Sharper
Sharper, a winboard compatible chess playing program written in C++.Using Sharper:
Sharper is a chess engine, that means that it is not a complete chess program with GUI (Grafical User Interface) to play with it. It is possible to play against it in a console window but I recommend that you download a GUI to play with it. One of the best free GUI's is Arena.
Strength:
The strength of Sharper depends on two things, the speed of your computer and the time control used. The following strength estimate assumes a pretty modern machine with a 2GHz CPU and 128MB memory for the engine. For blitz games I estimate Sharper to be around 2100 ELO, for longer games Sharper plays at 1900 ELO, perhaps a bit higher.
Basic features:
- Opening book
- Hash tables
- Move now
- Pondering
Better opening book:
Big book for sharper over 270000 positions, 1211 kB zipped.
Download this book, unzip it and put it in the sharper program directory. It is much larger than the book included with Sharper and gives a more variation in the play and makes Sharper a little stronger.
Logos:
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Thanx to:
Benny Antonsson, for introducing me to chess programming.
Leo Dijksman, for helping out so much with engine debugging.
Warning:
If you like programming and solving mind games and puzzles do not start writing your own chess engine. I was tricked into chess programming in late 2002 and has never found any other programming to be as challenging and funny. Chess programming is like a discease without a cure, I've tried other programming projects but none of them has given me the same intellectual satisfaction.