Houdini 6 has been released

[Damir]

Support for Cerebellum bin book or bin book in general might boost Houdini sales as well, because majority of users are using Brainfish with Cerebellum bin format...

[Leo]

Support for Cerebellum bin book or bin book in general might boost Houdini sales as well, because majority of users are using Brainfish with Cerebellum bin format...

Are you saying it doesn't support it?

[schack]

Is ChessBase going to release a Houdini 6 package?

[Damir]

Support for Cerebellum bin book or bin book in general might boost Houdini sales as well, because majority of users are using Brainfish with Cerebellum bin format...

Are you saying it doesn't support it?

No, Houdini 6 does not support Cerebellum bin books or bin books in general...

[Houdini]

Is ChessBase going to release a Houdini 6 package?

Yes, coming later this year.

[Houdini]

Support for Cerebellum bin book or bin book in general might boost Houdini sales as well, because majority of users are using Brainfish with Cerebellum bin format...

Isn't Cerebellum available in a common format that GUIs can read?
It feels a bit weird to implement "yet another opening book format" inside engines, there's already so much different formats available.

[Damir]

Yes, there is ctg book of Cerebellum but I think, is very old update, and is not updated any longer. Cerebellum bin book is updated every time.
if you can implement Cerebellum bin format in Houdini 6 without having to reduce the playing strength of Houdini, I think you should do it.
Also many players who are using Brainfish might in the end buy Houdini because it supports this format. In the end, this might boost Houdini sales.

[pohl4711]

Support for Cerebellum bin book or bin book in general might boost Houdini sales as well, because majority of users are using Brainfish with Cerebellum bin format...

Isn't Cerebellum available in a common format that GUIs can read?
It feels a bit weird to implement "yet another opening book format" inside engines, there's already so much different formats available.

I am doing testruns of BrainFish and Cerebellum since 2 years for Thomas Zipproth, who is the creator of BrainFish and Cerebellum. Some information about Cerebellum:
1) from the BrainFish-website: Brainfish is a standard Stockfish chess engine extended by a general book format, which is capable of handling a reduced part of Cerebellum, which is an innovative chess opening and playing book. All moves in the distributed book Cerebellum_light.bin generated by Cerebellum where calculated by using Stockfish as analysis engine, without using statistics. Then those moves where again recalulated by the Cerebellum Library using a graph algorithm which makes all scores in the library consistant. Consistant scores means for example when the starting position has a score of 0.2 and a best move is 1.e4, the position after 1.e4 must have the score -0.2. Additional some others properties are found like the best main line for a position and possible Transitions. That means when Brainfish is playing, it plays like Stockfish regarding the evaluation, only a much higher skill level. The lines in Cerebellum_light.bin are in some cases reaching the late middlegame and endgame.

2) Because of (1), see above), Cerebellum has much more in common with a persistent-hash-file than with an opening book. And it was calculated by Stockfish. So it is recommended, to use it with the Stockfish-Engine (BrainFish, asmFish).

3) There are two file-formats of the Cerebellum_Light Library: The "original" Cerebellum_Light.bin format (which is NOT polyglot or something else) and a polyglot-version, which can be converted by asmFish out of the original Cerebellum_Light.bin-file. BUT this polyglot-version of Cerebellum is somewhat weaker in gameplay, because asmFish (or any other engine, which can read polyglot-books) does not check the Library-moves for possible move-loops, which can lead to 3fold-draws out of the library (BrainFish does that check for move-loops). But the good news is, that Thomas Zipproth will release a polyglot-version of Cerebellum_Light very soon, which is checked by him for possible move-loops, so this polylgot-version will play stronger than the polyglot-version, which is converted by asmFish automatically. At the moment, I am doing a testrun with that enhanced polyglot-Cerebellum used by latest asmFish (so it is a asmBrainFish-Engine...) - and the result is looking very promising at the moment (result on monday on my website).

Stefan (SPCC)

[Leo]

Support for Cerebellum bin book or bin book in general might boost Houdini sales as well, because majority of users are using Brainfish with Cerebellum bin format...

Are you saying it doesn't support it?

No, Houdini 6 does not support Cerebellum bin books or bin books in general...

Ok. Thanks. Hard to believe.

[Houdini]

Ok. Thanks. Hard to believe.

Why? Our philosophy has always been that book management (in particular the probabilities of choosing between the different moves available in the opening book) is done by the GUI that runs the engine.
Each GUI has its own, different book format; if you’re using Arena, your book will be in the Arena ABK format; if you're using Fritz/ChessBase you'll be using ctg format book, etc.
To use an engine you'll eventually need a GUI; the GUI might then as well make the book move selection.