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Giveaway Wizard 2.05   
by Stanislav Goldowski  
README 
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Giveaway Wizard plays one of the most popular chess variants - 
Giveaway chess. 
(Aka: Losing chess, Suicide chess, Must-take chess, Vinciperdi)


ABOUT THE GIVEAWAY CHESS

The rules of Giveaway Chess are simple:

The opening setup is as in normal chess. All pieces move as in normal
chess (for the king see below), but *capturing is compulsory*. 
When a player can capture, but has different choices to capture a piece,
he may choose which piece to capture.
Object of the game is to lose all one's pieces or stalemate them. 
The king plays no special role in the game, and can be taken as any 
other piece. Moreover, *pawn can promote to king*.


ABOUT THE PROGRAM

1. Strength of play.

Giveaway Wizard plays very strong game. Perhaps it is one of the 
strongest existing Giveaway players. It is almost flawless in tactics. 
However, if you reach a quiet position it may show some misunderstanding 
in strategical play or endgames and give you some chances. 
So good luck!


2. Interface.

I. How does it look?

Giveaway Wizard has now two playing modes: one - text-based interface,
with some statistics, such as: the move currently pondered, evaluations,
best line so far, time, number of searched positions, speed (in positions 
per second), and maximal reached depth. If Giveaway Wizard found a forced
win (for either side) it will inform you about it. 

The other mode lets you play in graphics - unfortunately only if you have
a Microsoft Win32 system, such as Win95 or Windows NT. You'll need a special
graphical interface program - WinBoard, available on Internet. 
For details, see the file "WINBOARD.TXT", but note that it does not
run smoothly yet, so for the full satisfaction I'd still recommend playing
with the text-based interface. 

 
II. How do you play?

   a) Entering moves:

     1) Normal move:  enter [from][to]  (like  "e2e3", "f1b5", "g1h3")

     2) Castling:     enter only the king squares (like "e1g1" or "e8c8")

     3) Promotion:    add the piece letter (like "e7e8B" or "h2h1K")

     4) En-Passant:   enter as normal capture (like "e4f3")


  b) Commands summary: (case is irrelevant)
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1.  NW  .............  New game
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2.  PL  .............  Play

    Starts searching. You can use this to see how Giveaway Wizard would play
    in your position. Pressing "p" during its thinking will cause Giveaway
    Wizard to make the best move so far. Any other key will just stop 
    calculation. (However, you will have to wait sometimes, depending on how 
    long Giveaway Wizard has already been thinking)   
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3.  BD  .............  Show the board
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4.  ST  .............  Set search time

    Approximate. Giveaway Wizard may sometimes think less or more, depending
    on position. Default is 3 seconds per move.
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5.  SD  .............  (Set search depth)  (in half-moves)
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6.  BK  .............  Take back

    Takes back only last half-move played. So if you made a mistake last
    move - type "bk" twice or use "rm".
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7.  RM  .............  Remove             (Takes back last full move.)
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8.  ML  .............  List possible moves
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9.  NB  .............  (Next best)

    Feature which lets you see which move Giveaway Wizard considers second
    best to the one just played.
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10. SH  .............  Shuffle   "Fisher" random setup.

     This randomly sets up the back rows in the initial position. 
     Used sometimes in chess and chess variants to avoid known openings.
     Also if you are a very strong player - try playing without your
     opening knowledge - it is much more difficult!
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11. ED  .............  (Edit position)   (For analysis purposes)
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12. AU  .............  Autoplay mode

    For fun. You can stop computer's play anytime by pressing a key.
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13. PP  ............. Player-player mode on/off

    Enter game till a certain move.
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14. SS  .............  Search statistics on/off

    It is more difficult to play not knowing the machine's analysis!
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15. LD  ............. (Load game)

    Loads games or positions saved in PGN format.
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16. SV  .............  Save game

    Saves game in PGN format. 
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17. EN  .............  Quit

    Quits, automatically saving last game in file "lastgame".
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18. HELP.............  Help (brief command summary)
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III. Why are 4 commands above in brackets?

Well, Giveaway Wizard is a shareware program. You can use and copy 
as much as you want (no time limit), you can give it to your friends 
or chess clubs, I will be grateful to you for that. (Please DO NOT forget
to include this README file!). But - in this version 4 commands are disabled 
and time per move is limited to three seconds. Taking into account the 
Giveaway Wizard's strength, it should be enough, but if you are really 
interested in Giveaway chess, you will want to analyze your games or 
positions at higher time limits. Then (if you like Giveaway Wizard) 
contact me and I will send you the fully functional version for 
a fee of $10. 

IV. How do you register?

If you are a Compuserve user, GO SWREG and type the program's 
Registration ID: 14962. Then you will be billed $10 from your 
compuserve account. Otherwise, just send me E-mail to 
"Stan_Goldovski@compuserve.com", with "Giveaway Wizard registration" 
in the subject area. 

If you register I will:

 o  Send you the latest fully functional version of Giveaway Wizard. 
    (Registered to your name.) 

   
 o  Notify you about bug fixes and improvements and 
    send every fixed or improved version of Giveaway Wizard 
    at no charge. 


 o  Send you my "Tips for winning Giveaway chess."


 o  Give you direct support for any questions about Giveaway Wizard 
    or Giveaway chess for a minimum of 12 months. 


V. Known bugs.

As I mentioned above, playing with the WinBoard-interface is
a bit buggy, if you experience too many problems please use 
the text-based interface.
   
A severe bug or, better to say, missing algorithm is that Giveaway 
Wizard does not recognize two chess rules: the rule of 3-fold repetition
and 50 move rule. Both are (as you know) draws. 

This is what I know of. If you find any more please contact me, 
I will highly appreciate your help and any comments or suggestions 
about Giveaway Wizard (even if you're not registered user!). 


VI. A bit more information about the Giveaway Wizard...

Giveaway Wizard has a primitive openings library with first White moves.
Otherwise it would play only 1.b3 or 1.g3 (seem too cautious to me).

There is also an endgame library implemented, so that it knows the winner 
in all of 2-piece endings, but at lower time settings it might fail to
win them (e.g. with Rook against King). An evaluation close to +/- 60.0 
means that Wizard calculated to such an endgame.


ABOUT MYSELF

I am not a professional programmer, I just started studying computer 
science at university. I am deeply interested in computer chess and in 
Giveaway chess. Having trouble finding an equal (or stronger) opponent 
to play with, I decided to write this program. As a skeleton for it 
I took "Minimax 1.00" chess program by Ch.Donninger and Dieter Steinwender, 
which was supplied with a wonderful book "Shach am PC" by Frederic Friedel 
and Dieter Steinwender. Unfortunately, I know only of the German edition, but 
I hope it will be translated soon. Then I added some general computer chess 
algorithms and many Giveaway-specific improvements, which eventually made 
the program about 600 Elo points stronger than the initial version. 

I sincerely hope you will like Giveaway Wizard, and this will encourage 
me to develop and improve it further.

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March 25, 1997.
Stan Goldovski
