New Cerebellum Library

[agnolauga]

It is easy to convert bin to pgn

[Ovyron]

Yeah, I don't get why books would have weights other than 100% of the best move and 0% for the rest. I've never seen a position where two moves are playable, there's always one that is best and you should always play it.

[Graham Banks]

It is easy to convert bin to pgn

How?

[the_real_greco]

Yeah, I don't get why books would have weights other than 100% of the best move and 0% for the rest. I've never seen a position where two moves are playable, there's always one that is best and you should always play it.

Wait, what? Either this is humor that I don't understand, or Bobby Fischer's ghost is on these forums.

[Ovyron]

Yeah, I don't get why books would have weights other than 100% of the best move and 0% for the rest. I've never seen a position where two moves are playable, there's always one that is best and you should always play it.

Wait, what? Either this is humor that I don't understand, or Bobby Fischer's ghost is on these forums.

Huh, while I accept that for a given chess position the best move would depend on the game's conditions (there's a different move for bullet, as for blitz; as for rapid; as for classical; as for engine chess; as for correspondence time controls) after they are known then on a given position it makes no sense to throw dice to decide your moves.

It's a nuisance for BIN books, I download one to try it, it plays a game against someone, that someone misplays the opening but the book has missing a killer move, I add it to the book. We play another game, opponent plays same line, I get excited because of the killer move, but my BIN book deviates earlier and I don't get to play it. It was because some earlier position has a 50/50 bifurcation. I have to check every line it plays so that I can specialize in a line that it plays 100% of the time.

Over time you might change your opinion about what is the best move on a position, some lines on the Spanish and the Sicilian are bizarre and their best moves keep changing as stronger engines are available, but until that happens, you're supposed to have a mainline against anything, and always play it, because it brings out the best performance possible, and you can even outperform people on faster hardware.

There's no place in chess for randomness, those BIN books that play a move 2/3 of the time and another 1/3 of the time make no sense.

[jdart]

There are many cases where the best continuation is not clear.

Just for one example, this position from the Petroff:

[d]rnbqkb1r/ppp2ppp/8/3p4/3Pn3/3B1N2/PPP2PPP/RNBQK2R b KQkq - 0 6

Black can play .. Nc6, .. Be7, .. Be6, or .. Bf5. Strong players, including correspondence players, still use all of these. If there was a clear best move here I think GMs would be playing it consistently.

--Jon

[Jonathan003]

It is easy to convert bin to pgn

I know with polyglot-tolerant there is a option to convert to pgn. It creates 3 pgn files: cerebellum.pgn, cerebellum-white, and cerebellum-black.
The problem is that I work with merged books. And not all lines that are shown in the bin book are in the pgn file after conversions. Sometimes there are also lines in the pgn file that are not in the bin book.
So it's useless for me.

I get the best results by exporting a bin book to a merged pgn game in SCID. But there is a limitation of 3000 moves. So I have to split the books what's a lot of work. The exporting in SCID is also a slow progress.

[Ovyron]

Strong players, including correspondence players, still use all of these.

Do any of them throw dice to decide what move to play in that position, though? Or do they play the move they think it's best at the point they played it? What I've seen from my opponents is that either they play a move they've specialized in, or they like to experiment with moves they haven't played before. In the first case they'd play what they have as best (or they wouldn't have specialized on the variation.) In the later case they know what is best but have already played it so they have something else as best (by elimination) and play it.

But they're making a conscious effort to play the best that they can to increase their performance for this game, they don't go and ask for a move to a weighted bin book and repeat what they got like parrots. The ones that do (or who knows how they choose their moves, I just get big advantage against them from the opening) aren't "Strong players."

When you're going to spend the next 3 years of your life playing a game you don't leave things to chance.

[marsell]

If you and your opponent always play the best move, you are always playing the same game. A second best prevents this! For example e4,d4,c4...
Which one is the best?

[Ozymandias]

It's a nuisance for BIN books, I download one to try it, it plays a game against someone, that someone misplays the opening but the book has missing a killer move, I add it to the book. We play another game, opponent plays same line, I get excited because of the killer move, but my BIN book deviates earlier and I don't get to play it. It was because some earlier position has a 50/50 bifurcation. I have to check every line it plays so that I can specialize in a line that it plays 100% of the time.

Engines that support the format often have a setting to achieve what you want. In Komodo, it's called “Best Book Line”; with it, anything over 50% becomes 100%.