Banksia GUI released

[Rom77]

Interesting issue! Frankly speaking, I am so rare to create such that huge tournament.

Can you give me a few more info:
- what is your OS, CPU and RAM? How many threads does it have?

Win7 SP1, Intel Core i5 760 (Nehalem) 2.95 GHz, 4 core / 4 threads, 4 GB RAM.

I usually run tournaments in two or three threads. Tournaments from a large number of games usually start at 16s + 0.08s or 4s + 0.02s time controls.

- did you let BSG shows all playing games or watching games via Playing games panel?

Not. I even disable all logs.

BSG slows down even if you just create a tournament of 10,000 games and do not start it. The size of the RAM used by BSG increases, and during the tournament it becomes much larger. It seems to me that there are problems with loading .json files, where starting positions and played games are stored. These files are getting too large.

At least at the start of 2000 game tournaments, BSG's lag stops. Maybe if you have a more powerful computer, you should run a tournament of 50,000 games to see the slowdown.

[phhnguyen]

Interesting issue! Frankly speaking, I am so rare to create such that huge tournament.

Can you give me a few more info:
- what is your OS, CPU and RAM? How many threads does it have?

Win7 SP1, Intel Core i5 760 (Nehalem) 2.95 GHz, 4 core / 4 threads, 4 GB RAM.

I usually run tournaments in two or three threads. Tournaments from a large number of games usually start at 16s + 0.08s or 4s + 0.02s time controls.

- did you let BSG shows all playing games or watching games via Playing games panel?

Not. I even disable all logs.

BSG slows down even if you just create a tournament of 10,000 games and do not start it. The size of the RAM used by BSG increases, and during the tournament it becomes much larger. It seems to me that there are problems with loading .json files, where starting positions and played games are stored. These files are getting too large.

At least at the start of 2000 game tournaments, BSG's lag stops. Maybe if you have a more powerful computer, you should run a tournament of 50,000 games to see the slowdown.

I see. Look like your computer is put to its limit of memory. It will be worse when playing since BSG stores all game info such as moves, scores, times... in memory as well as storing to its JSON files (banksiaplaying.json). The memory usage will be expanded a bit after each move and BSG writes down to a JSON file almost every game (it has some caches but can help a bit only).

I don't know any solution at the moment except you may create multi-smaller tournaments. All games with full statistics are stored in the PGN file. BSG can help you to calculate overall statistics from PGN files (just drap-drop a PGN file of multi games to BSG then click the button "Statistics" on the popup dialog) or you can use some tools from the Internet.

[phhnguyen]

2. If you start a tournament, then stop it and restart BSG, the tournament statistics will change:

Immediately after stopping the tournament:

Code: Select all

  #  name                                nodes/m         NPS  depth/m   time/m    moves     time
  1. Stockfish NN 2020-07-19 SV8.08-8        48K      622405     12.8      0.1     66.0      5.1
  2. Stockfish 2020-06-27                   101K     1336046     14.2      0.1     66.2      5.0
     all ---                                 72K      976807     13.5      0.1     66.1      5.1

After BSG reboot (tournament not continued yet):

Code: Select all

  #  name                                nodes/m         NPS  depth/m   time/m    moves     time
  1. Stockfish NN 2020-07-19 SV8.08-8        48K      698460     12.8      0.1     66.0      4.5
  2. Stockfish 2020-06-27                   101K     1541787     14.2      0.1     66.2      4.4
     all ---                                 72K     1111376     13.5      0.1     66.1      4.4

I really the problem is the precision/round-up of numbers. BSG writes down the consumed time as a double number with 1 point decimal only (a kind of standard for storing computing data with moves). Thus the next time when reading back the totals may be a bit different from the original ones. it is not a serious problem since they are about speeds/consumed periods and the precisions still in acceptable ranges.

BTW, from the next release, I will increase to 3 points decimal for time (affect only the file banksiaplaying.json but not normal PGN files) and that may help data look "closer" to the origin.

[Rom77]

I see. Look like your computer is put to its limit of memory. It will be worse when playing since BSG stores all game info such as moves, scores, times... in memory as well as storing to its JSON files (banksiaplaying.json). The memory usage will be expanded a bit after each move and BSG writes down to a JSON file almost every game (it has some caches but can help a bit only).

There is enough memory. I keep an eye on the task manager so that there is always some headroom left. At least during the tournament there is no swapping. Of course, the memory may not be fast enough.

[AdminX]

I think there is a bug in LiChess Bot Challenges. They don't appear to be working from Banksia GUI. I can start them from the LiChess web interface of any browser however.

Did it work before?

I have just tried today, it seems be fine on my computer. Remember to check on the names of players you want to challenge and verify other parameters.

Yes, I have confirmed everything was set correctly. They don't appear to be sending out on my system (Windows 10) thru the GUI. I can only start matches from Web Browser.

[phhnguyen]

There is an option in Chessbase to display unplayed transpositions in a CTG book, but when you play engine against engine matches it seems like Fritz ignores these moves.
I want Fritz to play these unplayed transpositions to, if they are good moves.
If I make a tree from the same games in Aquarium, and I export
the tree to EPD format, and then I import this EPD file back to the same tree, and choose the option 'generate moves'. This tree also contains the moves that are displayed as unplayed transpositions in the CTG book.

I have made a video capture of it so you can see what I mean.

... sp=sharing

I would like to be able to include these unplayed transpositions automatically in 'opening lines' in Lucas Chess. Or some other way to convert to pgn with these unplayed transpositions included.

Maybe if there would be a way to include these unplayed transpositions in a polyglot book somehow. And then import all the best moves from the bin book to the opening lines.
Because I think it is useful information.
If I make a repertoire based on the games of Magnus Carlsen for exemple.
I can always delete variations I don't want, but it is more work to find good variations to add.

I hope someone can help me with this.

Do you mean moves in the opening books with low scores/weights and be ignored when playing in tournaments?

BSG can play them all. In the below image when creating a new tournament, users can open this dialog to set up opening books. If they select a Polyglot book, they may change the percentage of "Top". 0% means always the best - BSG always picks up the moves with the biggest weights. 10% means from the 10% of the best moves, BSG will randomly take one. 100% means BSG ignores their weights and pick up randomly any available moves (for the given position) in the openings.



If you want to bring the Polyglot book to other chess GUIs for playing all moves, BSG can help by following ways:

• You can edit weights of all moves to make them have the same weight

• Export Polyglot books to PGN or EDP books. Those book formats have no weight

No I don't mean this.

If I make a bin book from the pgn games these 'unplayed transpositions' will not be in the bin book. It's something unique for the CTG format from Chessbase, and also openings trees from Aquarium.
I hope it can be implemented in bin books somehow.
Maybe it is better to make a new book format, that can do al this and can easily be converted to pgn lines.
I tried to make my point with the video capture. I understand the video is long, and not very to the point. I'm bad in video editing, I will try to make a more clear video with voice comments and maybe text balloons.
Export bin to pgn doesn't work for me with Banksia. A lot of lines are not there like I explained before.
I have best results for exporting a bin book to pgn with Lucas ChessR. By making a bin book with the settings uniform for one color. And than importing all best moves for that color from the bin book to opening lines. And afterwards I export this new opening lines to pgn in Lucas ChessR. It takes a long time in Lucas ChessR but it does a decent job.
Afterward I import end export the pgn in Chess Opening Wizard, to limit the number of games while preserving all unique opening lines.

I still missed understanding about 'unplayed transpositions'. BTW, supporting CTG format is still in my TODO list. Will work with it and some involving issues later.

[phhnguyen]

I was thinking about something like this may be a neat solution.

"Syzygy engine path" and "Syzygy adjudication path" is probably fine.

Tooltip ideas:

• It is recommended to store syzygy egtb on a fast SSD.

• As adjudication only need single probe at root position. HDD/Mechanical hard drive is sufficient.

See -

Since I am still confused about the usefulness of using two Syzygy sets, I postpone that implementation until having some new data.

[bmp1974]

Why doesn't Banksia GUI make board sounds during Engine-Engine games?

[Nordlandia]

I was thinking about something like this may be a neat solution.

"Syzygy engine path" and "Syzygy adjudication path" is probably fine.

Tooltip ideas:

• It is recommended to store syzygy egtb on a fast SSD.

• As adjudication only need single probe at root position. HDD/Mechanical hard drive is sufficient.

See -

Since I am still confused about the usefulness of using two Syzygy sets, I postpone that implementation until having some new data.

I don't see the problem in using two syzygy sets. One dedicated solely for adjudication and one purely for engines consulting information during search.

There should be no interference.

[phhnguyen]

Why doesn't Banksia GUI make board sounds during Engine-Engine games?

To have sounds when engines vs engines you need to turn sound on (on Settings dialog), then in the sound configuration dialog (click to the button next to "Sound" checkbox to open it), tick "Engine moves", "Normal games", "Tournament games" as the bellow image.

Sounds will be played for displaying games only but not games running in the background of tournaments.