POLYGLOT TUTORIAL FOR PLAYING AT YAHOO AND FOR MAKING BOOKS

[matematiko]

-A little by little (as time allows me) I will be adding instructions and pictures.

-This tutorial is not finished and should be ignored until I delete this sentence.

-Once finished, this topic will be locked and all the replies will be deleted. On the mean time I am leaving this topic unlocked only to receive suggestions.

What is POLYGLOT?

Polyglot is an UCI engine emulator (also known as an adapter) for Winboard (Xboard for those using unix like OS). This means that thru polyglot, you can use UCI engines with Winboard. Out of the box, Winboard can only use Winboard-compatible engines and not UCI engines, and is here where POLYGLOT comes into play. For all practical purposes, Winboards "sees" POLYGLOT as an engine, it is POLYGLOT the "middle man" that parses commands between Winboard and the UCI engine specified in the polyglot initialization file (polyglot.ini by default, more about this later).

POLYGLOT can also be used to make opening books that can only be used by POLYGLOT itself, Fruit derived engines, and some other engines. List of engines that support the polyglot book format: Glaurung 2, Toga. I will add more engines to this list as soon as I find out. Do not get confused, a polyglot book works with any UCI engine(Rybka) as long as polyglot is the "middle man".This list shows the engines that support polyglot books directly without the need of polyglot as an emulator.

Why should I use POLYGLOT?

Most UCI engines are developed without a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and a third party UCI-compatible GUI is needed in order to make use of these engines. There are several of these GUIs out there, but not all of them offer what we need in order to auto play in Yahoo Chess rooms (remember that this forum is about Yahoo autochess programs).

-Arena: A free and extremely powerfull and full of options UCI-compatible GUI that at the moment, the current version does not provides the ability to connect to an ICS like server. The three currently working scripts (STUCI, YaY Ultimate and YtoICS Reborn) are nothing more but ICS emulators, in other words: they are the "middle man" between our GUI and Yahoo and make our GUI to "see" Yahoo as an ICS server. Without this ICS support this GUI is basically useless for our purpose of autoplaying at Yahoo servers.

-There are other GUIs like Arena that provide ICS connection capabilities, but engine playing gets disable automatically to avoid human-engine matches. This makes these GUIs useless again to our purpose.

-There are also GUIs (like Chess Partner) that provide ICS connection capabilities, and that do not disable engine playing, but their ICS protocol is not entire compatible with the ICS protocol YtoICS ( the father of all scripts) was written for.

-AQUARIUM. This is a brand new GUI made by CONVEKTA in cahoots with RYBKA team. Because is new, you can expect that has lots, I mean lots of bugs. Also, CONVEKTA tried a new user interface aproach and most users are finding it dificult to use. And on top of all this, it can not connect to Yahoo unless the scripts are modified extensevly. So, for practical purposes, at this time you can forget about using AQUARIUM to connect to Yahoo.

-Chessbase GUIs like FRITZ, HIARCS and SHREDDER. These GUIs do not even provided ICS capabilities, the only way to do it is by "linking" their Auto-232 adapter to Winboard by using the winboard adapter winboard232d.exe. By doing this, we are adding two more elements to chain of links between Yahoo Chess Servers and the engine and enhancing the probabilities of bugs. Example:

Yahoo Chess Server<->YaY<->Winboard<->Winboard232d.exe<->Auto-232<->FRITZ<->Rybka
A total of seven elements parsing information back and forth.

Chessbase GUIs are by far the best GUIs out there because they have so many options(like handiling databases, book learning, they can used extremely powerfull comercial CTG books, etc), but when combined with Winboard and the two other needed "links" (Auto-232 and winboard232d.exe) the chances of bugs get amplified. Problems I had have when using this array are mainly three: Whites and blacks do not move some times at the begining of the game, engine freezes once in a while, for lightining blitz these seven element array proves to be some how slow.

Again, this is the set up of choice by most seasoned auto-players, it has many advantages but it also has some disadvantages.

-Winboard. This a well known free GUI that offers (among other features like saving games in PGN format) the ICS compability YtoICS was written for and does not disable engine playing when connected to and ICS server. Unfortunally, Winboard was not made for UCI engines and is for this reason that POLYGLOT is used. Example:

Yahoo Chess Server<->YaY<->Winboard<->POLYGLOT<->Rybka
A total of 5 elements. The use of less elements makes this array more bug free and faster.

What is best then? FRITZ or POLYGLOT ?

None is best, it all depends on your goals, your computer, your opening book and the strength of your opponent. The only way to find out is by using both, taking notes and comparing.

TUTORIAL FOR USING POLYGLOT IN YAHOO BEGINS HERE

This tutorial is for autoplaying in Yahoo using POLYGLOT 1.4 (there is also a modified version by a different author called "Polyglot 1.4w", this version does not requiere cygwin1.dll) with: YaY Ultimate (and more than likely it will also work with STUCI and YtoICS Reborn), winboard 4.2.7( and with an unofficial modified version based on this released called winboard_x) and any UCI engine like Rybka 3.

As you can see, there will be many different combinations. This tutorial and the pictures included are based on the unofficial POLYGLOT 1.4w4, the unofficial Winboard_X, YaY Ultimate 2.1.1, Rybka 3 mp 64 all running in Windows Vista 64. This does not mean that it will only work with these parameters. This only means that I am not writting a tutorial for every single different combination and that if your parameters are different then you are going to have to use common sense and your brain to figure out the small changes needed to make it work.

To make this work requieres to read this tutorial very carefully and to follow it step by step. I insist, Yahoo engine playing is not for those with the whole purpose of making their IDs red. Engine playing is: for chess lovers, for computers lovers, for those who like challange, for non-cheaters, for dedicated people that wont give up at the first set back and go crying for help. If you belong to the first group, I suggest you stop reading this topic and go waste your time somewhere else. If you belong to the second group, welcome to this challanging and rewarding experiance.

For the reasons explained above, and to make this tutorial as short as possible, I am assuming you are a seasoned computer user.I won't explain neither post pictures on for example how to rename a file, or how to unzip YaY Ultimate to an specific directory. I won't explain either why "YaY_Ultimate.exe" is shown in your explorer as "YaY_Ultimate" or why "readme.txt" is shown as "readme". If you don't know what I am talking about or if you don't know how to go around these issues, stop now and go waste your time at youtube.com. Or at least go to google and try to find the answer there without flooding this forum with silly questions.

Before I continue, and before I get attacks from the Robin Hood's wannabe of this forum, let me clarify something.
Am I implying that this tutorial and engine playing in general is only for high IQ people and not for dumb or unexperience people? No, of course not. All I am saying is that if you are unexperience, then you should try very hard, follow steps very carefully and go look in google for the answers for the question whose answers are not explained here. That's all. After all, none of us were born with experience. Remember that the purpose of this forum is to share knowledge on how to use autochess programs in Yahoo and not to teach basic computer classes.

OK, enough chit-chat, let's begin.

First things first, since YaY Ultimate and YtoICS Reborn are officialy released only as executables, you do not need Active Perl. But if you are planing on using STUCI then you need to download and install Active Perl because at this moment(09-06-08) STUCI will only work on Windows machines if Active Perl is installed. It is beyond the scope of this topic to explain how to install Active Perl or to explain why certain versions are better than others. Look around this forum or use google. All I will say is that STUCI needs some TK modules and Crypt::SSLeay(http://johnbokma.com/perl/https.html).

That been said, remember that this topic ia about using POLYGLOT with YaY Ultimate, so go ahead and download YaY Ultimate from http://h1.ripway.com/matematiko/YaY_Ultimate.zip. As I said it before, this is the only version of YaY that we (The YaY Ultimate team) endorse. Do not download YaY Ultimate from anywhere else. Executable files can contain viruses and/or trojans. We beleive that our good reputation speaks for ourselves and you can rest assured that this executable does not have neither viruses or trojans. This version comes with tutorials, you can use those tutorials if you want, but obviously some people are still having problems understanding them so this tutorial supersedes the ones included with the release.

After downloading YaY_Ultimate.zip, unzip it to C:\ , after that you should have a new folder C:\YaY_Ultimate\ with a bunch of files inside. If you want, you can scan with your anti-virus software YaY_Ultimate.zip before unziping it and the whole new folder after unziping it. We are not ready yet, but this is a good time to partially test YaY Ultimate, so go ahead and navigate to C:\YaY_Ultimate\ and double click in YaY_Ultimate.exe,

[elcriollito]

maternatiko there is a program that can record everything u do on your screen,I will send the link, is from microsoft (windows media enconder),that u can use to add like a short 3 minute video to amplify your explination like once every program is running perfectly just see how u do it to conect to yahoo,

I don't know,but new user could see this video very usefull

thanks for this new tutorial

[matematiko]

Thank you criollito....

I'd like to apologize to everyone for not finishing this tutorial.....so many things are happening in my personal life that are demanding most of my free time....soon I'll continue this tutorial.

Cheers,

[tue_mouche]

hi matematiko,
i hope you are fine. please is there a follow of this tutorial. could you show me the topic that leads to. thanks a lot. have a good day. tue_mouche.

[matematiko]

Well, I am taking advantage of having my computer broken and I started working on YaY Ultimate version 3, when I finish YaY and if I have not yet received my motherboard back from ASUS I will continue with this tutorial. Be patainte please.

Cheers,

[tue_mouche]

Well, I am taking advantage of having my computer broken and I started working on YaY Ultimate version 3, when I finish YaY and if I have not yet received my motherboard back from ASUS I will continue with this tutorial. Be patainte please.

Cheers,

no problem friend; keep up the good work! have a good day.

[KimDongHwan]

Thanks Matematiko..
keep up your good work..
im still waiting for your tutorial about YaY Ultimate + Polyglot...
i hv already double click the Yay_Ultimate.exe files..
In your explanation about none are the best (Fritz vs Polyglot), i assume that Polyglot is the best for me because of my mid-end CPU...(only Intel Dual Core 2180 + RAM 512 MB with 54Mbps Wireless Connection)...

Again, thanks for your time n your dedication for chess...especially chess lovers like me..