.ctg Books in Winboard via Aquarium Book Adapter

[Charles Browne]

Hi Charles again,
Reading now your instructions how to use ABA at the Rybka Forum, you said at the end of it, that for playing at Winboard you must import the file Aquarium Book Adapter.exe and in the polyglot.ini you must write AquariumBookAdapter.exe as the chess engine. My doubt if it is not needed to write at the Polyglot.ini the "path" of were AquariumBookAdapter.exe originally was (Book Adapter Folder), since you import the file?

Yes of course you are correct Pablo. I did not go into detail of setting up the polyglot.ini file because I assumed, and I assumed correctly I think, that those such as yourself, that know how to set up Polyglot, would know to also include the directory path to the book adapter in the polygot.ini file.

In case there is any confusion on this. Here is a screenshot of my present polyglot.ini file for Shredder 10.






Also seen in the above screenshot is this: SyncStop=true

I do not know if this - SyncStop=true - added to the polyglot.ini file is really necessary but someone posted about a problem with the most recently released book adapter here:

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... ?tid=12252

So I just added - SyncStop=true - to my polyglot.ini file so as to avoid any potential problems with it. But I am not a heavy tester of chess engines so it is questionable whether or not I would experience the same problem as the original poster in the above linked to forum thread. I just added - SyncStop=true - as a safeguard, whether or not it helps any I do not know.

[Charles Browne]

Once you have added the book to the book adapter and made any desired settings changes, in the polyglot.ini file add the AquariumBookAdapter.exe file as the engine. If an engine has an ownbook entry in the engine section of the polyglot.ini file, I don't know if it makes a difference whether or not it is set to true or false. I just set it to true in the tests.

I will also correct an earlier post by me that is shown in bold type above.

If an engine has its own book and an OwnBook= entry in the polyglot.ini file. Then I think the OwnBook= setting should be set to false, and not true as I had mentioned above. If not should be set to false, then best to set it to false.

OwnBook=false

I do know that you master engine setter uppers will already know the above, but I did want to correct my own statement.

[Pablo]

Hello Charles,
Now is all clear. Thanks again.
Pablo

Hi Charles again,
Reading now your instructions how to use ABA at the Rybka Forum, you said at the end of it, that for playing at Winboard you must import the file Aquarium Book Adapter.exe and in the polyglot.ini you must write AquariumBookAdapter.exe as the chess engine. My doubt if it is not needed to write at the Polyglot.ini the "path" of were AquariumBookAdapter.exe originally was (Book Adapter Folder), since you import the file?

Yes of course you are correct Pablo. I did not go into detail of setting up the polyglot.ini file because I assumed, and I assumed correctly I think, that those such as yourself, that know how to set up Polyglot, would know to also include the directory path to the book adapter in the polygot.ini file.

In case there is any confusion on this. Here is a screenshot of my present polyglot.ini file for Shredder 10.






Also seen in the above screenshot is this: SyncStop=true

I do not know if this - SyncStop=true - added to the polyglot.ini file is really necessary but someone posted about a problem with the most recently released book adapter here:

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... ?tid=12252

So I just added - SyncStop=true - to my polyglot.ini file so as to avoid any potential problems with it. But I am not a heavy tester of chess engines so it is questionable whether or not I would experience the same problem as the original poster in the above linked to forum thread. I just added - SyncStop=true - as a safeguard, whether or not it helps any I do not know.

[Charles Browne]

Now is all clear.

When I first attempted to set up the Stand-Alone book adapter to use .ctg books I gave up because it seemed quite difficult to set up, and I couldn't get it to work. Much later I came back to it, and rereading some of the posts about it on the Aquarium forum, tried again and that time it seemed quite simple to set up and it did work.

Take it easy,

[Pablo]

Hello Charles,
Here is a little contribution for you work.
I tested the AquariumBookAdapter without the Atrees folder and works fine with Shredder engine.
Regards,
Pablo

Now is all clear.

When I first attempted to set up the Stand-Alone book adapter to use .ctg books I gave up because it seemed quite difficult to set up, and I couldn't get it to work. Much later I came back to it, and rereading some of the posts about it on the Aquarium forum, tried again and that time it seemed quite simple to set up and it did work.

Take it easy,

[Charles Browne]

I tested the AquariumBookAdapter without the Atrees folder and works fine with Shredder engine.

Thanks for letting us know that. Appreciated!!

[matematiko]

Before Mr. Brown deleted his post with a guide, I used his guide to create a MS World document, then I made few modifications.

The world document can be downloaded here:
http://chess.webcindario.com/Instructions.doc

If Mr. Brown asks me to delete it, I will have to comply.

Meanwhile, download it and use it, it worked for me and many of my friends.

I do not take any credit... well maybe 1%

Cheers,

matematiko

[Charles Browne]

matematiko,

Nice doc file.


If I may make one or two suggestions for your doc file.

Since Pablo found out and posted earlier that the Atrees folder is not necessary for .ctg books to work with the Stand-Alone book adapter, maybe it would be good to leave out the information about copying the Atrees folder over to the Stand-Alone adapter folder since that proved to be unnecessary when using only .ctg books with the adapter. Maybe a note that if using Aquarium format opening books, the Atrees folder may be needed?


And maybe change the title to:

Using .ctg Books in Winboard via the Aquarium Stand-Alone Book Adapter

or

Setting Up the Aquarium Stand-Alone Book Adapter to Use .ctg Opening Books

or something similar to the two suggestions shown above.


The reason I did not make the thread title of the thread what is shown above is because when making thread titles only a certain number of characters are allowed, and I wouldn't have been able to fit the above thread titles in.



I only suggest the title change so as to stress that this is for the Stand-Alone adapter, because when using the "Integrated Book Adapter" things will be different. For instance if someone is using the Integrated Book Adapter, which is basically used in conjunction with the Aquarium program, then maybe it would not be a good idea to do any editing to the tree_configurations.xml file.


If you want to use any of the suggestions that are posted above, word it and do it any way you see fit.



And yes I did end up deleting that post, because once I reflected on it I decided that it was really the Rybka/ChessOK people's role to make instructions for using their software, free software or other. But as mentioned in a post above, the post did end up on the Aquarium forum, slightly edited, and I actually like the Aquarium forum posted one slightly better, as the information in the beginning about having Polyglot was really unnecessary. Because once the Stand-Alone adapter is set up it can be used with many interfaces.

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... ?tid=12212


But I have no problems with you using the original post, or the Aquarium forum post, in your doc file. And again, edit it or add to it, as you see fit. (It's yours now!)

[matematiko]

Thank you sir, I will edited tomorrow or the day after. Kinda tired now hehe....

I need to read previous posts, confirm/test by myself what was said, then edit the Word Document accordingly.

Regards,


matematiko

[matematiko]

OK,

The tutorial was modified and the suggestions incorporated.

The link remains the same:
http://chess.webcindario.com/Instructions.doc

Cheers,

[Charles Browne]

matematiko,

Note that in this post I corrected an earlier statement of mine concerning OwnBook=true in the polyglot.ini file

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=50318&start=60#p191079

Since the book adapter is handling the book moves, there is no need for Polyglot to send a use OwnBook=true command to the engine. That is why I think it should be set to false. Of course I could be wrong.

[matematiko]

Charles Browne,

Thanks for the observation, I was going to mention about it but then I forgot.

The word document was changed accordingly, and the link remains the same:

http://chess.webcindario.com/Instructions.doc

Cheers,

[Guenther Simon]

Hi Charles,

First, let me say thanks for the qualified tutorial, which made it very easy for me to set up a ctg book up
for a WB/Polyglot engine in my first quick attempt.
There is still an important question left for me. Is there a way to set up the book adapter for several
engines simultaneously, thus that there is no need to adapt the [main] entry each time I decide to run
another program with it(or do I have to set up different adapter folders for each engine, which would
be quite an overkill and awkward too)?

Regards,
Guenther

[Charles Browne]

(or do I have to set up different adapter folders for each engine, which would
be quite an overkill and awkward too)

I think this is the only way to currently do it.

I was under the impression from what I'd read in the Aquarium forum that the Integrated adapter allowed the use of multi-engines but having just installed the Integrated adapter to check it out, I don't see that this is true. The integrated adapter looks to function exactly the same as the stand-alone one.

On the above I'm always happy to be proven wrong.



**********************************

While I'm here I'll post that it does appear that the .ctg books play moves percentiles are editable in Aquarium and that these changes can be used in the stand-alone adapter. In this case the "ATrees" folder would be needed to be copied over to the stand-alone adapters folder. But in the generic use of the .ctg books as outlined above in this thread, the ATrees folder does not need to be copied over.

Vytron's post from the Aquarium forum found below (start at the post and read down) has information on things going wrong while trying to use a .ctg book with the stand-alone adapter, and from it what to do right can be learned.

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... pid=153270

Now I haven't exactly gotten to the point of being able to actually change the book move percents and have it work with the stand-alone adapter because the other day I was trying some things with the Aquarium demo version and got such a headache that I've sworn off the whole thing for now. Hello Polyglot books!

[Charles Browne]

A case of when the ATrees folder would definitely be copied over to the Stand-Alone adapters folder.


I am using the Vytron post from the Aquarium forum, linked to in the above post, as a reference of sorts.


In the below graphic the .ctg opening book Perfect 2009 is being used in the example. The Perfect 2009 book has been loaded into Aquarium and if no changes were made to this book, as shown in the below graphic, then the instructions in this thread of not copying the ATrees folder over to the Stand-Alone adapter's folder could be safely followed (I think) since the ATrees folder would not be needed.






In the above graphic in the column at the far right labelled "Play %" can be seen that the move e4 has a 48% chance of being played. Only a guess on my part but maybe this 48% means that e4 will always be played and the other moves including d4 never will be played since 48% is the higher of all of the numbers.


But suppose it is wanted that an engine always plays d4 instead.


In the below graphic shows that the move d4 has been right-clicked on and a box has popped up and "Edit percents" has been clicked on.






And in the below graphic 100 has been entered into the Edit Percents box and OK clicked.






And in the below graphic shows that d4 now has a 100% chance of being played first.







Now when copying files over to the Stand-Alone adapter's folder, in addition to the tree_configurations.xml file being copied over to the Config folder, the ATrees folder would also need to be copied to the Stand-Alone adapter's folder since the ATrees folder now holds information on the Play Percent being changed for the opening book. Where exactly this information is stored in the ATrees folder I do not know, but the information is in one or more of the files that are in the ATrees folder.

[Waldemar]

What is the best polyglot version to use with the AquariumBookAdapter? I try the adapter but it stops playing sometimes. I dont know if my poly.ini is right! Help me! And Thx!

[Polyglot]

EngineName="AquariumBookAdapter"
EngineDir=C:\YaY_Ultimate_3\Winboard_X
EngineCommand="AquariumBookAdapter.exe"
Book=false
BookFile=
Resign=false
ShowPonder=true
CanPonder=true
SyncStop=true
PromoteWorkAround=true
KibitzMove=true
KibitzCommand=kibitz
KibitzDelay=5

[Engine]
Hash=128
Max CPUs=2048
NalimovPath=C:\EGTB
NalimovCache=16
NalimovUsage=Rarely
Ponder=true
Contempt Play=0
Contempt Analyze=0
UCI_Elo=2400
Time Buffer=10

[Olivier Deville]

What is the best polyglot version to use with the AquariumBookAdapter? I try the adapter but it stops playing sometimes. I dont know if my poly.ini is right! Help me! And Thx!

[Polyglot]

EngineName="AquariumBookAdapter"
EngineDir=C:\YaY_Ultimate_3\Winboard_X
EngineCommand="AquariumBookAdapter.exe"
Book=false
BookFile=
Resign=false
ShowPonder=true
CanPonder=true
SyncStop=true
PromoteWorkAround=true
KibitzMove=true
KibitzCommand=kibitz
KibitzDelay=5

[Engine]
Hash=128
Max CPUs=2048
NalimovPath=C:\EGTB
NalimovCache=16
NalimovUsage=Rarely
Ponder=true
Contempt Play=0
Contempt Analyze=0
UCI_Elo=2400
Time Buffer=10

Hello

I have noticed the same problem.

I am not sure polyglot is an issue here. It would be interesting to test if the problem happens too under a plain UCI GUI i.e. Arena. I'll do the test when I have some spare time.

Olivier

[Waldemar]

Ok. Thx Olivier.