Colored Pieces

Pieces turn red!

Let's stay with the same position that we had in the previous section, where you learnt about colored moves.

You saw that, in the position shown in the diagram, capturing the enemy pawn in the middle of the board with your knight looked like a pretty good move.

If you move the mouse over the enemy pawn, two squares become highlighted. The pawn square is highlighted because the mouse is over it, and the knight square is highlighted because that is the only piece that can currently move to the square under the mouse.

However, if you have colored pieces turned on, you will also notice that your knight may turn green!

This often happens when you are looking at a particularly good move and the program thinks that it is the best move available.

On the other hand, if you have highlighted a bad move, then your piece may well turn red!

This acts as a warning as the computer thinks that you are looking at a poor move; of course, you may know better and the computer may be wrong, but in any case, it is worth trying to figure out why the computer thinks the move you have highlighted is not that good!

For example, if you are thinking of leaving the pawn alone and instead moving your knight to another square, as shown in this diagram, your knight immediately glows red! Luckily, it is easy to know why; the enemy queen has also turned red as she could capture your knight on the very next turn! Watch out!

Turning on Colored Pieces

shows popup menu to select colored pieces

When you first start the program, colored pieces are turned on by default, so you do not have to do anything.

However, you can use the popup menu to toggle this feature on or off.

Using the mouse, right-click anywhere on the board to display the popup menu.

If you want to turn colored pieces on, click on the menu item labelled Show colored pieces.

If you want to turn colored pieces off, the menu item will display Hide colored pieces and you just click to turn colored pieces off.

Next Section

In the next section, you will learn about colored arrows which reveal to you how the computer might reply if you play a not-so-good move!

Colored Arrows