1 Sirius is a program for playing the game of othello. The program includes
2 an AI (Artificial Intelligence) opponent which plays at a very challenging
3 level and is actually quite hard to beat. The AI opponent's strength can
4 therefore be adjusted in several ways to give you a suitable opponent.
6 The AI opponent uses a plain alpha-beta search with hashing to figure out
7 which move to make. To be able to tell a good position from a bad one, it
8 uses a pattern based evaluation function. The pattern used is the 9 discs
9 surrounding each corner and the 8 discs creating the edge of the board.
10 The evaluation function also takes mobility, potential mobility and parity
11 into count. For the initial 9 moves the AI opponent optionally uses a
12 simple opening book. During midgame it searches and evaluates about
13 200.000 nodes per second on a PIII 750 MHz, in the endgame this number is
14 significantly higher due to more transpositions and a less expensive