Hi Rob Thanks so much for your help, needless to say I am still struggeling to get the makefile to run to completion. I am not sure where i should be unzipping the JFreechart files to? I keep getting the error that package org.jfree,chart does not exist. I get a total of five errors when I run the makefile. With regard to your other comment, I am looking at using the genetic programming paradigm and that is why I have chosen to use ecj. Is ecj my best option? When you speak about evolving players what exactly do you mean as I am looking at generating an evaluation function mainly. Thanks for all your help. Jurie