🚀 go-pugleaf

> In article <wolf-0307970937480001@port21.zed.com.au> wolf@zed.com.au 
>  (Chris Fotis) writes:
> >I would like to swap a golf game I have for Chessmaster 3000 for Macintosh
> >or Power Mac. Please email me if interested. Would also consider any other
> >chess program which has the facility to analyse games which are feed into
> >it.
> >
> >Oh yes, if you are going to post something warning me about copyright
> >infringement please read the message again, count to 10, and put you brain
> >into some sort of active state. Alternatively go flush your head in the
> >toilet.

It seems you probably have a Power Mac and are interested in a chess
program that will do "batch analysis" on games. The following Mac chess  
programs have "batch analysis" capability at the moment:

- Chessmaster 3000
     (weak to begin with, and not accelerated for PowerMac, either.)
- Crafty Mac (free), downloadable from:
     http://www.limunltd.com/crafty/

     Much stronger than Chessmaster 3000 (on any platform), and far
     stronger on a Power Mac, since Crafty is available "fat".
     Most commands require that you use the text interface, though.
     The documention is a little thin, too. Try "help" at the command
     prompt. In terms of features, though, Crafty's batch analysis capability
     is the best on the Mac. Here's the output of "help annotate"
     (after a little editing by me).

annotate <filename> b|w|bw <moves> <margin> <time> [x]

     <filename> is the input file with game moves, 
                the output will be written to filename.can.  

                the input file is PGN-compatible with one addition, 
                alternative moves to be analyzed can be inserted at any point.  
                To analyze alternative moves, simply include them in braces 
                   {move1, move2}
                and Crafty will then search them also. 

     b/w/bw     indicates whether to annotate only 
                the white side (w), 
                the black side (b) or 
                both (bw).  

     <moves>    indicates which moves to annotate.  
                a single number says start at that move number,
                                and go through the entire game.  
                a range (20-30) annotates the given range only.
 
     <margin >  is the difference between the search value for 
                the move played in the game, and 
                the best move crafty found, 
                before a comment is generated (pawn=1.0).  

     <time>     is the time limit per move in seconds.  

     x          if this (optional) flag is appended, Crafty does an 
                extended-mode annotation, which produces more output, 
                at the cost of taking longer to execute

     Examples:
          annotate myloss.pgn bw 12 0.3 300
                will annotate the game in files "myloss.pgn" for both
                black and white starting with move 12, commenting on
                any moves where Crafty thinks Crafty's preferred move
                is at least 0.3 pawns stronger than the game continuation.
                Crafty will spend 300 seconds (5 minutes) on each move.
                < I'm not 100% sure, but I think on moves that Crafty
                  disagress with, it takes a bit longer, since it also
                  has to evaluate the game continuation in order to do
                  the comparison vs. the "margin" specified.>

- Chessmaster 4000 - ca $35 US, new.


     On a Power Mac, at this point in time, it's probably a push as
     to which is stronger - this or HIARCS 1.0 Mac. It is CM4000's
     use of PPC code that lets it stay in the ring with HIARCS 1.0 Mac
     (which  basically has a stronger engine, even thought it is the
      somewhat dated HIARCS 4.0 engine). It's got lots of features, though,
     even if I think the interface is far too glitzy.

- HIARCS 1.0 Mac - ca $150 US, new.

     Since HIARCS 6.0 Mac (with the HIARCS 6.0 engine) has been announced
     for August 1st release, and since I imagine the price is the same,
     this wouldn't be a good purchase at this point. However, you can
     get a flavor of the HIARCS looks/features by downloading the demo
     (which plays, too, but I think is restricted to 2-ply search, or some
     such. The demo is available on the Hyperarchive: go to 
     <http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive.html>,
     and use the "search" option for keyword "chess".
     Note that HIARCS 6.0 adds features, as well as strength, to HIARCS.

- HIARCS 6.0 Mac - ?ca $150? US, new. [Planned release: August 1st]

     This will come with both 68K/PPC versions in the package.
     The (beta) PPC version is 10x faster than the (beta) 68K on my 6100/66,
     and 7x faster on my 7800/180 (Apple's newer 68K emulator does a better
     job). On top of this, HIARCS 6.0 Mac uses the HIARCS 6.0 engine rather
     than the HIARCS 4.0 engine, which is worth about 70 Elo rating points
     in itself.  This should be head and shoulders the strongest Mac chess
     program on Power Macs at tournament time controls or slower. New
     features include ability to display the "top three" variations instead
     of just the "best", and better EPD/PGN file handling.

- other vaporware ...
     I have two betas of other Mac Chess programs that have "batch analysis"
     capability, but their release dates aren't even proposed yet. 


fowell@netcom.com (Richard A. Fowell)

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