The best opening book for Arena?

[rodolfoleoni]

I wish to run some experiments but I need an excellent book. Suggestions?

[gerold]

I wish to run some experiments but I need an excellent book. Suggestions?

http://lefouduroi.pagesperso-orange.fr/hs-books.htm

[rodolfoleoni]

Hi Gerold and Gabor,

the experiment involves position learning. I just want to edit an excellent quality book which can compete with the books of best engines. After the edit, the learning engine should always play only the best move for each position, so to go into middlegame in a good position. In this way, I could limit the number of variations while getting deep enough, and I could hope learning to have effects within a reasonable number of games.

In fact, I'm trying to repeat an experiment I ran some years ago, but my book was not a great one as it reflected my poor ELO. Even if book quality was average, experiment worked well enough. I'm curious to repeat it with a good book...

I'll try with Harry Schnapp Grandbook.

Thanks!

[gerold]

Hi Gerold and Gabor,

the experiment involves position learning. I just want to edit an excellent quality book which can compete with the books of best engines. After the edit, the learning engine should always play only the best move for each position, so to go into middlegame in a good position. In this way, I could limit the number of variations while getting deep enough, and I could hope learning to have effects within a reasonable number of games.

In fact, I'm trying to repeat an experiment I ran some years ago, but my book was not a great one as it reflected my poor ELO. Even if book quality was average, experiment worked well enough. I'm curious to repeat it with a good book...

I'll try with Harry Schnapp Grandbook.

Thanks!

Should be interesting. Be happy to try any new book you can make.
Best of luck.
Gerold.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi,

interesting is the PGN-Random option from Arena. For eng-eng matches I think the best idea we have.

On my webpage (www.amateurschach.de) in download selection you can be found a newer "PGN-Random Book 4.1" file (a short and a long version). Verson 3.5 (4.1 for Shredder Classic GUI) is for Arena better. Tested now in around 35.000 40-minutes SWCR games without any problems, double games, fast win games and so on.

About my book I wrote in German language in sommer 2010 a discription. All steps for this book can be found (the bigger PGN Random Book 4.1 download file).

Furthermore, Volker Annuss wrote a small tool to this idea. You can create from a PGN-Random file very easy a test set.

PGN Random is an older idea by myself. Arena load a position from a PGN file by random (game per random is loaded)? You can give the option: Use the first x moves from a PGN file. Arena will save later (game is over) the game with the information ...

Anand-Karpov, 1994 ... and so on in PGN file. This is great because you have the main information to the opening system the engines played.

Have fun with PGN-Random!

Best
Frank

[rodolfoleoni]

Hi Frank,

it's interesting, I'll download it. Maybe I can adapt it for my purposes, which aren't random at all. Middlegame position learning has never been effective because of the enormous amount of variations in opening book. What I need to do is to "prune" moves so the learning engine can always play the same variations, against a group of non-learning engines and their books.

To make clear what exactly I want to do.... my old, low quality book can be found here:

http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/download ... hattan.zip

An experiment could be to give it to a learning engine (Spike and Alaric have a good learning), against an engine which is a bit stronger + its book. You'd see the learning engine always playing the same openings (English as white, Caro-Kann, Nimzoindian as black, and so on). By doing so, it eventually should improve the performance. The limit was the low quality of book. I want to improve it by using a state of the art book as a reference.

[slobo]

I have an excellent book for Arena for 5 moves.
It may be used for more than 5 moves (but not more than 10) however, it may not be so excellent as it is for 5 moves.
If you are interested, send me your e-mail by PM.

[rodolfoleoni]

Hi Slobodan,

I need to go deeper than 10 moves.

Thanks anyway

[gerold]

I have an excellent book for Arena for 5 moves.
It may be used for more than 5 moves (but not more than 10) however, it may not be so excellent as it is for 5 moves.
If you are interested, send me your e-mail by PM.

I would be very interested in your book. Why not post it for download.

Best,
Gerold.

[Dann Corbit]

I wish to run some experiments but I need an excellent book. Suggestions?

Hi Rodolfo,

Arena supports opening line selection from a PGN file, at least for engine-engine tournaments. If that is what you are planning to do, you might try this link: http://kirill-kryukov.com/chess/tools/opening-sampler/

Among the selectable collections there is Cody-10moves-7084.pgn which was built using the 40/40 computer database of CCRL. As the name suggests this file contains 7084 different opening positions. In all probability this is one of the best there is.

Here is that book as a set of analyzed EPD records:
http://cap.connx.com/chess-engines/new- ... 84.epd.bz2