Belofte

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**Belofte**,
a chess engine written in [[C]] by [[Yves De Billoëz]] and released under the [[Free Software Foundation#GPL|GPL license]] v2. Belofte is a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_application|console application]], but supports the [[Chess Engine Communication Protocol]] aka [[WinBoard]]/[[XBoard]] protocol.

=Features=
The engine supports [[WinBoard|Winboard v1 and v2]] protocol alongside the Belofte protocol. The engine also supports [[Extended Position Description|EPD]] test sets and can be run with initialization files. Games are saved in [[Portable Game Notation|PGN]] format. PGN files can be converted into an [[Opening Book|opening book]]. Internally, Belofte keeps a two-dimensional [[8x8 Board|8x8 board]] performing pure [[Negamax|negamax]] [[Alpha-Beta|alpha-beta]] so far with a once estimated [[Depth|depth]] rather than [[Iterative Deepening|iterative deepening]] <ref>[[https://sourceforge.net/p/belofte/gitrepo/ci/Version-0.9.0/tree/src/alg1_search.c|belofte / Code / [6fd788] /src/alg1_search.c]]</ref>.

=History=
Development started in 2005 and version 0.2.x made appearance on freechess.org chess server and in source code. At that time, it was released with a custom license (but still free for the open source community). Versions 0.3 till 0.6 were converted to C++ and developed under windows but compilation on other platforms failed. Source code for those versions is available. Look for the branch in the source repository. In 2017, the old version was re-released under GPL license and a new version 0.9.x is making its appearance. It is a branch from the 0.2 release and gradually, all changes from the 0.3+ branches will be included.

=Rating=
The engine performs currently at 1000-1200 Elo. In some tournaments, it achieved around 1500 ELO.

=Forum Posts=
* [[http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=64451|New engine: belofte]] by [[Yves De Billoëz]], [[CCC]], June 29, 2017

=External links=
* [[https://sourceforge.net/projects/belofte/|Source code on souceforge]]
* [[http://www.macchess.be/dev-belofte.php|Website]]

=References=
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=What links here?= 
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