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Alf version 1.07 by Casper W. Berg

A WinBoard chess engine written in Java.

web: 	www.student.dtu.dk/~s021692/Alf/alf.htm
email:	s021692@student.dtu.dk 

Date of current release: Jan 29 2007.
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1. Introduction
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Alf is a free chess playing engine written in Java for use with the free WinBoard interface by Tim Mann.
Link: http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard.html

Another free alternative to WinBoard is Arena, (has som extra nice features, try this!)
Link: http://www.playwitharena.com/

Alf nots/features:
+Opening book from about 70.000 top grandmaster games.
+Thinking lines.
-no learning
+Will try to hustle on the board and on the clock in blitz games.
+own graphical user interface (optional)


2. Installation
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Alf is a Java program, which means you must have the Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment 1.5 or higher installed in order to run Alf.
Link: java.sun.com

To start Alf with WinBoard, type in command prompt or create a link with the text:

winboard /cp /fd="ALFS DIRECTORY HERE" /fcp="java -Xms400m -Xmx600m -jar Alf107.jar"
NOTE: quotes must be included!

To use Alf with Arena, create a new engine in Arena, choose filetype ".bat" and choose "alf107.bat"

To start Alf with the built-in graphical user interface, type in command prompt or create a link with the text:

java -jar -Xms400m -Xmx600m Alf107.jar -gui

Or, if you are using Windows, just type "alfgui" in command prompt or double-click on the file "alfgui.bat".

3. Configuration
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You can also reduce the hash table size in the configuration file "settings.ini" to reduce memory use,
but this may make Alf play weaker. You can of course also increase this number.
There are also some other settings, see settings.ini for details.

NOTE: If you want to match Alf against other chess engines, you might want to lower "contempt" (for draw).


3. Notes
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Alf uses about 110 Mbytes of memory on a 32-bit java environment (without the GUI, 190 Mb with GUI) 
with standard settings (sorry, but I use a rather big move-class),
so you should not set the -Xms and -Xmx memory flags for java too low
(It seems that java will not allocate more memory than needed, even if you use larger values). 

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ALF 1.07 MAY BE FREELY DISTRIBUTED PROVIDED THAT ALL FILES, INCLUDING THIS, ARE PRESENT AND ARE UNMODIFIED.
THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF ANY KIND, SO THE USE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Enjoy!