Format of material queries in Quick Search

[dying_sphynx]

Hi,

TLDR: what is the full format specification of material queries in Quick Search? (I can see that it supports range, "*" and other things which are not listed in the documentation).

A little bit of context: I wanted to take a look at my games that reach rook endgames, so I wanted to query games where one side has a rook and any number of pawns vs the same on the other side.

After some experimentation I figured out that I can do it using this query: "R*PvR*P" were "*P" stands for "any number of pawns".
Then I also figured that we can specify ranges in there, i.e. "R2-3PvR2-3P" for only two or three pawns on each side.
Also I noticed that one can specify material in other formats (without "v"), e.g. "KPK" and it also works.

All those possibilities are not listed in the documentation:
https://www.hiarcs.com/hce-pro/manuals/ ... earch.html

So I wonder if there are any other nice query features that I still haven't discovered?

Thank you!

[mrudolf]

We will update the documentation. This was initially meant only for internal use, but indeed it can be useful.

Some other tricks:

• you can use M for minor piece, e. g 3M*P v 3M*P is any 3-minor piece endgame
• you can use lB, dB, oB for light/dark/opposite bishop, e. g. lB*P v dB*P is opposite bishop endgame
• you can use + or - to find positions with one side being material up/down, e. g. R*P v R+1P is rook endgame with one side being pawn up
• you can use = for same number of pieces, e.g. B*P v N=P is the bishop vs knight with same number of pawns
• you can use prefix W: or B: to mark the first side as White/Black, e.g. B:*P v -1P is pawn endgame with Black being pawn up
• you can use * after the first side and = after the second to mean "everything else is equal", e.g. 2B* v 2N= is two bishops vs two knights, other pieces the same for both sides

[dying_sphynx]

Oh, great, that's a lot of interesting queries! Thanks for sharing!

[dying_sphynx]

I also wrote a blog post about this feature and its usage here: https://64squares.substack.com/p/search ... sitions-in

[herO]

I also wrote a blog post about this feature and its usage here: https://64squares.substack.com/p/search ... sitions-in

Very nicely written article! I'm glad that users are actively utilizing the advanced features of Hiarcs Chess Explorer!

[dying_sphynx]

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it!
And those features are really useful, just used them again to find games that I needed to write another post - about my most embarrassing endgame mistakes