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Dan-the-K wrote:What is the meaning of analysis results and how (if possible) does Crafty analyze an entire game?

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My second question is can Crafty analyze an entire game? This seems to be an option "Analyze Game" but if I click that menu item and select a game, the computer remains silent....

Dan-the-K wrote:...

Please explain the syntax of the Crafty Annotate command. All I get is

annotate <file> <color> <moves> <margin> <time> [nmoves]

What is the meaning and format of these parameters?

3. annotate|annotateh <filename> <colors|name> <moves>
<margin> <time> This command is used to annotate (make com-
ments in) a game that has already been played.

The annotate command produces a file with the .can extension
added to the original name. This file will contain pure
ascii information from the annotation pass. "annotateh"
produces an HTML file instead (with the .html extension).
This includes the normal output, plus a nice bitmapped
graphical board display for every position where crafty had
'something to say'.

<filename> is the name of the file that has the game moves
stored in it. This should be a PGN-compatible file,
although Crafty can read nearly any file with chess moves
and convert it to pgn using the "read" and "savegame" com-
mands to perform the conversion.

<colors|name> indicates which side Crafty will annotate.
The valid choices are w, b, and wb/bw for white only, black
only, and both, respectively. Crafty will search and pro-
duce results for the indicated color only, making moves for
the other side silently as they are read in.

Alternatively, you can specify the player's name (useful if
you want to annotate several of your own games in one large
pgn file, for example, and you alternated colors so that you
can't pick the right one easily). Crafty will then figure
out which side to annotate for in each game. Note that the
name is case-sensitive, but that you only have to enter a
string that is unique in the name field. IE if one name is
"Anatoly Karpov" and the other is "unknown" then specifying
Karpov as the name would be sufficient. If the same
'string' appears in both names, Crafty will complain.

<moves> indicates the moves that should be annotated. If
this is a single integer, annotation starts at this move
number (for the color given above) and proceeds for the rest
of the game. If a range is given, as (20-33), then only
moves 20-33 inclusive are annotated. To annotate the com-
plete game, you can use 1-999.

<margin> gives a score "window" that controls whether Crafty
will produce comments (see below). The larger this number
this number, the fewer annotations Crafty will produce. A
negative number will result in an annotation for every move
selected.

<time> indicates the time limit for each search. Since each
move selected requires two searches, you can take the number
of moves, double this number and multiply by <time> to
determine how long the annotation process will take. This
time is in seconds.

How it works. Suppose you use the command "annotate game1 w
1-999 1.000 30" This asks Crafty to read the file "game1",
and annotate the white moves for the entire game. The mar-
gin is 1 pawn and the search time limit is 30 seconds. The
output for the annotate command is found in <filename>.can,
in this case this is game1.can.

Crafty first searches the move actually played in the game
to determine the score for it. Crafty then searches the
same position, but tries all legal moves. If the score for
the best move found in this search is greater than the score
for the move actually played plus the margin, then a comment
is added to the output file. This output file is quite
short, with all the game moves (plus any PGN tags in the
original, for identification purposes) plus the brief com-
ments. An annotation looks like this:

{real_value (depth:best_value PV moves)}

real_value is the score for the move actually played. depth
is the depth Crafty searched to produce the best_value and
PV for what it thinks is the best sequence of moves for both
sides. If you set <margin> to 1.000, you are asking Crafty
to only annotate moves that either lost a pawn or more, or
moves that failed to win a pawn or more. If you set <mar-
gin> to .300, you are asking for annotations for any move
that makes the score drop about 1/3 of a pawn below the
value for the best move Crafty found.

If you have other moves you would like to see analyzed dur-
ing this annotate process, at the point where the move can
be played, insert it into the PGN file as an analysis com-
ment, surrounded by () or {} characters. Crafty will pro-
duce analysis for this move as well. If more than one move
appears inside a single set of delimiters, only the first
will be analyzed. To force Crafty to analyze more than one
move, enter them like this: (move1) (move2) as though they
were two separate comments.

Dan-the-K wrote:...

In fact, is there a list somewhere of Crafty commands? How can I get Crafty to show me all its commands? "Help" doesn't do it.

Dan