Deep Analysis

[Dann Corbit]

Another GUI worthy of consideration is ChessAssistant
I use SCID a lot, but it is limited in how many games you can load and how many distinct player names are allowed.
Quite frankly, I am not fully satisfied with any chess GUI. All of them have limitations and quirks that bother me.
Most of my analysis is done using specialized tools I have written and with SQL manipulation.

[Werewolf]

If you think I've missed an important one, shout.

Chess Openings Wizard Professional (Bookup) is the best GUI around I have found to store my analysis. It is very powerful by how you can import a bunch of PGNs into a book up to some point, get a graph tree that summarizes all the games, automatically get an engine to analyze all the leaf positions and backsolve so the most relevant lines are sorted first. One can then compare those scores with books you already have to quickly see if a line has been played that refutes a mainline from another book, so it's the fastest way to find the most critical lines on a bunch of variations

Its comment window allows one to write anything on each of the positions, so one can use it to store the scores of many engines. Since it uses graphs you will quickly tell when a position has transposed to one with analysis existing to get you up to speed and there's a function that detects transpositions so all moves that go to previously done analysis will appear.

Finally, it has a very robust recovery function, in case of OS crashes or power outages, you can just rebuild the trees and never lose any analysis that you store. For opening analysis and storing analysis of correspondence games, or out of book positions between engines, it is excellent.

Too bad its other features are very basic, so one actually needs to use it alongside another GUI (I use Shredder), and copy analysis back-and-forth.

Plus, it's greatly overpriced, by now you can spend this much money in something like a better CPU or GPU and get more. $197 is out of line with what it does, but at least they have a free trial and a $7 mobile version.

Thanks for this.
I took a quick look at the website. I couldn't see any graphs you saw and there weren't many screenshots. On Youtube I saw a few more and this software looks very dated, like 1990s style.
$197 - my life.

What can it do that Aquarium's IDeA can't? IDeA backsolves.

[carldaman]

Last I checked, Aquarium trees did not detect mirrored transpositions, the way Fritz/CB ctg and Bookup trees do.
You might think that's no big deal, but it really is if you analyze reversed or symmetrical openings, where such transpositions are commonplace.

[carldaman]

If you think I've missed an important one, shout.

Chess Openings Wizard Professional (Bookup) is the best GUI around I have found to store my analysis. It is very powerful by how you can import a bunch of PGNs into a book up to some point, get a graph tree that summarizes all the games, automatically get an engine to analyze all the leaf positions and backsolve so the most relevant lines are sorted first. One can then compare those scores with books you already have to quickly see if a line has been played that refutes a mainline from another book, so it's the fastest way to find the most critical lines on a bunch of variations

Its comment window allows one to write anything on each of the positions, so one can use it to store the scores of many engines. Since it uses graphs you will quickly tell when a position has transposed to one with analysis existing to get you up to speed and there's a function that detects transpositions so all moves that go to previously done analysis will appear.

Finally, it has a very robust recovery function, in case of OS crashes or power outages, you can just rebuild the trees and never lose any analysis that you store. For opening analysis and storing analysis of correspondence games, or out of book positions between engines, it is excellent.

Too bad its other features are very basic, so one actually needs to use it alongside another GUI (I use Shredder), and copy analysis back-and-forth.

Plus, it's greatly overpriced, by now you can spend this much money in something like a better CPU or GPU and get more. $197 is out of line with what it does, but at least they have a free trial and a $7 mobile version.

Which Bookup version are you referring to? I bought mine nearly 10 years ago. I paid the overpriced amount because I was aware that it was the best way to aggregate opening analysis from different sources and backsolve it.

The problem for me was that it was very difficult to get in touch with support, and never could find out if there were new upgrade builds available or how to get them. The website was like a ghost town, with hapless users not getting any answers. That was a big turn-off for me. I'm pretty sure I don't have the latest build. There may be a new version out,
but I have no way of knowing that, or what it has to offer over the old one.

I still use it from time to time. My version frustratingly doesn't allow setting the hash or # of cores for uci engines, but at least it does work with Leela's default settings.

[Cornfed]

Chess Position Trainer...much cheaper and looks really good. Serves me well.

[kiroje]

ChessX would also be a good one to review

[Werewolf]

ChessX would also be a good one to review

Please say what you like about it.

This looks like a database prog with only very basic analysis features

[Ovyron]

Forgot to mention about Chess Openings Wizard, that everything it does has been recorded in video:

https://www.bookup.com/videos/

So at least one doesn't need to try it out to get an idea.

[Ovyron]

but I have no way of knowing that, or what it has to offer over the old one.

I got Chess Openings Wizard for free as an offer for Beta testing. It wasn't able to do anything that Bookup couldn't, plus features were removed (like one that protected books directly, so you didn't need to rebuild them after a crash/power outage, because he claimed one should make sure that doesn't happen )

Bookup was the superior product. Unfortunately, I lost my Bookup installation file and it got bugged so it'd overwrite the contents of newly opened books on the opening position with whatever was on the current comment window, so I couldn't keep anything on the books' opening position, forcing me to move to Chess Openings Wizard. But it was a re-skin with nothing noteworthy and a ridiculous increase in price.

As for Aquarium trees, I was involved in its development from the very beginning (I invented the GUI's arrows, including the curved arrows for the knights, which are now used in ChessOK apps like Lomonosov mobile ), even before IDeA was implemented. What I saw from version to version was that they added an extra layer of complexity, over old ones, every time, until it became like an onion of complexity, until the day came where the complexity was so high I couldn't use it anymore.

The simplest thing I found to do was having a text file with engines belonging to colors, then I stored analysis and depth with those colors on Chess Openings Wizard's comment windows, like:



I was glad to see this "engine has a color" concept was also used in Banksia's GUI, so I'm not that insane

[carldaman]

Right, Bookup was called COW (Chess Opening Wizard) when I bought it. The name change was deceptive, as nothing was really improved over the old Bookup - even the new name was worse.