Re: Gnu chess

[Simon Waters]

"Oliver, Glenn, VTC-SEx" wrote:
> 
> Hi all,

Hi Glenn,

Stuart seems to forward me these, so I suppose I better answer some.

> This may well help the program run faster, but it surely doesn't help the
> poor so-and-sos, such as myself, who would like to beat it more often than
> once in a blue moon, or less as CPU MHz inexorably rises, and so require a
> preview of its book strategies.

The stock answer is that any PGN file (without annotations) can be used
to build the book. The code actually checks that the player is a 'known
strong player' (or Gnuchess !?) before adding the games.

This means any games played can be saved as PGN and reloaded to make the
program play better. So any static translation is likely to be out of
date if you use Gnuchess this way.
 
> If you would be kind enough to make available to me the current book data,
> e.g. as vanilla text, I'll return it to you in a readily searchable form,
> such as Excel, which you could then make available with the rest of the GNU
> chess suite, if you wish.

Thanks for the kind offer. 

Xboard and WinBoard have a book option that hasn't yet been implemented
in GNUChess, this allows the player to ask what lines the computer knows
and supplies some extra information. It is on my list of things I'd like
to see implemented, but no one has yet coded it.

Perhaps you might like to have a look at that? 

The current development version has moved on substantially in the area
of the opening book, with a number of bug fixes and new selecton method
for openings, so if you feel you could contribute here then do make sure
you ask for the latest copy of the code before making changes.

Also the latest copy has an extended list of "strong players", including
some more recent Grandmasters, as the list was rather dated and limited.

        Regards

        Simon Waters