http://rebel13.nl/misc/ebf.html
Snippets:
The goal of this project is to create an extended opening book (or multiple books) for all chess engines that roughly will ensure:
Book hits for the first 10 plies with a 90-95% security
Book hits for the first 15 plies with a 75-80% security
Book hits for the first 20 plies with a 50-55% security
Book hits for the first 25 plies with a 25-30% security
Book hits for the first 30 plies with a 10-15% security.
If these numbers are feasible has to be seen, we are going to try it anyway.
All moves in an *.EBF book are analysed by at least one top engine at 30 seconds a move. Meaning that:
• The quality of the moves for the vast majority of chess engines is good enough to play it as a book move, gain some strength and win time on the clock. If Stockfish 7 plays a move analysed for 30 seconds it likely will be better than 98% of other engines.
• For variety reasons a position is (can be) analysed by more engines. Actually the system allows you to up to 127 engines you can freely define yourself.
Once your engine is out of your (own) opening book consult the (an) *.EBF opening book (just one call with as input an EPD string of the current position) and it for instance will return:
[d] rn1qkb1r/p1pp1ppp/bp2pn2/8/2PP4/5NP1/PP2PP1P/RNBQKB1R w KQkq
Code: Select all
Move Score Engine
d1a4 4 0 = Stockfish 7
b2b3 12 1 = Komodo 7
b1c3 4 2 = Gull 3
This is a typical project (like with PGN & EPD or Winboard & UCI) that stands or falls with the number of chess programmers that are going to support the EBF Extended Book Format. The more engines that support it, the more activity of users that will build stronger and stronger EBF books.
To get things to work takes no longer than 1 hour, you might even want to rewrite the source code yourself for your own purposes, the data structure of the EBF format (as described in the Source Code is quite simple. Therefore I like to maintain a list of engines that support the format. Drop me a note if you want to be named.