Re: Bug in GNUChess 5.04

[Simon Waters]

Denis Bernard wrote:
> 
> I've also noted that the function BookCmd() in cmd.c seems useless and never 
> called... Is it a first step of a future feature or some old code remaining ?

I think it is obselete code. I'll double check and cut. For some
reason my lint tool missed that one.

cmd.c is in for some major changes.

> As I'm a really weak player who wants to learn, I looked after the "rating" 
> command to make GNUChess catch up with my poor level, but this one seems to 
> be in a stale state: whatever values passed in produce the same null thing 
> (bookfirstlast = 2) :(
> Is someone working on it ? Could I help to make it work (I'd need some clues 
> here) ?

'rating' is designed for working with the Internet chess server,
where the program adjusts it's play marginally.

Probably the opening book handling still needs some work. Lukas
has made it portable and more robust, but the program still
plays minority lines with positive scores. One of the d4 lines
it plays a very early Qd3, which whilst not immediately bad,
does not befit a 2200 level player. I think we need some thought
on how to decide what opening to play from book. My idea was to
exclude from use book moves with less than N% of the total games
played. N about 20% maybe?

If you really want to improve your chess rather than your
programming I can probably dig out some losses by GNU Chess for
you to analyse, it worked for my chess game.

 Simon