Banksia GUI released

[Eduard]

On my device, v0.48 also crashes when I make a move in analysis mode. Previous version did not have this bug.

[Luecx]

I just downloaded the gui and it looks promising. Although there sadly seems to be an issue which would be my main usage with the gui.

If I open it up, click on the analyse button and select my engine, it does start the analysis on the initial board. Yet when I do a move, it instantly crashes. Is this issue known? Where should those issues be reported?

Greetings
Finn

Should be the same thing I reported I think. Under linux or windows for you ?

Windows for me.

[AlexChess]

Hi dear phhnguyen,

Another feature request:

Modify running tournament parameters: Rounds number, time controls, delay before engines timeout, draw e win range rules, openings & tablebases settings...

Thank you!
Best regards, Alex

PS: All OK now with the engines score counter in crosstable after 777 games (lucky number ) ...It's a real mistery about what was the cause having restarted my tournament from scratch with BSG 0.48.

[AlexChess]

Hi phhnguyen!

I must stop again my BSG tournament after 1040 games

Some games already played are missing. Round robin 54 engines 1 round = 1431 games. After a BSG crash the total is now 1407 and obviously I can find the missing games to re-play on the games list, so I cannot fix this issue. On Recent Tournaments still there isn't this tournament and was impossible to backup it. You must really improve this fundamental feature... or it is impossible to play big tournaments with BSG.



Best regards,
Alex

[phhnguyen]

The Stockfish developers are currently working hard to make Stockfish stronger (and to hunt down derivatives). Constantly new versions and new networks! That is very nice, but it lacks other basic functions. Playing without a book is no fun! Yesterday I played a few games with the latest stockfish and net from Sopel on Lichess. But I had to play without a book. That's shit and of no value in the long run.

I will soon delete some derivatives from my hard drive due to GPL violation. But then I almost no longer have an up-to-date engine with the ability to load polyglot books.

What can I do against it? With other GUIs I can load native books and play them on the servers. But I can't do that on Lichess.

What alternatives do I have? Do I have to stop playing Lichess?

Or maybe Banksia will offer an option to load opening books for playing on Lichess?

Lichess bot of BSG can play with Opening books. The requirement is that the book should be a Polyglot one (PGN and EDP books are only for tournaments). Remember to tick all boxes in the Settings:



BTW, Lichess bot management of BSG is having a bug about concurrency: when a game is finished, it is still counted as playing. The bug is fixed for the next release.

[phhnguyen]

Hi phhnguyen!

I must stop again my BSG tournament after 1040 games

Some games already played are missing. Round robin 54 engines 1 round = 1431 games. After a BSG crash the total is now 1407 and obviously I can find the missing games to re-play on the games list, so I cannot fix this issue. On Recent Tournaments still there isn't this tournament and was impossible to backup it. You must really improve this fundamental feature... or it is impossible to play big tournaments with BSG.



Best regards,
Alex

Did you look into the tourney backup subfolder (in the configuration folder of BSG)? There should be some daily-backup files and about 5 recent backup files. You may try them (by copying/renaming them manually into file banksiaplaying.json), find the best one as the recovery. The backup system may help to minimise the loss to few hours or a day.

I plan to add some new features thus users can check, backup, recover from BSG without the need to work directly and manually as now.

[AlexChess]

Thank you!

Restored to 2021/08/18 and I have now 941/1431 games

I'm sure you can easily automatize this ...You write much harder code

Best regards,
Alex
Banksiagui big fan & supporter

[Eduard]

The Stockfish developers are currently working hard to make Stockfish stronger (and to hunt down derivatives). Constantly new versions and new networks! That is very nice, but it lacks other basic functions. Playing without a book is no fun! Yesterday I played a few games with the latest stockfish and net from Sopel on Lichess. But I had to play without a book. That's shit and of no value in the long run.

I will soon delete some derivatives from my hard drive due to GPL violation. But then I almost no longer have an up-to-date engine with the ability to load polyglot books.

What can I do against it? With other GUIs I can load native books and play them on the servers. But I can't do that on Lichess.

What alternatives do I have? Do I have to stop playing Lichess?

Or maybe Banksia will offer an option to load opening books for playing on Lichess?

Lichess bot of BSG can play with Opening books. The requirement is that the book should be a Polyglot one (PGN and EDP books are only for tournaments). Remember to tick all boxes in the Settings:



BTW, Lichess bot management of BSG is having a bug about concurrency: when a game is finished, it is still counted as playing. The bug is fixed for the next release.

Thank you Pham!

Today's new GUI works fine so far. I overlooked the activation of books, sorry.

I have some questions:

1. What exactly is set with the book parameter "top" (in %)?
2. If both, the GUI book and another book is selected in the engine options, will both books be used?

3. Here is a graphic: What is shown in the fields marked in green?

[phhnguyen]

Thank you Pham!

Today's new GUI works fine so far. I overlooked the activation of books, sorry.

I have some questions:

1. What exactly is set with the book parameter "top" (in %)?

A given position may have multi-moves from an opening book. For Polyglot ones, each move has a weight number/a score, indicating how good the move is (the larger the better). You may turn on the panel "Books/Egtb" and take a look at them (as the below image).



For auto-playing, BSG can take only one move from them to play. It chops them by top% then takes randomly from the rest. Top 100% means total random. Top 10% of 20 opening-moves means BSG pickups randomly from the top 2 moves. Top 0% means it is always the first/the best one (not random at all).

2. If both, the GUI book and another book is selected in the engine options, will both books be used?

If there are more than two active opening books, each time BSG first selects a book randomly then pickup moves from that book. Thus, it may happen: at the first move of the game, the opening-move is picked up from book 2; at 2nd move, the opening-move is picked up from book 1, and so on.

3. Here is a graphic: What is shown in the fields marked in green?

BSG calls them bubbles. They help to show some information visually such as opening moves, Lc0's stats...

For opening books, you may control them from Settings, turn on/off, set size, color, display one or two parameters.

When the human player is in turn, BSG probes all opening books and displays all results in those bubbles. You can see a light link connecting between each bubble and a piece to show which move is. Move the mouse over a piece, BSG will display all related bubbles to that piece only.

The 1st number is the weight/score we have mentioned above. The best one (with the highest score) will be shown with a bold, dark border.

If you set to show 2nd param, it is winrate value. Polyglot books don't have those values thus you always see 0 instead. However, other books may have them such as the online book from chessdb.cn (click on the button "Online book/egtb" from Settings to add that book).

[Eduard]

Thank you Pham!

I understand so far. Very interesting everything. I have just tested a book with an engine that cannot load books. The engine was playing on Lichess with book and the bubbles were also displayed on the board. That's very nice, I like it.

In the picture, however, you can see that no moves are displayed in the book panel.


The book is activated (called Predator.bin), but no moves are displayed although moves were played from the book. What is wrong?