Myracle GUI

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Martin,

Arena received the opening book features very late.
That was a big problem in the past but I sent Martin Blume an old idea.

The feature got the name "PGN-Random" (can be give an other name).

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Selection dialog, first entry
User load a PGN database, example all white games from Ivantschuk are inside in a database.
A *.pgn database of any size is loaded.

Selection dialog, second entry
User can give a move-number for white or for black.

Selection dialog, third entry
Random ... yes / no
Start with the first game ... yes / no

Selection dialog, forth entry
Save game inforamtion ... yes / no
If yes: Name white player, name black player, City / State, Tournament Name, Year (the most important information from PGN-Header).

Example:
User give: White Move = 8, Random = yes, Save game information = yes

And now ... easy!
GUI load the database, search by random a game and the engine-engine match will be start with white move 8.
In the saved PGN file to the game you will find an hint after white move 8:
Ivantschuk - Karpov, 1988 (the information to the game from PGN-Header, loaded per random).

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For many people, opening books are complicated or take too much time to compile. No one has to create one; instead, they can simply copy their favorite games into a database.

You could also use it to apply the opening knowledge of your favorite grandmasters, such as Ivanchuk’s game collection in my example here.

Or you can play themed tournaments on opening systems using your favorite engines.

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This feature was very popular at the time and was used frequently.
Most are thinking and gave the information: We need no opening book features because we have this one.
It's a nice addition today!

Best
Frank

[mar]

the way pgn books work in Myracle is as follows:

you specify pgn and (optionally) maximum plies, there's also a sequential checkbox but I prefer to go without it
so by the default, the GUI loads whe whole pgn up no n plies, then shuffles the order using a high-quality PRNG seeded
with good entropy input, this is then used as books (and possibly cycled if number of pgn games is smaller than the tournament schedule)

(note that of course a large pgn takes some time to load and consumes some extra RAM, but I think it's well worth it)

I prefer this to polyglot books for eng-eng testing because (assuming no dups) this should ensure better variability;
polyglot is best for actual real-world tournaments where you need to pick a move quickly and cannot afford to load the whole book in memory

so I guess it's fairly similar to what you describe except that I don't copy any tags from the "book pgn"

[Frank Quisinsky]

Genial!
I think I understand it.

For the moment enough, I have to look more in detail.

[Modern Times]

I've uploaded build 52 with GameDuration and PlyCount tags. btw. the FEN tag is only present if startpos is different from normal chess startpos

Amazing, thanks.

[Joern]

Where can I configure the settings to play with multiple engines—that is, several games simultaneously? I’ve only found the Round Robin option.

[mar]

Where can I configure the settings to play with multiple engines—that is, several games simultaneously? I’ve only found the Round Robin option.

tools/settings/concurrency - core budget is what's commonly known as "concurrency" - but it has a more or less sane autodetection
then in new tournament check concurrency checkbox (on by default btw) - and it'll play as many games at once as possible

[Joern]

Many thanks for your help this Works fine.

Joern

[F.Huber]

Hi,

first thanks for this interesting GUI!

The newest build 54 is broken - when trying to load/start any (bundled) engine the following error message appears:
app crash: exception c0000005 near code ptr 0x7ff7b4ce0c9f

Unfortunately your previous builds are not available anymore ...

Regards,
Franz

[Andres Valverde]

Hi,

first thanks for this interesting GUI!

The newest build 54 is broken - when trying to load/start any (bundled) engine the following error message appears:
app crash: exception c0000005 near code ptr 0x7ff7b4ce0c9f

Unfortunately your previous builds are not available anymore ...

Regards,
Franz

Did it happen starting/loading EveAnn only or with other engines as well? Can you try to run bundled EveAnn in console and see if it crashes?
EveAnn won't run if your PC doesn't support AVX2.

[F.Huber]

Did it happen starting/loading EveAnn only or with other engines as well? Can you try to run bundled EveAnn in console and see if it crashes?

No, it's not a problem with EveAnn - it crashes with every engine!
The standalone EveAnn works fine.