program: Alex 1.73 (UCI or winboard protocol)
Author:  Normand marcel Blais
Date:    April 10, 2006
Email:   &marcel_ya@yahoo.com (use this address without the & sign)

- fix bug in hash size - Thanks to Olivier Deville

How to create an opening book for Alex from Chess games in pgn format?

1- Rename old book (optional)
2- Run Alex in console mode.
3- Type: book <pgn file name and path> <enter>
4- Answer the questions:
	Number of moves deep (the number will be translated into plies)
	Minimun number of games per move 
	Draw games yes or no 
5- Wait
6- When finished, restart Alex and the new book will be used.

(Keep bin, exe, ini files in the same directory)

!!!!WARNING: STARTING WITH VERSION 1.67.03 THE OPENING BOOK FORMAT HAS CHANGED (Sep 4, 2005)

Some features:

Bitboard engine
Opening Book (new v1.70)
Init file (new v1.71)
Pondering
Force mode
PVS
Transposition table and pawn hash
Static exchange evaluation
Internal iterative deepening (disabled v1.71)
late Move reduction (enabled v1.73) <----
Lazy eval (enabled v1.70)
bitbase (new!! v1.70) (Thanks to Daniel Shawul)
No analysis mode 
Written in C++ (MSV C++ 6.0)
No source code (Change all the time)
Strength: Class A to Expert
Alex will resign in hopeless situations (see Alex.ini)
Alex understands 4 cases of draw: stalemate, fifty-move, 3-fold repetition, insuffisiant material

Comunication: UCI and Winboard compatible (tested mostly under Winboard and Arena)

Type: help in consol mode to see more commands

One more thing: type: "new" in console mode to activate the hash table if you want to play with Alex interatively with
                no GUI. The moves are entered in coordinate notations (e2e4, e1g1, f7f8q...)
                
                
Enjoy!

Normand

   
