July 30, 1997
Crafty4Dummies.Zip (1.9MB)

As the name of the file implies...Crafty4Dummies.Zip is for those folks who really don't care about how Crafty and Winboard work together, but who just want an inexpensive (how does free sound??) 32 bit chess program that operates under Win95/NT.  This is not intended to be a "teach me all about Crafty or Winboard" file nor will it show you how to set up Crafty up under Winboard to play on the chess server or to use Winboard as a standard Winboard Graphical User Interface (GUI) for Internet Chess.  There are plenty of other excellent documents for that already and if you are really interested you may surf the internet for them.  

Rather the goal here is to give the interested party  an excellent chess program "Crafty" by the renowned Dr. Robert Hyatt , University of Alabama- one of the best programs in the world and certainly the *Strongest Free Chess Engine* in the world and provided free by the generosity of Dr. Hyatt. 

Paired with  the high standard Winboard (GUI) by a leading computer scientist,  Dr. Timothy Mann, Digital Electronics Corporation,  and also provided gratis, in one complete package with an easy to use Batch file  prepared by computer chess hobbyist Michael  Byrne  (that's  me)  to get you started. 

The Perfect 3-Man Endgame Tablebase (EGTB), KQK, KRK, KPK for both white and black is provided by EGTB genius - Steve Edwards.

Features include:

Perfect 3-Man Endgame Tablebase (EGTB), KQK, KRK, KPK for both white and black. :)

Both book and positional learning - as it loses certain lines and positions, it will start modifying it's play.:)

Optimized for the AMD- K6 233 chip.  It can analyze well over 100K nodes per second (NPS) in certain positions, I have seen as high as 140K NPS.  Your NPS will depend on the hardware and OS you are running it under.

Mates with KBNK under very fast time controls even without the KBNK EGTB.

Able to review and save games files in Portable Game Notation (PGN) , the current standard for recording chess games.

Includes AutoSave feature...no need to perform save command for a game that you just played. :)

Analysis feature for games previously recorded in PGN format.

Crafty can resign *lost* games, threshold user adjustable. :)

Easy position entering and analysis. (Right mouse clicks)

Wide variety of user adjustable time controls, including Game in x minutes, y moves in x minutes, and the Fischer clock - base time (minutes) with additional increment (seconds) per move.  :)

Hint feature  --  Crafty will provide a hint if you're sure what to do...must be out of book to work.

Show Analysis feature --  (a.k.a. Cheaters' mode)  --   Winboard can show Crafty's thinking,; however; to know what your opponent is thinking is a huge advantage.  You will win more games with this feature enabled.  :)

4 Board Settings - Tiny, Small, Medium, Large - hot key enabled.

Estimated Playing Strength - Grandmaster Strength at blitz (5 0) time controls have  been established on a Pentium Pro 200 mhz machine on the internet  (approximately 2800 ICS).    At longer time controls, Crafty's strength decreases relative to GM's and IM's.  The opening book will affect the strength of Crafty's play and the opening book used by Crafty on the internet is significantly larger than the book provided here.  The power (speed) of your computer is the single most important determinant of how well Crafty will play on your computer.  Generally, hardware that score higher  in integer processing benchmarks will play chess better than lower scoring machines - all things being equal.


Files Included:

Wcraftyt3.exe  --  Crafty v. 12.7 optimized for the AMD K6 chip and for use with the 3-man EGTB by Steve Edwards (included).

START.PGN 
SMALL.PGN - Two files included that are use by the BUILDBOOK.BAT file to build Crafty books.  Note Crafty uses two book files for the opening book - books.bin and book.bin.  Note the files included are not strictly in PGN format...but Crafty builds its books just fine with them.  For those that interested,  SMALL.PGN includes about 8,000 games from 1650 through 1997 - all obtained from the 1997 Essentia CD collection of  1,000,000+ games.  Slightly modified to save space and are no longer in strict PGN format.  Games were chosen at random, with the bulk of the games covering the years 1650-1873, 1931, 1951, 1971, 1981, 1991, 1996 and 1997.  The wide selection of years were selected to obtain a wide variety of book opening play - concentrating on more recent game theory  Approximately 1000 games were selected from each grouping above.  You may of course substitute your own PGN file to build Crafty's opening book.

Winboard.exe -- Winboard 3.6.2 - with some slight modifications to the function key commands - F1 resets the board for a new game, F10 forces Crafty to move immediately and F4 provides Crafty's hint.

Winboard.hlp  --  Winboard help file.

Buildbook.bat - a small batch file to build and place the Crafty's books.bin and book.bin file on the right harddrive and in the right directory. Harddrives C,D. and E are acceptable.

Crafty.rc  -- small file that includes some user adjustable Crafty settings.

Book.rc -- small file that is used by Buildbook.bat in building the books without the user going to the crafty command prompt. 

Also included are two empty folders /log and /lbook (save for one not_needed.doc to create the directory in WinZip)  that are REQUIRED for this version of Crafty to run properly.  Crafty will place .log and .gam entries into the log directory.  It will build the books in the /lbook directory.  In addition  the 6 3-man EGTB files are included in the /tb directory.

Requirements:

O/S - Win95/NT ..sorry this file is not meant for DOS /Win 3.1/MAC 

Hardware - Best on Pentium Class Chips with MMX or Pentium II technology.  I  personally use it on AMD K-6 233 mhz chip.  Performance may suffer on Pentium Classic chips. Minimum suggested RAM is 32 MB. More RAM is highly recommended. (of course) :).

35 MB Available hardrive space.  The zip file is almost 2 MB.. The Crafty directory Unzipped and after building books will take about 14 MB.  After deleting the zipped file and small.pgn file, the entire Crafty directory will be about 10 MB.  About 19 MB of space is required to build the books.  That space will be recovered once the books are built.

Instructions:

Download Crafty4Dummies.Zip to the root directory on the drive (C,D,E) where you wish to install it.

Unzipped the file - it should create a \Crafty directory on the root directory.  There should be other directories created as well - \lbook ; \log ; \tb ...if not the BUILDBOOK.BAT will create them ...but you may have to move by hand the EGTB files.

If you already have a \Crafty directory - STOP.  Going to the next step will overwrite your existing book files.  Rename the current \Crafty directory to some other name before proceeding - such as \Crafty_original

Double-click on BUILDBOOK.BAT.  Answer the questions on what drive and whether or not you wish to continue. 

Double click on Winboard.exe - and make your move by dragging the mouse and letting go over the square you wish to place the piece.  The pieces will not move - so it looks as though you are dragging nothing.  Once a game started you can't change time controls.  F1 starts a new game and you have an opportunity to change the time control before the first move is played.

!! Important - Do not click on the Save settings command - it will save the settings without saving the /fcp "wcraftyt3 winboard=2" setting causing your Winboard.exe file to go the default setting - which is the GNU chess engine.  

You can change Winaboard back to the Crafty engine by adding:

/fcp "wcraftyt3 winboard=2"

to the Winboard.ini file

Edit the winboard.ini file by hand using a text editor.  See the winboard.hlp file for help on settings.  

Enjoy !

Michael Byrne
