Basics of playing in Winboard

[Dan-the-K]

I've set up Winboard and have a problem using it. Using the engine Delfi 4.5, I start with time control of 30 moves in 60 minutes. I play for a while and then adjourn by saving the game. When I start the next session, I load the game but some properties are lost. I might start on move 22, and Winboard is fine about restoring the move and position, but the clock starts at 60 minutes. Its also necessary to respecify who is white (me) and who is black (the engine).

Is there a way of restoring all these properties: time, who is white and who is black?

TIA,

Dan

[Igor Gorelikov]

You may create a batch file and use it to play from pgn file.
Your batch file may look like this (of course, with your path and files):

winboard.exe -debug -tc 30 -inc 0 -lgf start.pgn -sgf mygames.pgn -cp -fcp "Delfi_45" -fd "E:\CHESS\ENGINES\Delfi_45"

Start.pgn should contain the game to load.

Igor

[Dan-the-K]

Igor,

Would you mind explaining what everything in the command means? Is there a reference where I can find and understand other options?

Spaceba,

Dan

[Igor Gorelikov]

The Winboard folder contains file WINBOARD.HLP with very useful info . You may press F1 while running winboard to get this beast.

And here are my comments:

Code: Select all

winboard.exe       (run winboard)
-debug             (log your game info into winboard.debug)
-tc 30             (set time control to 30 min)
-inc 0             (with zero increment)
-lgf start.pgn     (load the game file which is start.pgn)
-sgf mygames.pgn   (save your game into mygames.pgn)
-cp                (use computer program)
-fcp "Delfi_45"    (first chess program is ... exe name) 
-fd "E:\CHESS\ENGINES\Delfi_45" (directory of the first chess program is....)


Regards,
Igor

[Dan-the-K]

You may create a batch file and use it to play from pgn file.
Your batch file may look like this (of course, with your path and files):

winboard.exe -debug -tc 30 -inc 0 -lgf start.pgn -sgf mygames.pgn -cp -fcp "Delfi_45" -fd "E:\CHESS\ENGINES\Delfi_45"

Start.pgn should contain the game to load.

Igor

That's all very nice and informative but it doesn't solve the problem. Lets say I start a new game with 30minute time control. I play and both sides still have 10 minutes. Then I save the game and exit Winboard. I come back the next day, load the game and now each side has 30 minutes, not 10 minutes.

I want the clocks to resume with what they had before the adjournment.

Maybe I wasn't clear about my setup. I have Winboard.Ini and Delfi.Ini nicely set up. I run them in Windows NT 4. Now I also have a batch file as you suggested. The problem persists regardless of how I start Winboard.

Dan

[Guenther Simon]

Hello,

There is no GUI which allows you to play on with exactly
the same conditions for a game between 2 programs,
if you stop it during the game.
Moreover I doubt this 'feature' will be available anytime at all,
because it will be impossible to reach the same stored hashtable
informations as before and may be other things too.
I would try not to stop a game, if it is of any importance
for you, or just replay from scratch, sorry

Guenther

[Pallav Nawani]

That's all very nice and informative but it doesn't solve the problem. Lets say I start a new game with 30minute time control. I play and both sides still have 10 minutes. Then I save the game and exit Winboard. I come back the next day, load the game and now each side has 30 minutes, not 10 minutes.
I want the clocks to resume with what they had before the adjournment.

I am not sure about this, but maybe you can do this with arena. Arena has its own format (.fch) for saving games, perhaps it can store time and other information as well. Try it, who knows?
Pallav

[Igor Gorelikov]

You may create a batch file and use it to play from pgn file.
Your batch file may look like this (of course, with your path and files):

winboard.exe -debug -tc 30 -inc 0 -lgf start.pgn -sgf mygames.pgn -cp -fcp "Delfi_45" -fd "E:\CHESS\ENGINES\Delfi_45"

Start.pgn should contain the game to load.

Igor

That's all very nice and informative but it doesn't solve the problem. Lets say I start a new game with 30minute time control. I play and both sides still have 10 minutes. Then I save the game and exit Winboard. I come back the next day, load the game and now each side has 30 minutes, not 10 minutes.

I want the clocks to resume with what they had before the adjournment.

Maybe I wasn't clear about my setup. I have Winboard.Ini and Delfi.Ini nicely set up. I run them in Windows NT 4. Now I also have a batch file as you suggested. The problem persists regardless of how I start Winboard.

Dan

Open your batch file with a text editor and change:

-tc 30 > -tc 10

That's all.

regard,
Igor

[Guenther Simon]

Open your batch file with a text editor and change:

-tc 30 > -tc 10

That's all.

regard,
Igor
Pallav Nawani
PostPosted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 6:

Hi Igor,

I understand him quite different. IMHO he wants to be able
to stop any game at any point and be able to restart from
exactly that point.
Of course he will not know in advance at what point he will
stop, otherwise the whole procedure would be senseless
at all. There is no GUI I know, where you can set up different
clocks plus anything else, which would be needed to simulate
the same state of the game before as it was adjourned.
This even applies for Humans
Moreover I told already that you will never get
the same state of the game at all, because all hash infos
are lost meanwhile...time management might differ too.


Best regards,
Guenther

[Dan-the-K]

Open your batch file with a text editor and change:

-tc 30 > -tc 10

That's all.

regard,
Igor
Pallav Nawani
PostPosted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 6:

Hi Igor,

I understand him quite different. IMHO he wants to be able
to stop any game at any point and be able to restart from
exactly that point.
Of course he will not know in advance at what point he will
stop, otherwise the whole procedure would be senseless
at all. There is no GUI I know, where you can set up different
clocks plus anything else, which would be needed to simulate
the same state of the game before as it was adjourned.
This even applies for Humans
Moreover I told already that you will never get
the same state of the game at all, because all hash infos
are lost meanwhile...time management might differ too.


Best regards,
Guenther

I wanted to be sure before posting. Yes, the ChessBase GUIs Junior8 and Hiarcs8 have this feature. I don't know how they do it.

I played a game in Hiarcs8 and stopped the clocks after about 10 moves. The remaining time for white and black differed. I saved the game in .PGN format and exited from Hiarcs8. I then reopened Hiarcs8 and it had the same game with the same time controls. I closed Hiarcs8 and opened up Junior8. I was able to load the game and again, it had the same time controls.

So there are GUIs that have this feature. I can't use Arena, I think its a graphics problem.

I'm not sure what I want to do and why I want this feature. I'm in evaluation mode, just using the software and getting comfortable with it.

In a *private* communication, Thomas Mayer confirmed that Winboard won't save the remaining time. He made a similar suggestion as Igor, "if both clocks are almost the same, you can note the time and save the game. When you restart the game, FIRST set the clock to what you want and load the game after that. Because after a game has started (or is loaded) the clock can't be adjusted in WinBoard."

Thanks for all your responses,

Dan

[Thomas Mayer]

Hi Dan,

I wanted to be sure before posting. Yes, the ChessBase GUIs Junior8 and Hiarcs8 have this feature. I don't know how they do it.

well, it's simple - ChessBase stores times in the phn where WinBoard is not doing that. WinBoard is not doing that because it is definitely not part of the pgn-standard. Many of us know the somehow unfamiliar pgn files, chessbase gui creates.

On the other hand, ChessBase is not fully wrong with their enhancement, because as far as I know they follow a proposal by the founder of the pgn-standard to include time and score in pgns. But those enhancements never found their way in the standard itself.

So it's easy to understand why the ChessBase GUI can do it even with pgn and WinBoard can't do it.

So there are GUIs that have this feature.

well, there are two ways for it: a) they save their games with a special format (I think that is what Arena is doing) or b) they use the non-standard enhancements, ChessBase is using...

I do not really like b) ... especially market leaders should not always try to destroy a standard by changing it -> think about Microsoft and what they have done to HTML...

Greets, Thomas

[Dan-the-K]

...

well, there are two ways for it: a) they save their games with a special format (I think that is what Arena is doing) or b) they use the non-standard enhancements, ChessBase is using...

I do not really like b) ... especially market leaders should not always try to destroy a standard by changing it -> think about Microsoft and what they have done to HTML...

Greets, Thomas[/quote]

Hi, again, Thomas:

Another example: Borland totally ignored the standards in Pascal and maybe other programming languages.

Dan

[Dan-the-K]

You may create a batch file and use it to play from pgn file.
Your batch file may look like this (of course, with your path and files):

winboard.exe -debug -tc 30 -inc 0 -lgf start.pgn -sgf mygames.pgn -cp -fcp "Delfi_45" -fd "E:\CHESS\ENGINES\Delfi_45"

Start.pgn should contain the game to load.

Igor

One more related question. I've whittled down this batch file and moved parts of it to the Winboard.Ini file.

However, -debug and -cp must remain in the batch file. If I put them in Winboard.Ini, for example the line

"crafty2 logpath=I:\crafty.WB bookpath=I:\crafty.WB -debug -cp" /fd=I:\Crafty.WB

the Winboard.debug flags an error, saying both -debug and -cp are *invalid* (I don't remember the exact word).

The batch file is:
I:\Winboard.3\winboard.exe -debug -sgf L:\chess\games\games.pgn -cp

Running the batch (*.CMD) file works just fine, but I'd rather not use it and put these items in Winboard.Ini.

Can this be done?

Dan

[Igor Gorelikov]

If you mean the /firstChessProgramNames and /secondChessProgramNames sections of Winboard.ini, they can contains only an exe name (with parameters if needed) and path to the execuatable. That's all.
No -cp, no -debug.

Igor