Sirius is a program for playing the game of othello.  The program includes
an AI (Artificial Intelligence) opponent which plays at a very challenging
level and is actually quite hard to beat.  The AI opponent's strength can
therefore be adjusted in several ways to give you a suitable opponent.

The AI opponent uses a plain alpha-beta search with hashing to figure out
which move to make.  To be able to tell a good position from a bad one, it
uses a pattern based evaluation function.  The pattern used is the 9 discs
surrounding each corner and the 8 discs creating the edge of the board.
The evaluation function also takes mobility, potential mobility and parity
into count.  For the initial 9 moves the AI opponent optionally uses a
simple opening book.  During midgame it searches and evaluates about
200.000 nodes per second on a PIII 750 MHz, in the endgame this number is
significantly higher due to more transpositions and a less expensive
evaluation function.