Ubuntu Manpage: crafty - chess engine

NAME

       crafty - chess engine

SYNOPSIS

       crafty [bookpath=<directory>] [logpath=<directory>]
       [tbpath=<directory-list>]

DESCRIPTION

Crafty is a chess "engine". That is, the program concerns itself with playing chess and not with
providing a graphic user interface. Thus Crafty is commonly invoked indirectly via XBoard, and current
versions of these programs generally work very well together. Some noteworthy features of Crafty are:

* Source code, provided, is unusually deserving of study. The author has sought to provide a starting
point for others writing chess-playing programs, leading to clean and portable code. Another
objective has been to maintain a state-of-the-art chess engine, with the result that some parts of the
source code may be challenging to understand.

* Flexible and powerful command-line interface. About the only thing that can not be done within the
CLI is changing various paths determining where Crafty reads and writes various files. This manual
page focuses on explaining these paths.

* Easy graphic user interface via xboard(6).

* Informative log files. Writes "game.nnn" file storing current game in PGN format, and also writes
"log.nnn" file recording what the engine was "thinking".

* Intelligent opening play. Crafty learns from experience, and makes appropriate modifications to its
opening book. The "book" command allows generation of an opening book (from PGN data), and
customization of how it is used. The learning facilities synthesize several different approaches, and
allow various ways for the user to customize and follow what is being learned. Additional commands
allow easy creation of files to customize how Crafty plays the opening against humans and against
other computer programs.

* Uses endgame tablebases. Precompiled tablebases in the appropriate format are freely downloadable
from ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/hyatt/TB.

* Polished and powerful facilities for Internet play (for which the program continues to be extensively
used). Note that the licencing forbids concealing Crafty under another name, or unauthorized entry of
it in a tournament in which other computer programs have been invited to compete.

* Annotation. Generates either PGN or HTML files, in a manner made very flexible by choosing
appropriate aptions to the "annotate | annotateh" command.

OPTIONS

       In  the  command line arguments, <directory-spec> is a path to a directory, whereas <directory-list> is a
       non-empty sequence of paths to directories.  For portability, several different characters are  taken  as
       path separators: the colon (:), the semicolon (;), and the comma (,).

       There  are  actually  four  of these: bookpath is where Crafty seeks its opening books and writes learned
       knowledge; logpath is where Crafty normally writes a pair of files "game.nnn" and "log.nnn" for each game
       it plays; rcpath is where Crafty looks for a run control file to be read only; and tbpath is where Crafty
       looks for endgame tablebase files to be read only.

       The four path specifications have a number of things in common:  each has a default value set when Crafty
       is compiled, which can then be modified by the appropriate environment variable, and can  then  again  be
       modified  by an invocation argument, but can not be modified after the engine has been initialized (thus,
       in particular, it is not possible to modify the paths by editing a run control file).  Possibly the  best
       procedure is to avoid the invocation options, experiment with the environment variables, and then perhaps
       recompile  the  program  with  different defaults.  Note that if the program is compiled "out of the box"
       then all four values default to "./" (the directory in which Crafty has been launched).

       Crafty can be invoked with other arguments (such as "xboard" to indicate that  Crafty  is  being  invoked
       through xboard(6)) which would not usually be used directly.

COMMANDS

       Crafty's  extensive  command-line  interface  is  defined  in  "option.c", discussed in "crafty.doc", and
       briefly described by the command "help".

FILES

Run control
Crafty tries to read a run control file rcpath/.craftyrc. (On a non-Unix system, ".craftyrc" changes to
"crafty.rc".) Such a file should contain a sequence of valid Crafty commands, terminated by the command
"exit" to restore standard input to the keyboard. See craftyrc(5) for a skeletal example.

Logging
When a game is played, Crafty normally writes "logpath/game.<nnn>" and "logpath/log.<nnn>". Details of
what is written are modifiable by the `log' command. Because $CRAFTY_LOG_DIR defaults to "./" (the
directory in which Crafty is launched), trouble can occur if the program is launched in a directory to
which it is unable to write. Note that the "log.<nnn>" file normally contains all output that would be
visible if Crafty were run from the command line but is usually hidden when it is run from a GUI.

Opening books
Crafty is designed to maintain its chess opening knowledge in a file "book.bin", and to modify this file
as it learns from its mistakes. Refer to the documentation for the "book" command for information on
generating and customizing usage of "book.bin".

Further, files "books.bin" and "bookc.bin" allow easy customization of Crafty's opening play (against
humans and computer, respectively). See the documentation for the "books" command.

Finally, there are several files "*.lrn" for synopses of what Crafty has been learning. See the
documentation for the "learn" command.

Endgame tablebases
When normally configured, Crafty reads late endgame knowledge from "*.emd" files, which are distance-to-
mate tablebases. See the documentation for the "egtb" command.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

   CRAFTY_BOOK_PATH
       If  $CRAFTY_BOOK_PATH  is  set,  it  overrides  the  compiled  value  of  bookpath, the path to directory
       containing "book.bin" and friends.  Unless learning has been disabled, Crafty will  be  writing  in  this
       directory.

   CRAFTY_LOG_PATH
       If  $CRAFTY_LOG_PATH  is  set,  it  overrides  the  compiled  value of logpath, the path to directory for
       writing, but not reading, the log files.

   CRAFTY_RC_PATH
       If $CRAFTY_RC_PATH is set, it overrides the compiled value of rcpath, the path to directory for  reading,
       but not writing, a run control file (".craftyrc" or "crafty.rc").

   CRAFTY_TB_PATH
       If  $CRAFTY_TB_PATH  is  set,  it  overrides  the  compiled  value  of  tbpath,  the sequence of paths to
       directories for reading, but not writing, endgame tablebase files.

HISTORY

       Crafty is the son of Cray Blitz, also written by Bob Hyatt.  The subsequent history of Crafty is detailed
       in the source file "main.c".  Opening  books  appeared  in  version  1.9.  log  files  in  1.11,  endgame
       tablebases in 8.24, run control files in 9.22, and environment variables in 16.5.

BUGS

       In  the  interests of portability, Crafty deals with files in a simple manner, at the cost of robustness.
       Very long or incorrect paths may result in a "segmentation fault" when a file writing operation fails.

       This manual page itself will probably always be flagrantly incomplete in that many  essential,  powerful,
       and interesting aspects of Crafty are not even mentioned.

AUTHOR

       Robert Hyatt (hyatt@cis.uab.edu).

Crafty 19.8                                     December 22, 2003                                      crafty(6)