Banksia GUI has one of the most advantageous time control systems, be suitable for almost all tasks. It can set time controls (clocks) in one of three types:
- Normal
All engines use only one-time control. It could be set to the following modes:
- Standard: standard time control which could be customized for time, move number, increment
- Move time: time per move
- Depth: depth per move
- Nodes: nodes per move (Winboard engines don’t support)
- All moves: set time for the whole game without resetting the clock in the middle of the game. It is a kind of sudden death
- Infinite: infinite move time. Suitable for analyzing and human (we are so special 😀 )
Be aware that with modes Depth and Nodes BSG won’t rule the game even engines go beyond the limitations (we can’t rule the engines based on what they printed out – We should trust them anyway).
2. Multi (time controls)
There are 5 different time controls (Fig. 1). Each engine can be assigned to any of them. E.g., engine A can run with the standard clock of 40/20+1, engine B can run to depth 20 and engine C can run to nodes 1000. An engine is assigned to only one clock for all its games in a tournament.
3. Armageddon
It is a kind of multi-time control as above (Fig. 2). However, there are some differences:
- There are only two-time controls (instead of 5): one for White and one for Black. Which time controls will be assigned to an engine depends on which side it is playing. Thus an engine may not run with the same time control for all games in a tournament
- The way to calculate results: we could select between normal way (win, draw, loss are different points) or White must win (draw = loss for White) or Black must win (draw = loss for Black)
Fig. 1 Multi clocks (in pink color)
Fig. 2 Armageddon: two different clocks for White/Black and a special way to count the result