Banksia GUI released

[carldaman]

Re: adjudication - would it be possible to adjudicate wins based not just on a score threshold, but also combined with material situation on the board. In other words, don't adjudicate until a clear advantage is actually manifested on the board (based on piece points, P=1, N=3, B=3, etc)?

The reason for this is that it would improve the aesthetics of the adjudication phase, and the game would not be cut short when there is no clear win (to the average human eye) on the board.

Thanks for trying to create a GUI with so many features.

[twobeer]

Is it somehow possible to add variations (manually) to the game (pgn) when analyzing a game? I tried to move into the game and enter a "new" alternative move but was unable to get any variations in Banksia.. Is game variations - sidelines a feature not implemented? Or am I just missing how this is done in Banksia? Need to create DB??

[phhnguyen]

I wish static adjudication is near.

The way cutechess do it

Can you help to explain what static adjudication is? How does it work? Thanks

[phhnguyen]

Re: adjudication - would it be possible to adjudicate wins based not just on a score threshold, but also combined with material situation on the board. In other words, don't adjudicate until a clear advantage is actually manifested on the board (based on piece points, P=1, N=3, B=3, etc)?

The reason for this is that it would improve the aesthetics of the adjudication phase, and the game would not be cut short when there is no clear win (to the average human eye) on the board.

Thanks for trying to create a GUI with so many features.

Thanks a lot for the idea/suggestion. I have added it to my TODO list

[phhnguyen]

Is it somehow possible to add variations (manually) to the game (pgn) when analyzing a game? I tried to move into the game and enter a "new" alternative move but was unable to get any variations in Banksia.. Is game variations - sidelines a feature not implemented? Or am I just missing how this is done in Banksia? Need to create DB??

Sorry, at the moment BSG doesn't support variations. You may add them as comments for moves.

[Nordlandia]

Static adjudication is like this: once seven or less pieces remains, then auto determine result.

The syzygy adjudication need to be standalone compared to syzygy engine path.

Here is the catch -> if syzygy is stored on HDD then adjudication does not affect engine speed.

7-pieces can be stored on HDD without worrying about engine speed. Here just for adjudication.

[phhnguyen]

Static adjudication is like this: once seven or less pieces remains, then auto determine result.

The syzygy adjudication need to be standalone compared to syzygy engine path.

Here is the catch -> if syzygy is stored on HDD then adjudication does not affect engine speed.

7-pieces can be stored on HDD without worrying about engine speed. Here just for adjudication.

I am still confused. As I have understood, you want two sets of Syzygy EGTBs, one for engines and one for BSG for adjudication, correct?

If yes, I still see some big problems with using two Syzygy sets:
- It requires too much disk space (double size)
- Syzygy code may auto-catch a lot of data in memory. Double that may become a big trouble
- You may reduce a bit the affection of BSG on probing to engines. However, that is not serious since BSG hits the Syzygy maximum one per move, at the beginning before any involving engines have started searching. On the other hand, engines may hit Syzygy a lot when searching and may interfere or affect seriously other engines.

[carldaman]

Re: adjudication - would it be possible to adjudicate wins based not just on a score threshold, but also combined with material situation on the board. In other words, don't adjudicate until a clear advantage is actually manifested on the board (based on piece points, P=1, N=3, B=3, etc)?

The reason for this is that it would improve the aesthetics of the adjudication phase, and the game would not be cut short when there is no clear win (to the average human eye) on the board.

Thanks for trying to create a GUI with so many features.

Thanks a lot for the idea/suggestion. I have added it to my TODO list

Great! I'm not aware of any GUI that has such smart adjudication, so it'd be a ground-breaking feature.

[MikeB]

I just checked this GUI for the first time - it is quite good :

Two comments:

It not apparent to me how to use an engine for analysis in the GUI

The hash table is capped to 4000 MB which is quite small these days . Should be at least 256GB or 128GbBif your GUI can be used for analysis. It if cannot be used for analysis, then I get why it is so low.

Best regards,
Mike B

Edit: One more comment, would love to have ability where a human player can enter a tournament. Thx!

[Nordlandia]

Static adjudication is like this: once seven or less pieces remains, then auto determine result.

The syzygy adjudication need to be standalone compared to syzygy engine path.

Here is the catch -> if syzygy is stored on HDD then adjudication does not affect engine speed.

7-pieces can be stored on HDD without worrying about engine speed. Here just for adjudication.

I am still confused. As I have understood, you want two sets of Syzygy EGTBs, one for engines and one for BSG for adjudication, correct?

If yes, I still see some big problems with using two Syzygy sets:
- It requires too much disk space (double size)
- Syzygy code may auto-catch a lot of data in memory. Double that may become a big trouble
- You may reduce a bit the affection of BSG on probing to engines. However, that is not serious since BSG hits the Syzygy maximum one per move, at the beginning before any involving engines have started searching. On the other hand, engines may hit Syzygy a lot when searching and may interfere or affect seriously other engines.

The problems you list is not apparent in my case.

For simple adjudication (static if we choose to call it that) EGTBs can be perfectly stored on external HDD with USB interface. Let say if external HDD is connected with adjudication tables. It will wake up at 8-9 pieces if 7-piece syzygy is available.

Memory is not of issue if syzygy is set to accommodate the RAM available on your system. I.e. if total ram is 8 GB, 5-men syzygy is suffice.

Static adjudication mean HDD wake up near approaching the adjudication limit of the syzygy in use.