Banksia GUI released

[Eduard]

It's fun to play with Banksia GUI on LiChess. I've only been playing with Engines there since Sunday. Unfortunately, Permanent Brain is not yet working correctly, so I play without pondering. With the PB, the engine calculates (the same for all engines), but no main variants are displayed and the engine does not moves a move. In order to continue - and the engine moves again, you first have to click on Go Offline and then immediately on Go Online again. Maybe the developer can fix this?

I first copied some (15) bot account names (there is a list on Lichess) and saved them in the GUI. Then you can automatically challenge the opponent. You can also go online in your browser and manually challenge individual accounts.

But it's also fun without pondering. I play with a polyglot short-book on 8 cores and use 6 men Syzygy. Engines are Stockfish derivatives, down here (PGN) Eman 7.31 played. My account is SolistaBot:

[pgn][Event "Rated Blitz game"]
[Site "https://lichess.org/UfXRwdPR"]
[Date "2021.07.15"]
[Round "?"]
[White "SolistaBot"]
[Black "TeamChelsie"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "A28"]
[WhiteElo "2435"]
[BlackElo "2483"]
[Annotator "lichess.org"]
[PlyCount "161"]
[EventDate "2021.??.??"]
[EventType "blitz"]
[TimeControl "180+2"]
[WhiteClock "0:01:10"]
[BlackClock "0:01:06"]

1. c4 {2} e5 {2} 2. Nc3 {0} Nf6 {0} 3. Nf3 {0} Nc6 {0} 4. e4 {0 A28 English
Opening: Four Knights System, Nimzowitsch Variation} Bb4 {0} 5. d3 {0} d6 {0}
6. a3 {0} Bxc3+ {0} 7. bxc3 {0} O-O {0} 8. g3 {0} h6 {0} 9. Bg2 {0} Be6 {0} 10.
O-O {22} Rb8 {0} 11. a4 {10} Nd7 {29} 12. Nh4 {14} Qf6 {0} 13. h3 {9} Ne7 {5}
14. f4 {2} exf4 {6} 15. Bxf4 {4} Nc6 {0} 16. Qd2 {2} Qe7 {16} 17. d4 {3} Rfe8 {
21} 18. d5 {3} g5 {0} 19. dxe6 {15} fxe6 {6} 20. e5 {3} gxf4 {0} 21. exd6 {2}
cxd6 {4} 22. Ng6 {3} Qg5 {15} 23. Nxf4 {3} Nce5 {15} 24. Qxd6 {4} Rbd8 {0} 25.
Qd4 {3} Nc5 {2} 26. Qf2 {3} Ned3 {26} 27. Nxd3 {6} Nxd3 {0} 28. Qxa7 {2} Rd7 {2
} 29. Rad1 {3} Kh8 {7} 30. h4 {3} Qe5 {1} 31. Rf3 {4} Qe2 {0} 32. Rdf1 {2} Ne1
{0} 33. R3f2 {4} Qe5 {2} 34. Qb6 {8} Nxg2 {2} 35. Kxg2 {2} Qe4+ {0} 36. Rf3 {5}
Rd2+ {4} 37. Kg1 {2} Re7 {2} 38. Qc5 {4} Rg7 {1} 39. Qe3 {3} Qxe3+ {0} 40. Rxe3
{3} Ra2 {2} 41. Rff3 {3} Re7 {1} 42. Rf6 {2} Kg7 {0} 43. Rexe6 {11} Rxe6 {1}
44. Rxe6 {1} Rxa4 {2} 45. Rb6 {6} Rxc4 {6} 46. Rxb7+ {2} Kg6 {19} 47. Rb6+ {2}
Kh7 {3} 48. Rb3 {3} Kg6 {3} 49. Kf2 {3} Kf7 {0} 50. Ke3 {2} Rg4 {2} 51. Rb7+ {4
} Kf8 {1} 52. Rh7 {2} Rxg3+ {4} 53. Kd4 {2} Rg4+ {9} 54. Kd5 {3} Rxh4 {6} 55.
c4 {6} Ke8 {0} 56. c5 {3} h5 {31} 57. Kd6 {2} Rd4+ {8} 58. Kc7 {4} Rh4 {0} 59.
c6 {3} Rh1 {0} 60. Kc8 {8} h4 {0} 61. c7 {3} Rh3 {0} 62. Rh6 {2} Rc3 {0} 63.
Kb7 {7} Kd7 {5} 64. Rh7+ {2} Ke6 {0} 65. c8=Q+ {2} Rxc8 {0} 66. Kxc8 {2} h3 {0}
67. Rxh3 {2} Kd5 {0} 68. Rh4 {2} Kc5 {0} 69. Kd7 {2} Kd5 {0} 70. Ra4 {2} Ke5 {0
} 71. Kc6 {2} Kf6 {0} 72. Kd6 {2} Kf5 {0} 73. Rd4 {2} Kg6 {3} 74. Ke6 {8} Kg5 {
0} 75. Re4 {0} Kg6 {0} 76. Rg4+ {0} Kh5 {0} 77. Kf5 {0} Kh6 {0} 78. Kf6 {0} Kh7
{0} 79. Rh4+ {0} Kg8 {0} 80. Rh5 {0} Kf8 {0} 81. Rh8# {2 Normal White wins by
checkmate.} 1-0[/pgn]

[Eduard]

Lichess Bot feature doesn't work properly now. Engines losing on times almost every single time. Engines calculates too much and no moves are made. Sometimes BankSIA GUI even crash randomly when Lichess bot feature is on.

Thanks for the report!

Look like some part I have rewritten for Lichess bot is not good enough even it runs well on my computer. Will work with it next week! If you have some free time, I will send some versions to you to test.

I have to set Move Margin to 0,0s in the bots options, and move overhead to 1000 (for Stockfish) in the engine options. With Move Margin 5s, I losed on time.

[AlexChess]

Hi!

Tournament games disappearing bug still present in build 0.46. I was at 660/903 games completed, I have found BangsiaGui closed and when I reopened it, the games was only 410/903. The running tournament isn't shown in Recent Tournaments so was impossible to clone it to prevent games loss. I think it could be very useful to have a button to clone running tournament also when incomplete, near the "Edit tournament" button



Best Regards, AlexChess

[Eduard]

Hi,
How can I copy engine info to clipboard? There is an engine log function that can be copied, but there are no eval of the engine.

[CMCanavessi]

Hi!

Tournament games disappearing bug still present in build 0.46. I was at 660/903 games completed, I have found BangsiaGui closed and when I reopened it, the games was only 410/903. The running tournament isn't shown in Recent Tournaments so was impossible to clone it to prevent games loss. I think it could be very useful to have a button to clone running tournament also when incomplete, near the "Edit tournament" button



Best Regards, AlexChess

Welcome to the club

[AlexChess]

Please phhnguyen,

Improve the backup feature

Just re-played 200 lost games



Best Regards,
AlexChess

[RubiChess]

Please phhnguyen,

Improve the backup feature

Just re-played 200 lost games

Improving backup is just a workaround. Author should improve stability and fix the reason for the crashes.
For this he probably needs some exact way to reproduce the crashes.
Or he should provide some info how to create some crash dump which helps to debug.

Regards, Andreas

[CMCanavessi]

Improving backup is just a workaround. Author should improve stability and fix the reason for the crashes.

That's not always true. Maybe the whole pc crashes (not Banksia's fault) and even if Banksia was 100% stable, it would still lose games. The best thing to do would be to save the running tournament after every game is finished.

[RubiChess]

Improving backup is just a workaround. Author should improve stability and fix the reason for the crashes.

That's not always true. Maybe the whole pc crashes (not Banksia's fault) and even if Banksia was 100% stable, it would still lose games. The best thing to do would be to save the running tournament after every game is finished.

Reading about the actual problems it seems that Banksia crashes are responsible for them. Making it stable would have solved all the current (two; yours and Alexchess) problems. So fixing Banksia should have highest prio.
And from the programmers point of view: Fixing crashes of your program should ALWAYS have highest priority.
But of course you are right. Making the (automatic?) backup feature more reliable would also help for the situations you describe.

[AlexChess]

Arena doesn't loses tournament data, but often it aborts the game without reasons and re-play it again and again

Banksiagui will be perfect with some extra bug fixes. It already has much more features than all the others chess GUIs.

Engine crashes are rare, GUI crashes even less, and as you know I run it on Windows 11 ARM64.

I'm confident about author skills, I must only wait a little.

Regards, AlexChess