Non-castling opening book

[PeterO]

Hello,

I would love to have an opening book with - non-castling games (polyglott - bin). But I dont know how to produce it.

Can you help me - and make a non-castling.bin ??

Peter

[mvanthoor]

The way to do this would be to find all games in which both white and black have not castled within the first X moves, export those games, and then create an opening book from those games. Maybe ChessBase would be able to filter this. I don't know; the latest version I have is 12, and I don't really use it a lot nowadays.

[phhnguyen]

There is an ambiguity and a dilemma in building opening books for the Non-castling variant.

1) The ambiguity: positions should have the castling rights or not?

I haven't found yet any standard mentioning that.

a) With castling rights
The start position FEN is the normal one of standard chess:

Code: Select all

rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1

You need both chess GUIs and engines to support and play that variant. Otherwise, the game will become standard chess.
The good thing is that you may use any opening book. The chess GUI will ignore all castling moves


b) Without castling rights
The start position FEN:

Code: Select all

rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w - - 0 1

You may use almost all chess GUIs and engines to play that variant. The requirement is that the chess GUI could start from above FEN.

(However, for full features of using opening books, you may need a chess GUI that supports that variant.)

Polyglot book format could be considered as a set of positions + weights. Thus counting or not counting castling rights is an important decision to build opening books for the variant.


2) The dilemma: are normal games good for Non-castling variant?

Some people suggest using normal (standard chess) games to build books for that variant. IMO, it is fine for the beginning period. Having something is better than nothing.

However, it is not good for the long term: those games are not good for that variant because castlings are still important factors in them even if we ignore those moves or they may not do any castling move. For example, in many games, players may sacrifice positions or even materials to destroy castle rights from rivals or protect their ones.

In long term, we should collect games of that variant only to build opening books.

[PeterO]

Hi friends,

I play against engines. Would love to have an opening book: no-castling.bin

AND

Castling on opposite side! opposite-castling.bin - no idea how to realize this

Peter

[Chessqueen]

Hi friends,

I play against engines. Would love to have an opening book: no-castling.bin

AND

Castling on opposite side! opposite-castling.bin - no idea how to realize this

Peter

You can download Lucas Chess, and create your own Personal Opening guide with Non Castling, but I strongly recommend you to use either Stockfisk 15 or Komodo Dragon to recommend you different variations once you start with a particular Non Castling opening. For instance you can have two screens on your computer one with Lucas Chess Personal Opening Guide, and another screen with either Stockfish 15 or Komodo Dragon which will be the two assistant engines that will help you with your variation for whatever non castling opening that you choose. You can also get all the Non castling chess games played between GM Anand vs Kramnik and ask stockfish or Komodo for recommendations of new variations to use for the Opening that they played and use Lucas Personal Opening Guide to create your personal Non Castling Opening Book ==>

[Graham Banks]

Hi friends,

I play against engines. Would love to have an opening book: no-castling.bin

AND

Castling on opposite side! opposite-castling.bin - no idea how to realize this

Peter

The SALC books have lines with castling on opposite sides.