Banksia GUI forums

Hey there,

I've recently moved from Arena Chess to Banksia for creating engine vs engine matches. I really like this GUI, but I'm having a few problems doing some of the things I usually do in Arena and was wondering if someone could please help me.

1) I set up a 4x4 engine tournament. The type was Round Robin/Carousel/Swap Sides. Under tournament opening books, I selected a 100-game PGN file. Options selected were All new in sequence/No special. I've also tried one opening for a pair.

I was expecting each engine to play opening #1 against the other 3 engines as black and white, then move onto opening #2. This is what Arena Chess and Fritz chess do. Banksia GUI has the first 2 games in the round with opening #1, then the next 2 engines use opening #2 (even though they haven't played opening #1 yet). Is there a way around this?

2). Banksia sometimes skips games on the list of upcoming games ( see here https://ibb.co/fHHBhGr ). Is there a reason for this? The only thing I can think of is the 2 engines are both CPU engines rather then GPU, but I still don't know why it would skip them if this is the case? I've restarted the tournament and the same thing happens with these same engines. It does play if I select concurrency 2 instead of 1, but I don't really want 2 games playing at once.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Jonno

jonno-nz86 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 15, 2021 10:51 pm Hey there,

I've recently moved from Arena Chess to Banksia for creating engine vs engine matches. I really like this GUI, but I'm having a few problems doing some of the things I usually do in Arena and was wondering if someone could please help me.

Thanks for using and feedback.

jonno-nz86 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 15, 2021 10:51 pm
1) I set up a 4x4 engine tournament. The type was Round Robin/Carousel/Swap Sides. Under tournament opening books, I selected a 100-game PGN file. Options selected were All new in sequence/No special. I've also tried one opening for a pair.

I was expecting each engine to play opening #1 against the other 3 engines as black and white, then move onto opening #2. This is what Arena Chess and Fritz chess do. Banksia GUI has the first 2 games in the round with opening #1, then the next 2 engines use opening #2 (even though they haven't played opening #1 yet). Is there a way around this?

I have written down that way setting up openings as a new feature request since BSG doesn't create openings by that way. Thanks for the idea.

jonno-nz86 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 15, 2021 10:51 pm
2). Banksia sometimes skips games on the list of upcoming games ( see here https://ibb.co/fHHBhGr ). Is there a reason for this? The only thing I can think of is the 2 engines are both CPU engines rather then GPU, but I still don't know why it would skip them if this is the case? I've restarted the tournament and the same thing happens with these same engines. It does play if I select concurrency 2 instead of 1, but I don't really want 2 games playing at once.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Jonno

Whenever there are some GPU games, BSG manages to play them first because those games can be played one-by-one only (without concurrency with another games in that group). Once a GPU is selected and played, BSG will find and play other none-GPU games, based one the concurrency number. By doing that way, BSG can maximise the number of playing games. However, since you set concurrency to 1, none-GPU games can't play right now and it looks BSG skip them. However, they will be played AFTER all GPU games.

It looks a bit strange but useful since users may change concurrency to higher values at anytime.

Hi Everybody!

Use this thread too as an unexperienced user for basic questions, hoping that's ok.

To start with a first one concerning ECA:
Creating a new project from a position Black has first move, how can I get the move number to be shown correctly as 1... (even better x... if x is the real move number in original game) instead of 1., which so far I get always, even with several trials of editing fen-string of new project and (or) changing options of Black's and White's plies and moves at button of the dialog. I don't get the logic of these two- time- setting. Changing the options for White and Black changes the fen- string also, but in a way, I don't understand.

Thanks in advance,
regards
Peter.

Edit: Signature isn't added automatically.

Peter wrote: ↑Mon Oct 17, 2022 8:42 am To start with a first one concerning ECA:

Next one:
How can it be, that after far more than 1 hour of hardware- time with 30 threads of 16x3.5GHz and 32G hash not more than 2 plies get evaluation- score at all, even if these two plies are restricted to 1, at highest 2 candidate moves and all other ones are set on "ignore"?
Not even Children or Subnodes are listed after first 2 plies.
What kind of "expansion" does engine do there? 30 seconds per move is set, there should be at least 10 plies evaluated per hour without any restriction to single canditate moves at all, if I compare that to e.g. IDeA, which is the next similar GUI- feature I know of that kind,
regards
Peter.

BTW signature still isn't added to posting automatically