Alf - a chess playing program.

About Alf

Alf is a chess playing program written in Java, so it should run on all platforms.
Alf runs with the WinBoard or Xboard interface, or you can use the built-in graphical interface   (see a screenshot)
The playing strength of Alf is about 2100 elo.

Alf has an opening book created from more than 100.000 top grandmaster games (8 Mb binary) 

Alf is playing at The Internet Chess Club, see Alf's rating (only human opponents).

Download

Download Alf v. 1.09 (4.6 Mb zipped, no GUI) NEW!

Download Alf v. 1.08 (4.0 Mb zipped, GUI included)

Old versions

For installation instructions please read readme.txt

Jim Ablett has made this logo for Alf.
On his homepage Jim Ablett's Winboard Chess Projects you can also download an optimized Windows compilation of Alf.
This does not require Java installed, but the graphical interface is not included.
I can recommend this for Windows users!

Version historics

To be implemented

• Analyze mode
• Pondering
• Inclusion of the GUI in version 1.09
• Weaker levels/personalities

And of course continuous tuning of the evaluation function and search speed.

Other stuff

Read my experiences on optimizing Alf: 

 Berg, Casper W. and Petersen, Hans G.: A simplex approach for the tuning of a chess evaluation function, Informatics and Mathematical Modelling, January 2006.

 Berg, Casper W.; Mosbech, Thomas H.; Eriksen, Peter: Stochastic Simulation - Grid Computing, Informatics and Mathematical Modelling, June 2006.

Links

Arena - A free alternative to WinBoard

Winboard "X" - Alessandro Scotti's modified version of WinBoard

Winboard Forum - Chess Tournaments, Chess Programming, Discussion about Winboard.

TalkChess.com - Another computer chess forum.

ProGuard - A java shrinker, optimizer, and obfuscator for java programmers.

The author

You can visit my homepage here. Feel free to write to me if you have any comments on Alf.