From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Aug 2 18:02:27 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0223B16A4CF for ; Mon, 2 Aug 2004 18:02:27 +0000 (GMT) Received: from proxy.hddesign.com (dsl-194.madison.chorus.net [216.165.159.194]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A244943D66 for ; Mon, 2 Aug 2004 18:02:24 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from damon@hddesign.com) Received: from [10.0.0.20] (bob.hddesign.com [192.168.1.254]) by proxy.hddesign.com (8.12.8p1/8.12.8) with ESMTP id i72I2Mw0065655; Mon, 2 Aug 2004 13:02:22 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from damon@hddesign.com) Message-ID: <410E81AE.9@hddesign.com> Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 13:02:22 -0500 From: Damon Butler User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040727 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD Questions References: <410E5C6A.1090309@hddesign.com> <410E78E5.1000403@hddesign.com> <20040802133608.3edf3818@localhost> In-Reply-To: <20040802133608.3edf3818@localhost> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-MailScanner: Found to be clean cc: freebsd@pursued-with.net Subject: Re: Chess for Kids (and dummies like dads) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 18:02:27 -0000 > if you haven't already tried it, visit sf.net and plug 'chess' into the > search window. it will probably return a bunch of programs, including some > which are java based. Thanks. I'll try that out. > fwiw, i thought that gnuchess had level settings. are you certain that > even level 1 is too difficult for your needs? That could be part of the problem. There are no generalized level settings for the chess engines I've found. Apparently, computer chess is quite the discipline, involving plies and nodes and hash tables and who knows what else. As best I can understand, the most I can do to weaken the engine is to restrict the amount of time it has to think over moves and the search depth it is allowed to consider. In xboard, I've set pondering off (so the engine doesn't think when it's not its turn), forced the engine to move after only 1 second of consideration (the minimum time), and restricted the depth to 1 ply or node or whatever. Even doing all that, gnuchess and crafty are much stronger than that old MacChess program I talked about. If there's more I can do to make them more kid-friendly, I'm all ears. --Damon