New web page (since 2018, I think). The old one is defunct.

Here: https://lucaschess.pythonanywhere.com/
Portable Download: https://bintray.com/artifact/download/l ... le1117.exe

I did **not** test for portability.

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giulia
Posts: 531
Joined: Sat Sep 14, 2013 8:09 am

Re: Lucas Chess

#10 Post by giulia »

Cornflower wrote: Sat Nov 21, 2020 5:14 am New web page (since 2018, I think). The old one is defunct.

Here: https://lucaschess.pythonanywhere.com/
Portable Download: https://bintray.com/artifact/download/l ... le1117.exe

I did **not** test for portability.
hi
there is even on portableapps here https://portableapps.com/apps/games/luc ... s-portable
yes old but still a beautiful program

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