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Subject: Re: CCT8 - Final

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 09:56:33 02/27/06

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On February 26, 2006 at 22:50:22, Tom Dyer wrote:

>On February 26, 2006 at 19:43:06, Mike Byrne wrote:
>
>>For the blitz tournament, I disabled the bookc.bin and it seemed to get better
>>openings and had a much better result.
>
>>A good book is still very important and there was hardly any book preparation >at all - except for turning off bookc.bin.  My bookc.bin seemed to guide >Crafty to terrible lines with the black pieces and it repeated a terrible >Sicilian line twice.
>
>Mike or Bob, sorry if you've already clarified this before somewhere, but I was
>wondering if you can help me understand Crafty's optional bookc.bin and when to
>use it / not use it.  On some other sites/posts I've seen the following:
>
>"Bookc.bin which you can download with Crafty is in fact no more than a ordinary
>books.bin file...It was built from the file start.pgn but after removal of
>unsound , especially gambit lines to ensure that a more suitable book can be
>built against other computers."
>
>This would seem to indicate that it is recommended to use bookc.bin in computer
>matches, but I've also received the advice to remove it even in computer
>matches.  Bookc.bin (from the UAB ftp site) seems to do more than restrict
>unsound gambit lines, in my results I've only seen it play 1. D4 from White.
>
>Congratulations on the continued good performance of Crafty :)
>Thank you,
>Tom


Here is the simple explanation:

1.  book.bin is the main book file.  Crafty will play openings from this file if
they exist...

2.  bookc.bin is a "computer opponent book" and normally has very few moves in
it, augmented by the "play 50% or play 100% type modifiers".  If Crafty finds a
bookc.bin when playing a computer, it will play those moves as instructed, and
it will not play moves with a "play 0%" or "?" modifier if there are openings
you want to avoid.

3.  books.bin is the same as bookc.bin, but used only against non-computer
(meaning humans only) opponents.

The idea is that books.bin/bookc.bin are very small and easy to maintain, and
you modify those to choose/avoid specific openings.  You can also create
additional such .bin files and attach them to a specific player's name.  I added
this from GM Roman D. a few years back when he wanted to practice one particular
d4 opening over and over, I set up a roman.bin that only played 1. d4 as he
requested...

hope that helps.  The crafty doc file also has a very complete explanation of
this near the end...




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