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1.1 root 1: .TH ADVENTURE 6
2: .SH NAME
3: gnuchess \- The Technology Chess Program for GNU Unix
4: .SH SYNOPSIS
5: .B gnuchess
6: [
7: .BI \-n
8: ]
9: .SH DESCRIPTION
10: .I Chess
11: plays a game of chess against the user. Or it plays against
12: itself. Or it referees a game.
13: .PP
14: .I Chess
15: has two display modes. The first mode is simply a normal
16: mode that you could use with a terminal. The second mode
17: is a fancy display mode you can use with a SUN workstation.
18: To use the former, simply type 'gnuchess'. To use the
19: latter, simply type 'chesstool gnuchess' on a SUN
20: workstation where 'chesstool' is installed. In the
21: latter example, the argument should be the path
22: specifying where to find the gnuchess binary.
23: .PP
24: The following documentation assumes you are in
25: the first mode (e.g. normal mode using a regular
26: terminal). If not, then you should read the chesstool documentation.
27: .PP
28: For help once in
29: .I Chess
30: type a question-mark. To type in your move, use the
31: notation "e2e4" where the first letter-number pair
32: indicates the origination square and the second
33: letter-number pair indicates the destination square.
34: The letter indicates the column with the left-most
35: column being "a" and the right-most column being "h".
36: The number indicates the row, the first row (White's
37: first rank) being "1" and the last row (Black's
38: first rank) being "8". To castle, type the origin
39: square of the king and the destination square of the
40: king, just as you would do for a regular move.
41: .PP
42: The "bd" command prints what the current board position
43: looks like. You may type this to see what the board
44: looks like after the computer moves.
45: .PP
46: The "book" command compiles the opening book into
47: dbm(3) format. This book is then consulted
48: whenever the computer makes a move. If the current
49: position is in the book, then the suggested move
50: associated with that position will be made as
51: the computer's move. Note that this command is a
52: maintenance command, usually used only once per
53: site per book.
54: .PP
55: The "depth" command allows the user to change how many
56: moves ahead the computer looks. Normally, it looks ahead
57: three half-moves, examining every move for each side.
58: Then, it examines all captures for both sides for another
59: two half-moves. "Depth" changes the first of these values.
60: There is an upper boundary of five half-moves as set by
61: the quiescence search which searches captures a little
62: deeper to get better tactical play.
63: .PP
64: The "enter" command causes the current game played thus
65: far to be entered in the human-readable version of the
66: opening book. If no current game is in progress, this
67: command requests the name of a file from which to read
68: games. These are then added to the binary database.
69: Since the versions of the two files are slightly different,
70: in the former case, you must additionally type "book"
71: to get the new game fully entered in the book.
72: Also, the "enter" command tries to mail your new additions
73: to the book maintainers
74: so that your contributions can be added to the master copy
75: of the book. If you are not on our network, you should send
76: us your new additions via some other method.
77: .PP
78: "Fill" allows the user to specify a completely different
79: board position. Input is based on Forsythe notation.
80: For example, the opening position in Forsythe notation
81: is "rnbqkbnrpppppppp8888PPPPPPPPRNBQKBNR+". Capital
82: letters indicate a White piece, lower-case Black. A plus means
83: it is White's move, a minus means Black's.
84: .PP
85: "History" and "historyf" list the game as played so far
86: to the terminal and a file respectively. The file is
87: assumed to be "GAMES/chXXXXXX" where XXXXXX is a random
88: number and GAMES is a subdirectory. If GAMES does not
89: exist, an error message is reported. The equivalent of
90: "historyf" is done after every move automatically to
91: record the game thus far.
92: .PP
93: "Legals" shows legal moves for the current position along with
94: the rating for each move based on a positional presort.
95: .PP
96: "Neither" instructs the program to play neither side, that is,
97: to simply act as a referee.
98: .PP
99: "Reset" resets the board to the starting position.
100: .PP
101: "Quit" exits the game.
102: .PP
103: "Read" restores a game as if you were still playing it.
104: The game must be in the format as written by "historyf" or
105: as automatically recorded by the program itself after every
106: move.
107: .PP
108: "Self" causes the program to play against itself.
109: .PP
110: "Static" causes a static evaluation to be done for the
111: current position. A static evaluation is based on material
112: difference only. Positional considerations are handled
113: by the ply-1 positional presort.
114: .PP
115: "Switch" causes the program to move, whether or not it
116: is the program's turn to do so. Continually typing
117: "switch" is equivalent to typing "self".
118: .PP
119: "Test-moves" initiates a test of the speed of the move
120: generator. An initial series of move generations is done for the
121: opening position and the timing speed is reported.
122: Then, for each of ten stored test positions, a series of
123: move generations is done and the timing speed is reported
124: for each one. Finally, the program averages across those
125: ten runs and reports the overall average.
126: .PP
127: "Test-search" uses the ten stored test positions to
128: actually conduct a search at the current depth to
129: choose a move for each position.
130: .PP
131: "Undo" undoes the last move whether it was the computer's
132: or the human's. You may also type "remove". This is equivalent
133: to two "undo's" (e.g. retract one move for each side).
134: .PP
135: The flag-option on the command line allows specification
136: of how deep to search in half-moves as with 'Chess -3'
137: to search three half-moves ahead. Capture searches are
138: normally carried out a few half-moves further than the
139: regular full search specified with this option. This
140: is known as the quiescence search and it usually is
141: conducted to 6 ply. This option is identical to the "depth"
142: command once in the program.
143: .SH BUGS
144: .PP
145: En passant is not currently implemented. Also, promotion
146: to pieces other than queens is disallowed. Checks and
147: checkmates are not detected in the tree-search and
148: are not handled as "forcing" variations.
149: .PP
150: There are other bugs. Suggestions for improvements
151: and caveats are contained in the files README and TODO
152: which come with this distribution.
153: .SH AUTHOR
154: .nf
155: Stuart Cracraft Stuart Cracraft
156: P.O. Box 13123 UCLA, Dept. of Mathematics
157: Torrance, Ca. Los Angeles, Ca.
158: 90503 90024
159: (213) 214-1136 (213) 825-9040
160: .fi
161: .SH AUTHOR'S COMMENT
162: .PP
163: This software is being made available by the Free Software
164: Foundation under the restrictions described in its license
165: agreement which accompanies this distribution. This software,
166: its sources, binaries, documentation and all associated parts
167: are copyright (C) 1986 by the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
168: .SH SEE ALSO
169: .nf
170: chesstool(6)
171: dbm(3)
172: .fi
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