Testing Stockfish, Lc0, Banksia GUI for iOS (iPhone, iPad, iWatch)

[phhnguyen]

How do the different versions of the Apple Watch behave concerning the engines on the hardware ?
Is there a need for the latest generation 6 or is the SE also usable ?

Is it possible to play chess with the banksia chess gui on the Apple Watch ?
What do I need ?
Can I move with the Fingers ?
Which Engines run ?
Please more information.

Which Apple Watch is how fast / Strong for chess engines ?

- Yes, we can play chess with BanksiaGUI for Apple Watch. Based on the benchmark, it is clearly hard for a human to vs engines on Apple Watch
- All you need is an Apple watch running from watchOS version 7.0. I have tried on Apple Watch 6 only but I believe older ones could run too if they can upgrade to watchOS 7. Of course the later the better
- Definitely, you can use your fingers to control/play chess. The app can automatically zoom up the board size so users can easily use it even with big fingers
- The first version comes with 8 top-open-source chess engines, listed in the previous page

[mclane]

Ok I have it running.
The input is a little strange with this zoom effect but works.
I have more difficulty with the levels.
It moves almost instantly although I set up 30 seconds average.

Also I see no information about the chess engines thinking .

Or is there none on a watch ?
Igel crashed the app while lc0 and stockfish worked.

Can't you implement a screen with
Evals, depth, main line ?
What about 40/120 time control?

What about weaker engines ?

I used an apple watch 4.

[phhnguyen]

Ok I have it running.
The input is a little strange with this zoom effect but works.
I have more difficulty with the levels.
It moves almost instantly although I set up 30 seconds average.

Also I see no information about the chess engines thinking .

Or is there none on a watch ?
Igel crashed the app while lc0 and stockfish worked.

Can't you implement a screen with
Evals, depth, main line ?
What about 40/120 time control?

What about weaker engines ?

I used an apple watch 4.

Thank you a lot for using and giving feedbacks!

All suggestions, issues are noted down and I am going to work with them. Some weaker engines may be added later.

One of the hardest design problems is that the watch’s screen is too small, thus we have to simplify and cut off information as much as possible, including engines’ thinking info.

If we insist on displaying those info:
- They are out of the view in all most of all time since the board take much higher priority and sometimes the board can be displayed partly only and users have to scroll to see hidden parts. Basically users can’t see concurrently both the chess board and engine’s info
- They (info) are too small to read and/or may take so many lines to display

We will try anyway and hope to find out some reasonable solutions. Any ideas, suggestions are highly appreciated!

[mclane]

I don’t think the Info hast to be on the same Screen like the Board.
Swipe to the left where all the other menues are Would be enough IMO.


I have a dedicated chess computer (millennium the king element) where pressing button cursor right also shows different kind of info:
One screen with clocks. Another screen search info, another screen move list. And another shows board position.

40/120 20/60 would be good for tournament play.
I know it is only a watch. But IMO blitz controls make on such a small machine less sense then time controls with almost no time flag.

[mephisto]

My main problem is that I don't stand a chance of winning any games even with the engines playing at their lowest level.
So for me the inclusion of weaker engines (Elo 1200 - 1500) would be great.

[phhnguyen]

My main problem is that I don't stand a chance of winning any games even with the engines playing at their lowest level.
So for me the inclusion of weaker engines (Elo 1200 - 1500) would be great.

Interesting!

One of the problems I don’t know which “weak” engines I should add since they are too many and it’s not easy to select weak BUT interesting ones.

Perhaps you may make current engines play much weaker. It is simple by setting the level to very low, say, depth to 3, or nodes to 100 or even 1 (as I have known Lc0 may be above 2000 Elo with setting nodes to 1 but surely other engines’ strengths must be significantly lower). Some engines such as Stockfish can be set Skill level too, just set it to low one. Just try and error and you may make some engines weak enough.

[George Sobala]

My main problem is that I don't stand a chance of winning any games even with the engines playing at their lowest level.
So for me the inclusion of weaker engines (Elo 1200 - 1500) would be great.

Interesting!

One of the problems I don’t know which “weak” engines I should add since they are too many and it’s not easy to select weak BUT interesting ones.

Why don't you implement lc0 with the Maia nets? https://github.com/CSSLab/maia-chess and https://maiachess.com

These will give a range of Elo-calibrated opponents from 1100 to 1900 with a human-like play style, and will be very CPU efficient as you should only be requesting a 1 node search.

[mephisto]

Sounds like a very good idea George

[mclane]

Weaker uci engines ?

Sargon 1

[silitho]

Hi, I just discovered Banksia GUI for iOS - great job.

I noticed a problem. In landscape mode, the title bar of Banksia GUI covers the status bar of the iPad. This is done by showing the advertisement below. This moves Banksia GUI up.