It is time to revolutionize chess GUIs

[hgm]

Well. Hmm - yes. Sometimes I think it would be nice, if Arena (for me the best available GUI for playing against engines) was a bit like Babaschess.net (fics frontend) - My babaschess looks really sexy, has a full screen mode and some very useful functions.

This is purely a matter of taste. Personally I think Babas looks awful. But this is why it is good that there are many different GUIs. I like WinBoard because almost everything is in different windows, that you can independently open or close, and layout on your screen in any way you want. OtherGUIs are horribly rigid compared to that.

It's GUI is more configurable than Arena, it seems to make use of more modern GUI concepts/programming IDEs.. As for the functionality, the auto analysis is better; calculated moves are managed inside tha GUI as variants, wheras in Arena you get text files with no GUI interaction.

I am not completely sure what you mean here, but it seems to me that WinBoard does it in the way you want. Wth Analyze File the engine PVs are added to the game moves as PGN variations, and can be accessed by normal variation-tree walking. Currently stillonly for thewhole file, but I am planning to change the menu item for it to "Analyze Game", where it would act on the already loaded game, starting at the currently displayed move.

Unfortunately in Babaschess, you can only Analyse the whole match...

A lot could be better, but also the development of Babas or Arena seems to have ceased.

[Don]

Think of it... top GMs can't win a match against top chess engines, period.
For us mere mortals, amateur players, there is no chance, engines are merciless tactical monsters.

Why not focus development on better chess GUIs ? New ways of imputing moves, better 3D boards, better spoken analysis, better and faster search functions, better tools for opening analysis, better and more detailed statistics of your own games?

For OTB players, it doesn`t really matter if we're losing to a 3200 ou a 3250-rated engine.

Engine development should concentrate in strategical concepts or different styles of play.

It was a pleasure to play against CS Tal, Tiger, Junior and Rebel because of their aproach to the "styles" concept.

I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but the proliferation of Ippo clones is sharply reducing the diversity of chess programs, and I know there are computer chess enthusiasts who are real connoisseurs of playing style differences and enjoy seeing programs with different styles clashing - and also understand what they are seeing. Are those days going away? When the only difference between programs is ELO, it starts to get boring doesn't it?

Once there was the Power Chess program with a nice female voice to talk with us. I`m really tired of the sarcasm of Fritz, and the ridiculous window that opens when I make a blunder. Why not a GUI that talk gently to the player?

It does not make any sense to facelift a GUI and not add new features.

CA has the same program since version 8.
CB improvement? I see no great difference between CB 8 and CB 11. In fact, CB 8 had a more "intuitive" interface. The pull down menus in new CB interface are really ugly to work, just as bad as the new MS Word.

Today`s processors and graphics capabilities are great. Please improve your GUIs.

[fern]

My point is less specific. I do not say much about pattern recognizing. I Just say that this openning study , which myself has tried many times, is beyond the emotional capabiities of an average chess player. You get bored too soon.
My best
fern

[Don]

?? I don't agree with this advice at all. You really think the key to chess progress is to not study openings and only study blunders?

yes, tactics not openings....at most opening PRINCIPLES.

You are misinformed. Pattern recognition is only one part of the equation.

What are the other parts of the equation....Dont make me laugh by saying opening study ...

Until you are a pretty good player, it's all about tactics. Most 1600 and below players blunder in just about every game, either failing to spot a blunder or making a blunder. Of course failing to spot a blunder is a blunder too. When I say blunder I mean simple blunders, outright hanging a piece or missing something as simple as a knight fork. Things that a 2 ply search with quies would pick up in most programs.

At low ELO levels, raising your blunder threshold by 1 ply is a major ELO boost for humans (and computers too.)

And that's the fault of Chessbase?

No. But I am pointing out that the feature they advertise is USELESS to most ..


To chessbase's credit I think they do have some advanced search criteria for many tactical motifs which is probably superior to SCID -- not seen much discussion on that feature though. ..

[Albert Silver]

?? I don't agree with this advice at all. You really think the key to chess progress is to not study openings and only study blunders?

yes, tactics not openings....at most opening PRINCIPLES.

You are misinformed. Pattern recognition is only one part of the equation.

What are the other parts of the equation....Dont make me laugh by saying opening study ...

Until you are a pretty good player, it's all about tactics. Most 1600 and below players blunder in just about every game, either failing to spot a blunder or making a blunder. Of course failing to spot a blunder is a blunder too. When I say blunder I mean simple blunders, outright hanging a piece or missing something as simple as a knight fork. Things that a 2 ply search with quies would pick up in most programs.

At low ELO levels, raising your blunder threshold by 1 ply is a major ELO boost for humans (and computers too.)

Yes, visualization (seeing ahead) is a big part of the equation too. The pattern recognition helps filter the moves, but if you can't see more than two moves ahead, no amount of chess knowledge is going to save you. Thankfully, this is something that can be developed too, but it is one of the most taxing.

[Ponti]

I know there are many different chess engines, strong ones, weak ones, engines that play at any level.

What I wanted to say is: there are _enough_ engines. If someone wants to write another one (from scratch ), it`s ok, but for us, chess players, it doesn`t add anything.

I own many different chess programs. Chessbase 9. Fritz 12, Shredder, Junior, Chess Assistant, Chess Academy, Tiger, Rebel, Genius, Nimzo, many UCI engines, countless winboard engines, Jose, SCID, Arena, many DVDs from CB, many programs from CA, Aquarium, very old ones like Kasparov Chess, Sargon, Cyrus, etc... I can`t list all of them. Maybe more than 300.

Why the hell there is 1 program to play, another one to search databases (Fritz's database has a limit of games), another one to train tactics, middlegame, endings...

What I`m saying about Chessbase is that I don`t like the new interface, I don`t see many improvements. A clock to tell me the position is "hot" ? I know the position is hot, full of tactics, complicated. BTW, I`m 2029 FIDE rated. Not a master, nor a beginner, but still an amateur (amateur is not a synonim for beginner).

C. Assistant gives me the impression I did not read the F* manual, everytime I try to do something different. It`s not intuitive.

Chessmaster is user friendly GUI, but it is not complete, and far from useful when analysing the games.

I like Winboard and Arena - but none of them have a 3D board. Why ?

Jose has a 3D board, but it is very buggy.
SCID does't have good graphics, nor 3D board. Not intuitive too.

Speech in chess GUIs is ridiculous: "pawn"..... "e" ..."2"....... "e"....."4"... Come on! Is that a Quad-Core with millions of transistors, speaking?

There is no decent move imput by voice (tryed that Mac chess app, but it is crap).

When OTB players play in a tournament, the stronger player analyse the game and give some advices to the weaker player. I can`t see why it could not be offered that in a chess GUI too. For instance, if I lost the game, pops up a windows and asks me: "Do you want to analyse it?" and if I agree it goes instantly to analysis mode, step by step, from the opening to the endgame. I know Fritz can analyse the games I choose for a hole night. I wanted a different way to do it. Maybe it would be a better way for really beginners (I`m not a beginner), for instance, teaching children.

Maybe it is time to ask Steve Jobs what is possible to improve in a chess GUI (including that one of OS/X). Ask him to add multimedia features in a chess GUI.

One of our friends at my local chess club was brazilian Blitz champion. He says he can`t play blitz at ICC using an iPhone, without increment. Good intenet connection. The interface just lags!

BTW, nowadays I think Fritz and Chessmaster are the best GUIs. It`s not full database-featured (you have to buy Chessbase). With Chessbase you can`t play (have to buy Fritz). New design sucks. It doesn`t matter if it is "the same as MS Word or Windows", because they suck too. There are amazing graphics cards, but all I get from many GUIs is a boring 2D board.

"Pawn"............."e"........."7"........."e".................."5" !

[Ponti]

Well, we are doing that all the time, of course. I have added dozens of new features toWinBoard. But developing a GUI is between 10 and 100 times more work than writing an engine, so not many people have the stamina for it.[/quote]

Now I understand it.
Developing multimidia features needs more programming time.
But maybe it pays better than writing a strong _freeware_ engine...

[Don]

?? I don't agree with this advice at all. You really think the key to chess progress is to not study openings and only study blunders?

yes, tactics not openings....at most opening PRINCIPLES.

You are misinformed. Pattern recognition is only one part of the equation.

What are the other parts of the equation....Dont make me laugh by saying opening study ...

Until you are a pretty good player, it's all about tactics. Most 1600 and below players blunder in just about every game, either failing to spot a blunder or making a blunder. Of course failing to spot a blunder is a blunder too. When I say blunder I mean simple blunders, outright hanging a piece or missing something as simple as a knight fork. Things that a 2 ply search with quies would pick up in most programs.

At low ELO levels, raising your blunder threshold by 1 ply is a major ELO boost for humans (and computers too.)

Yes, visualization (seeing ahead) is a big part of the equation too. The pattern recognition helps filter the moves, but if you can't see more than two moves ahead, no amount of chess knowledge is going to save you. Thankfully, this is something that can be developed too, but it is one of the most taxing.

If you are less than 1800 ELO the easiest way to improve your chess is to get a book on tactics with puzzles and solve the puzzles as quickly as you can in your head. If the book is too hard get a simpler book but I think it's better for the problems to be on the easy side than on the hard side although it should be somewhat challenging. It's not good to have to ponder 20 minutes on each problem because it is too advanced when you could be building patterns in your brain with easier problems. Use a stopwatch - for learning to work best there must be pressure.

I think for most players this will produce the biggest improvement in the shortest amount of time. If you are already a master it probably won't make as much difference, but I think even strong players have to stay sharp.

[hgm]

I guess WinBoard doesn't have a 3D board because I don't like 3D boards much. Of course I cannot really imagine exactly how the speech that you describe would actually sound (I suppose the dots indicate long pauses), but what I imagine does not really sound at all like the speech produced by WinBoard for JAWS. So I guess it is mainly a matter of what speech interface you use.

[Don]

The problem is that your criteria for what a good GUI should have is not universal. For example I prefer simple. I view features such as voice recognition and 3D boards as gimmick features that a serious player doesn't want. (I like to read, I don't like books being read to me, so speech is pretty low on my criteria.) Also I study best when I'm silent, talking out loud prevents serious meditation for me.

As a serious student of chess I'm used to seeing diagrams in books, a 3D board is a huge distraction - I would MUCH prefer to see more information presented on the screen instead of the wasted extra space a 3D view consumes.

However, someone else has completely different concept of what the killer feature are. My criteria only applies to me. That's why there are so many different ones.

A good GUI is a work of art and can provide all the features you need while staying out of the way. However, the more features supported the more complicated the GUI becomes. You have to navigate an array of menu's and buttons to get it just the way you want. I like simple interfaces that hide advanced features so that the simple things are simple, and the features that are just cosmetic glitz stay in the background, or can be made default.

You will never get anyone to agree on what those features should be or even which interfaces looks good or are easy to use.

I know there are many different chess engines, strong ones, weak ones, engines that play at any level.

What I wanted to say is: there are _enough_ engines. If someone wants to write another one (from scratch ), it`s ok, but for us, chess players, it doesn`t add anything.

I own many different chess programs. Chessbase 9. Fritz 12, Shredder, Junior, Chess Assistant, Chess Academy, Tiger, Rebel, Genius, Nimzo, many UCI engines, countless winboard engines, Jose, SCID, Arena, many DVDs from CB, many programs from CA, Aquarium, very old ones like Kasparov Chess, Sargon, Cyrus, etc... I can`t list all of them. Maybe more than 300.

Why the hell there is 1 program to play, another one to search databases (Fritz's database has a limit of games), another one to train tactics, middlegame, endings...

What I`m saying about Chessbase is that I don`t like the new interface, I don`t see many improvements. A clock to tell me the position is "hot" ? I know the position is hot, full of tactics, complicated. BTW, I`m 2029 FIDE rated. Not a master, nor a beginner, but still an amateur (amateur is not a synonim for beginner).

C. Assistant gives me the impression I did not read the F* manual, everytime I try to do something different. It`s not intuitive.

Chessmaster is user friendly GUI, but it is not complete, and far from useful when analysing the games.

I like Winboard and Arena - but none of them have a 3D board. Why ?

Jose has a 3D board, but it is very buggy.
SCID does't have good graphics, nor 3D board. Not intuitive too.

Speech in chess GUIs is ridiculous: "pawn"..... "e" ..."2"....... "e"....."4"... Come on! Is that a Quad-Core with millions of transistors, speaking?

There is no decent move imput by voice (tryed that Mac chess app, but it is crap).

When OTB players play in a tournament, the stronger player analyse the game and give some advices to the weaker player. I can`t see why it could not be offered that in a chess GUI too. For instance, if I lost the game, pops up a windows and asks me: "Do you want to analyse it?" and if I agree it goes instantly to analysis mode, step by step, from the opening to the endgame. I know Fritz can analyse the games I choose for a hole night. I wanted a different way to do it. Maybe it would be a better way for really beginners (I`m not a beginner), for instance, teaching children.

Maybe it is time to ask Steve Jobs what is possible to improve in a chess GUI (including that one of OS/X). Ask him to add multimedia features in a chess GUI.

One of our friends at my local chess club was brazilian Blitz champion. He says he can`t play blitz at ICC using an iPhone, without increment. Good intenet connection. The interface just lags!

BTW, nowadays I think Fritz and Chessmaster are the best GUIs. It`s not full database-featured (you have to buy Chessbase). With Chessbase you can`t play (have to buy Fritz). New design sucks. It doesn`t matter if it is "the same as MS Word or Windows", because they suck too. There are amazing graphics cards, but all I get from many GUIs is a boring 2D board.

"Pawn"............."e"........."7"........."e".................."5" !