Banksia GUI released

[AdminX]

Wow! Tested it with my LiChess bot account (NeuralAbyss) and it worked like a charm! Thank you very much for all the work you are doing with Banksia.

Question: Can you assign a opening book to your bot? If not, then that would be a feature request.

[brinan]

Great work.

If you do allow a bot to be assigned an opening book,
would you extend the facility to allow the GUI to assign a book to any engine,
without requiring the opponent's engine to also be assigned a book.

One engine plays with book, the other does not.
For example, a neural-net engine does not have an opening book,
but Stockfish does access a book (perhaps in pgn form).

Thanks.

[phhnguyen]

Wow! Tested it with my LiChess bot account (NeuralAbyss) and it worked like a charm! Thank you very much for all the work you are doing with Banksia.

Question: Can you assign a opening book to your bot? If not, then that would be a feature request.

Phew, thanks! It works! Frankly, I didn't test that function (Lichess bot) long enough

Yes, BSG can play openings for engines when playing, including Lichess Bot function. Just use a polyglot book (PGN, EPD books can use for tournaments but not that kind of playing since they don't have move by move), check "Auto play opening book moves" and "Active" in Settings dialog:

[phhnguyen]

Great work.

If you do allow a bot to be assigned an opening book,
would you extend the facility to allow the GUI to assign a book to any engine,
without requiring the opponent's engine to also be assigned a book.

One engine plays with book, the other does not.
For example, a neural-net engine does not have an opening book,
but Stockfish does access a book (perhaps in pgn form).

Thanks.

As my above reply (to AdminX), at the moment BSG can use opening books for Lichess bots.

However, assigning different books for different engines is quite a hard task since it is complicated on Interface (you may see how complicated BSG assigns different clocks to different engines), managing multi-books with multi-ways to use is not easy either.

Perhaps, it is much easier if we only turn on/off using books for bots, say, a bot will have a checkbox to denote use or not use books (you can check it for normal engines and uncheck for NN engines). If you think it is good enough, I may add it to the next release.

[Guenther]

Thanks for the new preview version!

I think the buttons below the moves window don't work correctly when loading pgn files.

Code: Select all

|< = ok
<  =  >|
>  =  >|
>| = ok
>* = oscillating between start and end position? (intended?)

[brinan]

[by phhnguyen]
Perhaps, it is much easier if we only turn on/off using books for bots, say, a bot will have a checkbox to denote use or not use books (you can check it for normal engines and uncheck for NN engines). If you think it is good enough, I may add it to the next release.

Yes, do think it's good enough for engine v engine tournaments/matches.

Thanks for all your efforts.

[Modern Times]

What does the pgn that it produces look like ? A clean format something like below like Cutechess ? e.g.

1. e4 {book} g6 {book} 2. d4 {book} Bg7 {book} 3. Nc3 {book} d6 {book}
4. h3 {book} Nc6 {book} 5. Nf3 {+0.62/29 66s} Nf6 {-0.68/10 23s}
6. d5 {+0.71/29 63s} Nb8 {-0.64/11 26s} 7. Bg5 {+0.76/26 13s} c6 {-0.57/10 54s}
8. Bd3 {+0.58/30 131s} O-O {-0.57/11 47s} 9. O-O {+0.68/26 9.7s}


Or Shredder GUI (also has the expected move, sometimes)

1. c4 {book 0s} c6 {book 0s} 2. Nf3 {book 0s} Nf6 {book 0s}
3. e3 {book 0s} d5 {book 0s} 4. a3 {book 0s} e6 {book 0s}
5. d4 {+0.57/25 37s} Nbd7 {+0.10/12 30s (Be7)} 6. Nbd2
{+0.63/25 18s} b6 {+0.12/13 1:09m (Bd6)} 7. Bd3 {+0.61/27
37s} Bb7 {+0.19/8 24s (Be7)} 8. O-O {+0.53/27 23s}

Something like this.

[Event "banksia game"]
[Date "2020.01.17"]
[White "Ethereal 8.28"]
[Black "hm::Human"]
[Result "*"]
[TimeControl "40/300+1"]
[Time "14:21:48"]
[Termination "*"]
[ECO "A55"]
[Opening "Old Indian"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 d6
3. Nc3 Nbd7 4. e4 e5
5. Nf3 {A55: Old Indian, main line} c6 6. Be2 a6
7. a4 a5 8. O-O {+0.46/15 5.4 6817419} Be7
9. Qc2 {+0.02/16 8.6 11036347} h6 10. Rd1 {+0.12/16 6.5 8072594} Qc7
1

What are those numbers supposed to represent I wonder ? Is it milliseconds or something ? If so, then the Shredder or Cutechess methods of just specifying the seconds taken is much cleaner in my view. This new GUI looks really impressive, massive credit to the author, but in my case a nice clean readable and understandable pgn is one of the most important things. I loved that about Cutechess when I started using that, comapred to the ugly Chessbase/ChessGUi format.

[Guenther]

...
[Event "banksia game"]
[Date "2020.01.17"]
[White "Ethereal 8.28"]
[Black "hm::Human"]
[Result "*"]
[TimeControl "40/300+1"]
[Time "14:21:48"]
[Termination "*"]
[ECO "A55"]
[Opening "Old Indian"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 d6
3. Nc3 Nbd7 4. e4 e5
5. Nf3 {A55: Old Indian, main line} c6 6. Be2 a6
7. a4 a5 8. O-O {+0.46/15 5.4 6817419} Be7
9. Qc2 {+0.02/16 8.6 11036347} h6 10. Rd1 {+0.12/16 6.5 8072594} Qc7
1

What are those numbers supposed to represent I wonder ? Is it milliseconds or something ? If so, then the Shredder or Cutechess methods of just specifying the seconds taken is much cleaner in my view. This new GUI looks really impressive, massive credit to the author, but in my case a nice clean readable and understandable pgn is one of the most important things. I loved that about Cutechess when I started using that, comapred to the ugly Chessbase/ChessGUi format.

Those are nodes.

[Modern Times]

OK, so nothing in the pgn to say how much time was spent on each move ?

[Guenther]

OK, so nothing in the pgn to say how much time was spent on each move ?

No. Time is of course there too.

Code: Select all

{+0.46/15 5.4 6817419} = {eval/depth time nodes}