A Book For a Vintage Program

[mhull]

I'm looking for an opening book for a vintage computer program from the late 1970s. I'm guessing this program has not played any public games since 1978. It will likely not search deeper than 9 plies at human tournament time controls.

The program will not be a giant killer but it might be a novelty for humans of a certain strength.

I'm thinking perhaps 200 - 300 variations to start with human opposition in mind. There could even be different versions of the book to change-out the openings if desired. A final book could be much larger but I'm just testing at the moment.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

[Roland Chastain]

Hello! I don't know exactly what kind of book you are looking for, but for me I was glad when I discovered that I could use pgn-extract to build books in what I called "TSCP format" (maybe the good format for a vintage program), from pgn files. So I downloaded collections of grandmasters games and, for example, build a book for white from games where Fischer played white, and so on. You can find an example of command line to do that here:
http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 33#p826533

Still in a "vintage" spirit, I converted my books to the "Kathe Spracklen format":
https://github.com/rchastain/alouette/b ... /white.txt

My two cents.

Regards.

Roland

[mclane]

IMO the book should be kind of mirror of the playing style of the engine.

If it plays like Petrosian I would not bring aggressive openings into the book.
If the engine plays Like tal it would be nice to bring open positions into the book.
If it plays very nimzowitch....


The engine must come out of book in a position it can handle.

[mhull]

IMO the book should be kind of mirror of the playing style of the engine.

If it plays like Petrosian I would not bring aggressive openings into the book.
If the engine plays Like tal it would be nice to bring open positions into the book.
If it plays very nimzowitch....


The engine must come out of book in a position it can handle.

Thanks for the pointers.

This program does very little pruning and move ordering seems to mainly depend upon the score of the previous search iteration (it does iterative deepening). So its search is wide and not deep. 9 plies would be a maximum (on modern hardware) and more likely is 5-6 plies in a middle-game.

A book tailored for a 1980s non-speculative program might be good for testing at-least. This program is going to play more like a club-house "Petrosian" (not like an aspiring Tal or Rashid Nezhmetdinov).

So far, I have setup a program to process PGN format. What I don't have is a way to set the depth of the book or to tailor the opening for white and black.

So if there are books (in the public domain) that already set to a middle-game positions for white or black, that would be ideal.

[mhull]

Hello! I don't know exactly what kind of book you are looking for, but for me I was glad when I discovered that I could use pgn-extract to build books in what I called "TSCP format" (maybe the good format for a vintage program), from pgn files. So I downloaded collections of grandmasters games and, for example, build a book for white from games where Fischer played white, and so on. You can find an example of command line to do that here:
http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 33#p826533

Still in a "vintage" spirit, I converted my books to the "Kathe Spracklen format":
https://github.com/rchastain/alouette/b ... /white.txt

My two cents.

Regards.

Roland

I think the Spracklen books could work fine for testing.

Thanks, Roland!

[Rebel]

I'm looking for an opening book for a vintage computer program from the late 1970s. I'm guessing this program has not played any public games since 1978. It will likely not search deeper than 9 plies at human tournament time controls.

The program will not be a giant killer but it might be a novelty for humans of a certain strength.

I'm thinking perhaps 200 - 300 variations to start with human opposition in mind. There could even be different versions of the book to change-out the openings if desired. A final book could be much larger but I'm just testing at the moment.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

http://rebel13.nl/dump/hg440.txt

It's from the Mephisto HG40 module, a move with a "-" sign means don't play.

[mhull]

I'm looking for an opening book for a vintage computer program from the late 1970s. I'm guessing this program has not played any public games since 1978. It will likely not search deeper than 9 plies at human tournament time controls.

The program will not be a giant killer but it might be a novelty for humans of a certain strength.

I'm thinking perhaps 200 - 300 variations to start with human opposition in mind. There could even be different versions of the book to change-out the openings if desired. A final book could be much larger but I'm just testing at the moment.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

http://rebel13.nl/dump/hg440.txt

It's from the Mephisto HG40 module, a move with a "-" sign means don't play.

Thanks Ed! Excellent.

Do you know if the "-" is a prefix or suffix?

[chrisw]

I'm looking for an opening book for a vintage computer program from the late 1970s. I'm guessing this program has not played any public games since 1978. It will likely not search deeper than 9 plies at human tournament time controls.

The program will not be a giant killer but it might be a novelty for humans of a certain strength.

I'm thinking perhaps 200 - 300 variations to start with human opposition in mind. There could even be different versions of the book to change-out the openings if desired. A final book could be much larger but I'm just testing at the moment.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

http://rebel13.nl/dump/hg440.txt

It's from the Mephisto HG40 module, a move with a "-" sign means don't play.

Thanks Ed! Excellent.

Do you know if the "-" is a prefix or suffix?

Looking at the F2F4 lines in the text file. Almost certainly a suffix. Eg don’t initiate any of the F2F4 lines

[mhull]

I'm looking for an opening book for a vintage computer program from the late 1970s. I'm guessing this program has not played any public games since 1978. It will likely not search deeper than 9 plies at human tournament time controls.

The program will not be a giant killer but it might be a novelty for humans of a certain strength.

I'm thinking perhaps 200 - 300 variations to start with human opposition in mind. There could even be different versions of the book to change-out the openings if desired. A final book could be much larger but I'm just testing at the moment.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

http://rebel13.nl/dump/hg440.txt

It's from the Mephisto HG40 module, a move with a "-" sign means don't play.

Thanks Ed! Excellent.

Do you know if the "-" is a prefix or suffix?

Looking at the F2F4 lines in the text file. Almost certainly a suffix. Eg don’t initiate any of the F2F4 lines

Ah! So no Reti lines either. Thanks for the excellent clue!

[Rebel]

Yes, suffix.