Review of new aquiarium

[ozziejoe]

Hi folks,

I thought some of you might be intersted in my take on the new aquairium GUI/chess analysis program. I am an 1800 player who is primarly interested in playing chess rather than playing computer chess.

I have found the new aquarium, and particularly, the new IDEA to be very useful and well worth the money. the key advance in IDEA is the ability to easily refocus analysis to variations that interest you. Essentially, IDEA explores variations and records evaluations in a tree. Thus, all your data is saved to the tree, and you can build on your previous analyses/tree over long periods of time.

IDEA has at least two major innovations that allow you to focus analysis. First, it allows you to play around with , say , an opening, and get to a critical position, and then asigin this new position as one of the roote nodes (i.e., a position that receives alot of analyses). Second, the new idea also allows you to focus your analysis on finding the best lines for a particular colour.

I think IDEA is now designed in a way that works well with how a human naturally analyzes games (e.g., try out variations, jump around to various positions, and then come back to a roote position and try something new. Record everythign you learned).

There have been some bugs reported, though i have not experienced them yet. The aquirium team is very fast to respond to your questions and complaints

In sum, the new Aquairium is state of the art for analyzing games. I highly recommend it.

best
Joseph

[beachknight]

Thanks for this review, Joseph. I read in ICCF forum that
some high-level correspondence players started using it
in their games. Some time in future I must try the aquarium
demo in a couple of corr. games in order to determine its
advantages. I have already conducted smooth engine tests
in Aquarium, ie no bugs or frequent crashes etc. But my
opinion was this part of the software needed further
development.

More later,

Best,

[michiguel]

Hi folks,

I thought some of you might be intersted in my take on the new aquairium GUI/chess analysis program. I am an 1800 player who is primarly interested in playing chess rather than playing computer chess.

I have found the new aquarium, and particularly, the new IDEA to be very useful and well worth the money. the key advance in IDEA is the ability to easily refocus analysis to variations that interest you. Essentially, IDEA explores variations and records evaluations in a tree. Thus, all your data is saved to the tree, and you can build on your previous analyses/tree over long periods of time.

IDEA has at least two major innovations that allow you to focus analysis. First, it allows you to play around with , say , an opening, and get to a critical position, and then asigin this new position as one of the roote nodes (i.e., a position that receives alot of analyses). Second, the new idea also allows you to focus your analysis on finding the best lines for a particular colour.

I think IDEA is now designed in a way that works well with how a human naturally analyzes games (e.g., try out variations, jump around to various positions, and then come back to a roote position and try something new. Record everythign you learned).

There have been some bugs reported, though i have not experienced them yet. The aquirium team is very fast to respond to your questions and complaints

In sum, the new Aquairium is state of the art for analyzing games. I highly recommend it.

best
Joseph

Isn't this what Bookup was doing for the last two decades already? (in connection with an external engine through epd)

Miguel

[ozziejoe]

Yes, I think bookup is a fine piece of software for opening training. I know the professional version has backsolving, which is probably similar to ideas procedures where a lines evaluation is updated based on variations found further in the tree.

I don't own the professional version, so I am not sure how similar it is. Does this version allow you to analyze multiple rootes at once, and change and refocus analysis on the fly (i.e., without stoping the processing)? I always wanted to buy professional bookup, but it was a little expensive.

Probably the main difference is that IDEA includes things like a database and good search functions, a computer versus computer module (not sure how good it is...the first one was buggy), and a reasonable gui for playing chess at different levels (e.g., with bishop odds).


best
Joseph

[oreopoulos]

Probably the main difference is that IDEA includes things like a database and good search functions, a computer versus computer module (not sure how good it is...the first one was buggy), and a reasonable gui for playing chess at different levels (e.g., with bishop odds).

The only similarity between the two starts and ends with trees. They both work with trees. So actually there is nothing in common

IDEA is an automated (and not only automated) algorithm to generate trees, that have attached to the position a computer evaluation. More or less it tries to emulate how a human would analyse a position, going back and forth , extending lines , finding alternatives.... etc.

Bookup creates a tree from a database (which many other programs do, for many years now). Backsolving is a method to try to correctly enumerate the number of games that can be reached from a position. Dont know how good it works and how much time it needs for today's 4M+ databases.

In few words, those 2 products have nothing in common