Observation: You polyglot.ini is all wrong, Houdini does not use Nalimov table bases and you are also declaring parameters that Houdini does not use.
Please read the whole post before doing anything.
I am not very familiar with the latest releases of WinBoard, I am going to suggest to try this first with an older version (4.3) see the topic bellow:
http://www.open-aurec.com/wbforum/viewtopic.php?t=49439 I installed this version on a folder I arbitrarily called C:\WinBoardGoldPack
I then "dived" into the WinBoard folder and created a new folder called "Book Adapter":
I then "dived" into the newly created "Book Adapter" folder and created two new folders called "ctg books" and "Config", also I copy the Aquarium Book Adapter files and also observe that I placed a copy of Houdini chess engine here.
As you can see I am kind of following the instructions in the guide mentioned above.
It is very important to copy the ctg book folder/files to this location (or whatever location of your choice) prior to doing the Aquarium thingy. Why? Because the "tree_configurations.xml" file will contain information regarding the physical location of the book.
Next, I copied a folder that contains a ctg book files, In this particular case I use a book called MOVEMENTS:
OK, At this point I ran The Convekta Aquarium Demo Program and followed the steps as mentioned in the guide above:
As mentioned in the guide, if the resulting tree is empty, then something is wrong and you should use a different book or try to solve the issue which I do not have idea how to.
Now go and copy the file "tree_configurations.xml" from the Config folder of your Aquarium installation (more than likely if you follow the defaults: C:\AquariumDemo\Config) and paste it in "C:\WinBoardGoldPack\WinBoard\Book Adapter\Config"
Ignore the guide's instruction about editing the file, it does not make any difference.
Go to "C:\WinBoardGoldPack\WinBoard\Book Adapter" and double click on "ABAGui.exe"
Since this is the very first time you click on this file, and assuming you did not copy any ini files(extremely recommended) you are going to get a screen like this:
Forget about the "File" section, it is empty because it did not see an ini file, but since this exactly what we are doing (creating an ini file for the book adapter) next time is going to be populated.
Thick the box "Relative path, then browse to the location of your engine(If you follow this instructions to the letter, it should be just there).,
Enable logging is up to you, I recommend to do this only when you have bugs you want to report to the developers of the Adapter.
This tutorial is not about what are the correct settings for the adapter....for that you have to go to rybka forums,etc....just as an example here are my 2 cents:
Latency 1
TimeBuffer 0
History Length 0
Minimal Time 0
Prioty Low
Tick the box "Use Book 0" and then the drop down arrow to search for the book you want to use, in this caese was MOVEMENTS.
Adjust the depth as you wish.
Note: Obviously you can select more than one book at the same time, but this unknown territory to me.
WinBoard is going to use polyglot as the engine, so, next step is to create a winboard shortcut with the correct instructions to launch WinBoard on ICS mode, connet to freechess.org and launch polyglot as its engine, so I ain't going to get into details on how to do this because that is a whole another topic that you should had master by now, I am only going to type here what the properties of the shortcut look like, note I am creating the shortcut in the "C:\WinBoardGoldPack\WinBoard" folder, you can later copy the shortcut to the desktop if you wish.
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C:\WinBoardGoldPack\WinBoard\winboard.exe /zp /ics /icshost=freechess.org /icsport=5000 /icshelper=timeseal /fcp="C:\WinBoardGoldPack\Polyglot15w\polyglot.exe polyglot.ini" /fd="C:\WinBoardGoldPack\Polyglot15w\"
Please observe that polyglot was installed by the goldpack in "C:\WinBoardGoldPack\Polyglot15w" also observe that we are not declaring a polyglot initialization file, so by default polyglot is going to look for a polyglot.ini in the same folder polyglot.exe exists. Also observe that I am not adding extra parameters like seek or so, it is up to you to do that.
Be sure that timeseal.exe exists in "C:\WinBoardGoldPack\WinBoard" folder, I can confirm that the GoldPack installation put it there. Also be aware that other servers expect timestamp.exe instead of timeseal.exe, this is another subject that I am not going to cover here.
OK, Now a WinBoard shortcut that points to polyglot.exe has been created. The next step is to create a polyglot initialization file to point to the book Adapter. I am not sure about this next statement but it seems that we should assume that the book adapter also reads the polyglot.ini [ENGINE] section and parses the declared parameters to the engine later declared in the AquariumBookAdapter.ini file (sorry if this sounds confusing to some but I am making the statement for whatever is worth). My point here is that even thou we are telling polyglot that the engine to use is AquariumBookAdapter.exe, we should pretend that the engine is Houdini, or Rybka or whatever engine we later declare in the AquariumBookAdapter.ini file and we must declare the options we want the engine to use. If this sounds confusing...please keep reading.
Now please create a polyglot.ini file in the same folder were polyglot.exe exists and make it look more or less like this:
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[PolyGlot]
EngineCommand="C:\WinBoardGoldPack\WinBoard\Book Adapter\AquariumBookAdapter.exe"
EngineDir="C:\WinBoardGoldPack\WinBoard\Book Adapter\"
Book=false
BookFile=
SyncStop=true
ShowPonder=true
CanPonder=true
KibitzMove=false
KibitzPV=false
KibitzCommand=kibitz
KibitzDelay=5
[Engine]
Hash=256
Threads=4
Split_Depth=10
Ponder=1
Contempt=2
GaviotaTbPath=C:\YaY_Ultimate_3\Winboard_X\GTB
GaviotaTbCache=64
Hard_Probe_Depth=24
Soft_Probe_Depth=16
Large_Pages=1
Observe that I am declaring a path to the Gaviota EndGameTableBases as: GaviotaTbPath=C:\YaY_Ultimate_3\Winboard_X\GTB, I am doing this because this is where my gaviota tablebases exists, you should change this as needed, or deleted if you do not have the Gaviota tablebases.
My hash and other parameters are set to my likings, this post is not about how to configure UCI Engine parameters, the polyglot ini shown here is just an example, set yours as you wish.
Please do not ask me about Large Pages either...Google it.
That is it. Double clicking in the WinBoard's shortcut takes me directly to the Internet Chess Server:
I suggest that before doing so, open WinBoard in any mode and go true the options, more specifically under UCI options, untick the Book Options like this:
Check all other options and set as needed/desire.
As you can see in the picture below, the book adapter made 6 moves before started thinking, I was just a little slow and took me a second to hit the "Print Screen" button.
Please observe that after running out of book, the engine starts thinking with no problems:
I almost forgot, the Book Adapter is free but is not perfect, something I mentioned before, it tends to still running in the background even after exiting WinBoard, if you do not kill the process manually, next time you start the adapter is not going to make a move.
I fall victim of this and as you can see there were several instances of the Aquarium Book Adapter, Houdini and Polyglot running at the same time, if this happens to you, kill all this processes before starting WinBoard/Polyglot/Adapter/Engine again.
Good luck,
Posted: 11 Jun 2011, 19:52
