+++ CHESSMIND 0.82 README +++

ChessMind is a weak UCI engine in a rather early stage of development.
I estimate its current playing strength at about 2100 CCRL-Elo respectively ~1900 Human Elo (if at all).


+++ CHANGES TO PRIOR VERSIONS +++

ChessMind 0.80 (changes to 0.63):
- minor bugfixes
- big improvements in search, better tactical view and lower effective branching factor (~2.5-3.0 in middlegame)
- slight improvements in evaluation, mainly concerning king attacks and passed pawn evaluation
- UCI implementation
- draw recognition for both threefold position repetitions and 50-move draws

ChessMind 0.82 (changes to 0.80):
- better at tactics, this at the cost of lower search depth
- improvements in evaluation, does not sacrifice pawns without any reason as often as 0.80
- some more UCI options
- improvements in time management
- smaller aspiration windows (also adjustable)


+++ UCI OPTIONS +++

Since version 0.80, ChessMind has some UCI options.
I will shortly explain them here although they are mostly self-explanatory:

- Pawn:				material value of pawns
- Knight:			material value of knights
- Bishop:			material value of bishops
- Rook:				material value of rooks
- Queen:			material value of queens
- BishopPair:			value of the bishop pair
- RookPairPenalty:		penalty for having two (or more) rooks on the board
- KnightBonus(ClosedPosition):	Knights are worth more in closed positions, so their value is increased in closed positions
				and proportionally decreased in open positions. The higher the option value, the higher the adjustment.
- RookPenalty(ClosedPosition):	This is quite the opposite of the knight bonus in closed positions, only for rooks because they are
				worth more in open positions. The higher the option value, the higher the adjustment.
- Aggressiveness:		This option adjusts the aggressiveness of king attacks and also the value of own king safety.
				The minimum is 1 (king safety plays almost no role), the maximum 20 (very aggressive). The default
				value is 5. Note that ChessMind is generally not a very aggressive engine.
- Window:			The aspiration window of ChessMind in cp. A small aspiration window speeds up the search, but increases instability.
				The default value of 30 cp may be OK, but if the search is too instable, you may want to increase the window.
- Razoring:			A pruning method which decreases the size of the search tree but is risky. It is disabled by default because I
				want the engine to be reasonably good at tactics.

I suggest you to play around with the UCI options a bit, especially with the material values. If you yield better results with any other combination of
option values, please inform me.


Have fun with ChessMind!
metax, 2010/06/03