WinBoard/XBoard 4.8.0 released

[Ferdy]

That also holds for trivial draws and material draws: KK isn't necessarily draw in KOTH (I think).

Yes when I run the test, I disabled the adjudications on those. I am revising the evaluation, and have to remove a lot of them related to low material drawish scores.

[hgm]

The XBoard On-line User Guide now also has been updated, incorporating the new features of v4.7 and v4.8. Although it is written for XBoard, WinBoard and Xboard are now so similar that almost everything would apply to WinBoard as well (although the screenshots would have looked a bit different).

The release tar balls of the 4.8.0 source code finally appeared on the GNU server.

I also updated the WinBoard download page at WinBoard forum.

The WB protocol specs at the GNU website is now also updated to include all protocol extension implemented in v4.7 and v4.8, in particular the exlude and highlight features, the extended Thinking Output format, and the setup and piece commands. (The specs included with the sources have always been up to date, but they did not end up automatically on the GNU web page.)

[Henk]

Would be nice if winboard shows the current score. So if you are running a tournament you can see how many games an engine has lost/won at that moment. So if score is too bad and I know enough I'm able to abort the tournament. That may save time. Otherwise I can only run short tournaments for testing.

[hgm]

It already does that, doesn't it? In the title bar, (when you play a two-player match) it will show the numbe of wins - losses - draws in parentheses behind the engine names.

[Tom Likens]

The XBoard On-line User Guide now also has been updated, incorporating the new features of v4.7 and v4.8. Although it is written for XBoard, WinBoard and Xboard are now so similar that almost everything would apply to WinBoard as well (although the screenshots would have looked a bit different).

The release tar balls of the 4.8.0 source code finally appeared on the GNU server.

I also updated the WinBoard download page at WinBoard forum.

The WB protocol specs at the GNU website is now also updated to include all protocol extension implemented in v4.7 and v4.8, in particular the exlude and highlight features, the extended Thinking Output format, and the setup and piece commands. (The specs included with the sources have always been up to date, but they did not end up automatically on the GNU web page.)

Hey HGM,

Just wanted to drop you a note about how grateful I am for the massive amount of work you've put into xboard (all for free!). I use this program *all* the time and it works really well. Tim gets much of the original credit, but the latest xboard really is a new program.

thanks,
--tom

[Henk]

It already does that, doesn't it? In the title bar, (when you play a two-player match) it will show the numbe of wins - losses - draws in parentheses behind the engine names.

I'm using Winboard 4.73a. And I see only scores at the end of the tournament.

[hgm]

There is a difference between a tournament and a match. A tournament can have an arbitrary number of players, so that "current score" becomes a sort of ill-defined concept. So XBoard only prints the tournament type and round number there. Only in a plain two-player match (when you do not specify participants or a tourney file, but just run with the currently loaded engines), WinBoard would print the current W-L-D info.

Now you can run a two-player tournament in stead of a match, but why would you? So I never bothered to make WinBoard recognize this special case where printing a current score would make sense.

[Carlos777]

I installed WB 4.8.0b and added Spark 1.0 with the following settings:

"Spark 1.0" -fcp "spark-1.0-win64-mp-corei.exe" -fd "C:\wb48\Engines\spark" -fn "Spark 1.0" -fNoOwnBookUCI -fUCI

Anyway, when I try to run it, I got this message:

Failed to start first chess program polyglot -noini -ec "spark-1.0-win64-mp-corei.exe" -fd "C:\wb48\Engines\spark" -uci NalimovCache=4 on localhost: # Warning: book not found: spark.bbk

The thing is that I cannot start the engine in order to set it in Engine #1 Settings.

Something similar happens when I install SmarThink 1.7.0, this time because of # EGBT files not found

I have installed like 8 other engines without problems.

How could I fix this?

Regards,

Carlos

[hgm]

Hmm, nasty. WB protocol does specify that error messages like "not found" given at the start of the engine would make the GUI assume the engine refused to start, But of course UCI engines are not bound by this, and Polyglot seems to pass on the message to XBoard.

Now I thought that UCI engines were not supposed to volunteer any error messages, so that makes Spark non-compliant. But Polyglot should really filter this out. It seems to pass it on to the GUI as a comment (prefixed with #), but apparently it is even considered a fatal error message by XBoard in this form. It is a bit late now, but tomorrow I will have a look at this.

[Ferdy]

For spark, just create an empty file and save it as spark.bbk. Then open the spark.ini file and add a # before the book.file as in the following.

Code: Select all

# book.file="spark2.bbk"

For Smarthink, create smarthink.ini file and copy paste the following. Adjust some options to suit your needs.

Code: Select all

;  Setup file for the SmarThink 

; 
;  TranspositionSize - the size of transposition table 
;                                                  
;  Value                   Size (bytes) 
; 
;  15                      655360 
;  16                      1310720 
;  17                      2621440 
;  18                      5242880 
;  19 *                    10485760 
;  20                      20971520 
;  21                      41943040 
;  22                      83886080 
;  23                      167772160 
;  24                      335544320 
; 
;  * - default 
; 

TranspositionSize=21

;  
;  PawnHashSize - the size of pawn hash 
; 
;  Value                   Size (bytes) 
; 
;  14                      360448 
;  15                      720896 
;  16                      1441792 
;  17                      2883534 
;  18 *                    5767168 
;  19                      11534336 
;  20                      23068672 
;  21                      46137344 
;  22                      92274688 
;  23                      184549376 
; 
;  * - default 
; 

PawnHashSize=18 

; 
; Aggressivity (%) - causes SmarThink to attack enemy king stronger 
; (100 by default) 
; 
; 0 <= Aggressivity <= 300 
; 

Aggressivity=100 

; 
; Cowardice (%) - causes SmarThink to make care of own king 
; &#40;100 by default&#41; 
; 
; 0 <= Cowardice <= 300 
; 

Cowardice=100 

; In learning mode SmarThink saves a costly miscalculations in special 
; file for using this info in next games 

Learning=off 

; When UseLearningData on, SmarThink uses data from learning file 

UseLearningData=off 

; If LogLearningIntoFile is on than SmarThink shows all learning positions 
; in log-file &#40;EPD-notation and several additional debug info&#41; 

LogLearningIntoFile=off 

; If evaluation is less than *ResignValue* during *ResignTimes* moves 
; than SmarThink resigns 

ResignValue=800 
ResignTimes=3 

; In book learning mode SmarThink updates weights in openings book 

BookLearning=off 

; DISCOVER = play unchecked variations first to collect a weights, 
; KILL = try to find best lines to overthrow opponent 

BookLearningMode=KILL 

; VarietyOfPlay (%) - play book move only if its weight is not less 
; than weight of best move by *VarietyOfPlay* %. 

VarietyOfPlay=15 

; Update weight if abs&#40;evaluation&#41;>*BookLearningBound* 

BookLearningBound=260 

; No comments 

UseBookWeights=on 

; Support pondering or no? 

Pondering=off

; Use endgame tablebases or no 

UseEGTB=off 

; Path to tablebase files 

EGTBpath=