Forum Discussion
Excel Chess Games Viewer 2.0
As my contribution to the celebration of Spreadsheet Day on 17 October 2021, I will post Version 2.0 of my Excel Chess Games Viewer. I now completed testing all of the 73 most famous chess games of a...
This is impressive, very impressive. I didn't guess the brilliant move 21, I had what I think was a 'good' move but then again, I don't play. That said, maybe you already did this in v2.0 but can I suggest adding a CHECK/CHECKMATE notification field. For example I added the following in the cell below the Sequence number:
=IFS(LEN(INDEX(Moves!B5:B155,INT(K6/2)+2))<2,"CHECKMATE",RIGHT(B7,1)="+","CHECK",1,"")
and then adding a little conditional formatting for Yellow if CHECK and Red if CHECKMATE, I think would be nice (of course you should sub in your Named ranges but I didn't look them up).
=IFS(LEN(INDEX(Moves!B5:B155,INT(K6/2)+2))<2,"CHECKMATE",RIGHT(B7,1)="+","CHECK",1,"")
and then adding a little conditional formatting for Yellow if CHECK and Red if CHECKMATE, I think would be nice (of course you should sub in your Named ranges but I didn't look them up).
I appreciate your compliment but no conditional formatting is required for:
1, Check. Because the last character in the move would be "+";
2. Double Check. Because the last two characters in the move would be "++"; and
3. Checkmate. Because the last character in the move would be "#".
For additional information, these last characters in a move mean, as follows:
1. Question Mark (?). Bad move;
2. Double Question Mark (??). Blunder;
3. Question Mark followed by Exclamation Mark (?!). Dubious move;
4. Exclamation Mark (!). Good move;
5. Exclamation Mark followed by Question Mark (!?) Interesting move; and
6. Double Exclamation Mark (!!). Brilliant move.
- I noticed the "+" but didn't notice/realize those other characters. But more importantly my point was to help us noobs that don't know those conventions with a simple cell that highlights that information for us.
on an aside, what if there is a combination of them? e.g. a bad move was also check ?+ or +?
also who defines all those?- Curiosity is thirst for knowledge. A check that is a bad move would be: +?. Check (+) is the move. Bad move (?) is the comment on the move.
A move always precedes any comment thereto, not otherwise. So, a Question Mark (?), in chess notation, can never precede a Plus Sign (+). - By all means, you must know by heart the meanings of those characters in each move. Those characters were published by chess gurus (certainly excluding me for being unqualified to be deemed as such). After knowing those meanings, the only issue that remains is: from what square to what square did the last piece move? If you view any chess game from other platforms, you will certainly visualize those answers, but never in Excel, until I did!