Re: easier level for children

[Timothy D. Prime]

I am looking into clubs.  Of course, finding one with children is
a priority.  I was hoping there would be a club at school.

We picked up a book from the library which he absolutely adores.  But,
at six years old, his chess playing ability excedes his reading skill.
This will change rapidly over the next year or two.  Until then, more
personal training and computers seem to be the way to go.

> "depth 1", I don't think "depth 0" works (probably my incorrect
> answer).

"depth 0" doesn't work in xboard.  However, in bare gnuchess, it does
seem slightly dumber than "depth 1".

> At a depth of one the computer moves pretty much instantly (as

Yes, I am sure I am setting the depth properly.  I had to go through a
bit of a debugging exercise to discover "xboard -xponder" (to keep "easy"
mode on).  This involved logging every command xboard sent to gnuchess.

> Failing that it is back to knocking out terms from Evaluate in
> eval.c - but that is just hard work ;-)

This does seem to be the right course of action.  Although, I won't be
taking on the task just yet.

I feel that software that is capable of training human players is more
valuable than a program focussed on winning.  So, adjustable features
and feature weights would be a step in the right direction.