Important: While version 1 is a reasonably strong and functional draughts program for Windows, it is only tangentially relevant to the Deep Brew project. It is not being actively developed; we are building a replacement which will be stronger! better! and freer!! We've put version 1 online (and released the source under the GPL - it was developed as a closed program) mostly to provide you with something useful while we build the new software. However, if you'd like to work on this legacy version, please contact me so that we can synchronise what we do.

Excuse the cheerleading tone; this is old content which was intended to make you amenable to pay money for this thing (shareware style). Sheesh. Fortunately for my conscience, no-one ever did.

Features

Deep Brew has features designed to make it easy to play and improve your draughts skills. These include:

• Play games at any level of skill, from basic to advanced (note: if you're really advanced, you probably want something like Nemesis, King's Row or Cake rather than Deep Brew)
• Set up positions for analysis and practice
• Load and save games (note - unfortunately Deep Brew doesn't yet support Portable Draughts Notation)
• Change sides during a game
• Take back moves if you blunder
• Customise the board colours

Deep Brew's clear, simple layout makes playing and improving at draughts a pleasure.
Deep Brew Screenshot

This "legacy" Deep Brew is compatible with Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP and Windows Server 2003, and you can get it from our download page.

Strength

Brute speed was the primary concern in Deep Brew's design. This has given Deep Brew a measure of strength - sufficient to win the competition it was built for - and allows Deep Brew to span a range of skills up to strong players. Deep Brew is not currently as strong as leading commercial programs; however, it is probably strong enough for most player's purposes - and it's also free and very easy to set up and use. Features of Deep Brew's implementation which contribute to its playing strength include:

• Deep Brew uses highly-optimised bitboard code to squeeze every last drop of performance out of your processor
• Extensive use of memory cache allows Deep Brew to search far deeper in complex middle- and endgame positions
• On a Pentium III/700, Deep Brew analyses from 450,000 to over a million positions each second.
• Zippy performance, combined with Deep Brew's carefully-tuned positional knowledge, allows Deep Brew to play strongly even when given very little time to think.
• Early in development, Deep Brew began to win games against me, its author. In developing and testing the engine, however, my own play grew considerably stronger (when I started Deep Brew, I hadn't played draughts since childhood!). Deep Brew remains far ahead of me, though, and it's current strength is definitely out of my league.

Experience indicates that Deep Brew's strength, combined with its ease-of-use, make it a good partner in developing your own checkers strength. And, of course, it's free.