Banksia GUI released

[AlexChess]

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?

Once CFish is up to date with Stockfish master again you can use up to two polyglot books. Alternatively, you can use Brainlearn which dynamically builds a persistent hash to guide SF's search which turns out to increase SF's strength about as much as a regular book. This will need a couple of thousand games, though.
I commend you for not using SF derivatives that don't honour SF's license.

I know all of these engines. Unfortunately, Cfish is not up to date, but above all the latest version does not run as AVX2. Without AVX2, Cfish is with me (Ryzen CPU), slower than the current Stockfish.

The newest engine (with book support) for me is SugaR AI 2.30. That's nice, and thanks to Marco Zerbitani for that.

There is also a Stockfish Polyglot that can load 4 books. The engine is from June 2021.

My fun is testing the latest networks. This is the point for me to test for lichess.

The latest engine from Sopel + Netz is very strong and fun too. The new architecture plays strong. However, the network has a size of 45,900 kb. Only Sopel's engine can use it. Unfortunately, the developer does not consider that one would also like to test with books. Is it that hard to implement an option for a book? No Stockfish can use native books! A shame and embarrassing. But all derivatives can do that. That should change.

...Marco Zerbinati I like SugaR too, and also I like to try all Stockfish test NNUEs!

Maybe BSG could include a native opening book working with all engines (and optimized for playing with black or white)

Regards, Alex

[marsell]

Easy to use with Banksia https://www.chess2u.com/t7375-polyglot-how-to-use-it

[Eduard]

Yes that would be great. With Stockfish I can use all other native books online (chessbase and infinitychess). But Polyglot would be enough for me. I am currently using polyglot_tolerant for the creation of the book, and SCID for the book tuning. I saw that you can see the Bin book under Banksia, but I can't edit a book with it.

[Eduard]

Dear friends!

I always look for the maximum. So it doesn't make sense to me to play without a book. For me, pondering is one of them! The Stockfish developers do a lot, and it's fun to test new versions and networks. I am currently testing the latest version of Sopel with the 45.9 MB network. Unfortunately, I can't load books natively. Stockfish does not support opening books. That's sad! Sorry

I use Banksia GUI to play on Lichess. I succeeded in integrating the engine via a Polyglot adapter in such a way that books can be loaded. I used this version of the adapter:

----------------------------------
PolyglotAdapterGUI
====================
"PolyglotAdapterGUI" is to use Uci chess engines in "WinboardGUIs" as "Winboard" & "Chessmaster", but is necessary a "Polyglot.ini" file.

"PolyglotAdapterGUI" is an interface for making "Polyglot.ini" files for UCI chess engines.

After clicking on the "PolyglotAdapterGUI" .exe, navigate to the chess "engine.exe" that want to make the ".ini" for.

The ".ini" file and an copy of "PolyglotAdapterGUI" will be saved to the engine's folder.

Install "Stockfish 13 x64m_wb" in Arena, CuteChess, Fritz, etc.
I only installed it in the arena, it works here.

All the best to everyone!

! Polyglot_GUI_Adapter.7z
https://mir.cr/0EMVXXK0

-----------------------------------

Everything worked wonderfully, but I was only able to integrate Stockfish into the adapter as a Winboard Engine. What I have done wrong? Banksia GUI only recognized an integration using the included WB adapter (Polyglot_CMXI.exe). However, I would like to install the engine as UCI. Isn't that possible with the Polyglot adapter?

I configured the INI file as follows:


I always made sure that Ponder = true

Nevertheless, the engine ALWAYS played without pondering. I do not understand that? What am I doing wrong?

Here is the contents of the folder with all the files:


Here is one of the 4 games I just played on Lichess.


Everything works, only pondering doesn't! What is wrong with that?

(By the way, the Stockfish developers can save us a lot of energy by implementing book options in Stockfish)

[marsell]

I can't tell you since I don't use the banksia gui as a BOT.
You could take Sugar as engine. This engine is provided with source code and can use bin books.

[Eduard]

The current Stockfish version is better than SugaR AI because it uses a brand new network with a new architecture. In my tests, this engine + network is the best I've had in my hands so far. I want to test this version (it's from Sopel, by the way).

[Cornfed]

I can't tell you since I don't use the banksia gui as a BOT.
You could take Sugar as engine. This engine is provided with source code and can use bin books.

Serious question: what would anyone want to use this as 'a bot'? I mean...playing sites have their own bots if someone wants to play against one.

[Eduard]

I do not understand this question. Banksia is an open source project, as is lichess. Everything is free and allows anyone interested in computer chess around the world to play against each other. I am not interested in playing against people. There are many interesting bot projects on Lichess. You can test a lot. Nobody is excluded, the projects are financed with donations, and nothing is influenced by commercial interests. That's great.

[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

[xr_a_y]

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 ?