Amateur (chess engine)
Will Singleton (smocfi@aol.com)
The Amateur program is a Macintosh chess engine for the Fixation 2.x
interface, allowing automated computer play on the Internet Chess Club
(ICC) and the
Free Internet Chess Servers (FICS).
It contains a settings file (see "engine parameters"), which allows the
user to change the hash-size, pondering, strength, etc. The program will run
on all PowerPC cpus.
On a G3/500, Amateur will maintain about a 2500-2600 ICC blitz rating
(2200-2300 FICS). A 266 mhz machine should lower those numbers by about
70-100 points. Using the small hash, disabling pondering and book will further
reduce its strength.
Using Amateur with Fixation
To use Amateur as a Fixation engine, launch the Amateur 1.x application.
Prior to connecting to a server, select the "Engine" item from the
Option menu in Fixation. Fixation will display
the Engine communications window:
The "<-- version" means that Fixation sent the "version" command to Amateur.
The ">> version: Amateur 1.3" indicates that Amateur responded with this version
information. If Amateur is not running, Fixation will display the error
"The chess engine does not appear to be responding to Apple Events. Is it running?"
in the engine communications window.
Connect to a chess server using a computer account -- if you attempt to
logon with a non-computer account, Fixation will automatically disable the engine.
If Amateur and Fixation do not seem to be communicating properly, you can enable
communications tracing by entering Command-T. Trace information will be displayed as
green text in the engine window.
"gameend" alias
At the end of each game, Fixation will automatically send "gameend" to the
chess server. This gives you the option of issuing multiple seeks on the ICC
by setting up the "gameend" alias. For example, you could enter the following
on the ICC:
+alias gameend multi resume; seek 1 0 m f; seek 3 1 m f; seek 5 0 m f
Make sure to use the manual parameter (i.e. "m") for the seek so that Fixation
has the chance to send the challenge request from the seek to the engine for
screening. FICS servers do not support the "multi" command so you will only be
able to issue one seek with the "gameend" alias on the FICS.
Fixation 2.0.3 or later will also send the "gameend" command after the
computer account is logged onto a chess server.
Files
All distribution files must reside in the same directory as the application.
The books and "movefile" must not be modified, since Amateur expects them in a
certain format. The engine parameters file may be modified as stated in that file.
Playing Others
You can use Amateur to play against other engines, people or yourself.
To play Amateur yourself, run the program as described above, then startup
a second copy of Fixation and logon to another account. It provides a
medium-quality game, and a good player should be entertained. The engine's
strength level can be set to normal or weak using the "strength" parameter in
the engine parameters file.
Quitting Amateur
The Amateur application does not provide a user interface. To quit Amateur, you
can do one of the following:
- In Fixation's Engine window, enter "quit" in the command entry line at the bottom.
- Write an AppleScript command that sends a Quit Application event to Amateur.
For example:
quit application "Amateur 1.3" saving no
- Use the sendae command in the MPW shell:
sendae -e aevtquit -t "Amateur 1.3" -m 1
Download
NOTE: You must be a member of the
Fixation discussion group
to download the following file:
Download Amateur 1.3 (202K)
Revised: November 14, 2004
