Video review of chess GUIs for analysis

[Werewolf]

It's an outstanding video. I strongly recommend it to all players with an interest in chess software. Well done!

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You summarise the merits and demerits of the marvellous Aquarium very well. (The way you personally set up a new IDeA project looks suboptimal. And I'd have like to have seen all your precise settings too, but never mind.)

Now about the two positions. The first is nowadays solved by Infinite Analysis and doesn't need "deep analysis".

The second is of course extremely hard indeed. IDeA with Stockfish doesn't find it. So then you added infinite analysis (simultaneously) from lc0. And hey presto!

What you didn't explain was that the position came from an lc0 game. Therefore, it was not a fair test at all. What you showed was the strength of lc0 in that particular position and, persuasively, an excellent way to use Stockfish and lc0 together in Aquarium.

Did "deep analysis" really solve either position then? It merely looked like infinite analysis with the right engine did. Having said that, Aquarium (for all its faults) presented and preserved the analysis brilliantly.

Thanks for your comments.

I'd like to know what you thought was sub-optimal in the IDeA project setup, was it the 2 roots? I don't normally do it that way.

I did not know the 2nd position was from a Lc0 game - if I did I would not have been so surprised in the video when Lc0 found the move instantly!

[Marek Soszynski]

I did not know the 2nd position was from a Lc0 game - if I did I would not have been so surprised in the video when Lc0 found the move instantly!

Quite.

We are all looking for The Answer to any and every chess position: some method or software or something, like IDeA for example. We use up prodigious amounts of computing power employing some analytical procedure, and find that that's not enough. And that is just as well, for otherwise chess itself would be solved. So what is automated deep position analysis actually for? Presumably, it is PC time better spent than on Infinite Analysis. Which is not exactly proven by the video.

I'd like to know what you thought was sub-optimal in the IDeA project setup...

It looked odd, to me, that you set up the new project position from the Root Node List pane. I tend to use full games in Projects, so I do things differently. Maybe your way, for what you do, is okay, but I flinched when I saw you awkwardly having to manually enter the move number and the rest of it. It's not a major point.