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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.

SEE ALSO

       craftyrc(5), xboard(6), /usr/share/doc/crafty

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).