Questions about opening books and tablebases?

[el hermano]

ok i have so many hints and all that but can someone exp by pictures? that will be alot of help thanx.

[goldminer999]

These instructions are very clear:

To Create a .ctg Book by Mark Mason

1. Start with a database of games that you want to use to make your book.

2. Create a new book in Fritz by selecting FILE/NEW/OPENINGS BOOK - call it anything you like.

3. Open your new book by selecting FILE/OPEN/OPENINGS BOOK and selecting the new book you created earlier.

4. Now import the games from your database by selecting EDIT/OPENINGS BOOK/IMPORT GAMES and navigating to your database.

5. There is a dialogue box which you need to tick against. "Games" is the number of games you want to import. Default is all games are selected so leave this. "Length" is how deep the lines will be in the book. Choosing "ECO-relative" plus a number will make the main line variations longer than the oddball side variations. If you pick "Absolute length" and a number, it will make all the variations the length you chose, regardless of whether the variation is a main line or side line - so book will be deeper. "Include variations" is important if some of the games from your database contain commentary in the form of sub-variations, but can be left un-ticked.

6. When you're finished with these settings, click "OK". You'll see a progress bar appear, keeping you posted as to how close Fritz has come to completing the, you'll see a menu of moves where the empty book had been and a small window saying "x new positions" (this tells you how many positions total are in the new tree). Click OK, and you're finished.

To manually edit the book

if you have the little booklet that came with Fritz 9 then in sections 5.6 and all of section 11 give details. Also there is a manual on the Fritz 9 DVD . Pages 49 to 54 give some instructions to have a look at. Meanwhile here is a brief pointer:

Go into Fritz and do File/Open/Openings Book and select the book you want to edit. Then select the Openings Book tab on right hand side of screen. Basically you can either

a) add a new move to the book, To do this right click somewhere in that book area (not on a move just in empty space) and tick Allow Move Adding. then when you play back through a game and want to add new line, just make the move on the actual board and then select new main line from the options. This will then have added the move to the book.

b) change the 'weighting' of an existing move making it more/less likely to be chosen. This is shown in the Prob / % column. To change it right click on the actual move itself and do change weight. The value is from -125 (very unlikely to be picked) to +125 (very likely to be picked). You can change these manually to any value. Actually this is what the automatic book learning does based on whether games are won or lost - but this is how you do it manually.

c) or mark moves either red (means they won't be played ever) or green (mean they will be picked, with a probablility given by the % column). To make a move red right click on it and select Don't play in tournament
To make a move green right click on it and select Main Move. You might want to make a move red if you find that at some point in the book line you had a negative evaluation and therefore you can mark that move red so it won't be played again.

There is a lot more to it than this but this should give you enough to start creating and editing your book. I hope this helps you.

[zappa79]

Hello everyone!

I am new to this forum, and this is my firs post! So please forgive me if this has been answered already!

1. I want to know if there is any site that lists the top opening books and their ranking?
2. What is the best opening book to use, right now? (Probably hard to answer, but would like to hear opinions!)

3. How much better will the engine play if I have all the 3-4-5 & 6-men tablebases?
Should I use them all, or is it just waste of space?

Thank you all in advance!

[Waldemar]

1- Best site to check opening book rank and elo is Sedat's site

http://www.sedatchess.com/index.html

*Check the tournament section. Or go direct here: http://www.sedatchess.com/scct4rating.html
*Soon he will make the SCCT 5.

2- The best book is the one that has the best elo.

3- To have all 3-4-5-6 men is the best way to have the best ending in your games.

And welcome to our forum.

[matematiko]

I do have all 5 man EGTB and some of the 6 man (about 50 GB), but, I do not think EGTBs help much. This had been talked about in so many other places and I have to agree that if they help it is only once in a while and only in blitz games, and incomplete (no to mention corrupted)databases can (and will) many times lead to problems. In the other hand, price of hard drives had dropped a lot, and internet speeds had incresed a lot so maybe having them won't hurt as long as you have the full set.

This is just my opinion.

Cheers,

[zappa79]

Thank you so much for your answers, you sure answered quickly!

I see that the best book for now is the "Ultra Blitz 3", so now I will search for it! (Or maybe I can find it here on this forum?)

I have a fast internet connection, and 3 1TB drives in raid0, so space is not the issue for me, I just wanted to know if it will help much to have the tablebases? I guess I will download all of them and see what happends!

Oh and one more think comes to my mind, I have the "Rybka 3" engine, which one is the better one to ise in engine to engine matches, "Rybka 3" or "Rybka 3 Human"? What is the difference between them?

Thank you in advance, and once again thank you for your fast and straigt answers!

[matematiko]

In this type of forums Not a lot has been talk about the difference between "Rybka 3" and "Rybka 3 Human", I'll suggest you go to the rybka forum for that, sorry.

Good luck,

P.S. I like this place http://kirill-kryukov.com/chess/tablebases-online/ because it has a list of the MD5 checksum for every file. Weather or not you download the databases from here, I recommend you check the MD5 checksums posted in that site.

[goldminer999]

Hi Zappa,

Although Sedat runs excellent book tournaments his last one is quite old now and he is just about to start a new one. Meanwhile there has been a much more recent book tournament run - check this thread:

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... ?tid=11257

It gives download link to all the books and the final results:
1. Donbook 4 3318
2. tornado 3312
2. titielmago 4.0 3312
4. il konte 3.1 3310
5. mybook 14.2 3306
6. storm 3.2 3300
7. Poker 1.1 3299
8. OM long book 2.0 3290
9. salvo 12 3283
10. om long book 1.0 3281
11. jean disquin 1.2 3280
12. Phoenix 3262
13. MyDailyBook 3244
14. Moonrider 3189

He is now running a second tournamnt and results so far are at:

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... ?tid=11263

[zappa79]

Hi Zappa,

Although Sedat runs excellent book tournaments his last one is quite old now and he is just about to start a new one. Meanwhile there has been a much more recent book tournament run - check this thread:

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... ?tid=11257

It gives download link to all the books and the final results:
1. Donbook 4 3318
2. tornado 3312
2. titielmago 4.0 3312
4. il konte 3.1 3310
5. mybook 14.2 3306
6. storm 3.2 3300
7. Poker 1.1 3299
8. OM long book 2.0 3290
9. salvo 12 3283
10. om long book 1.0 3281
11. jean disquin 1.2 3280
12. Phoenix 3262
13. MyDailyBook 3244
14. Moonrider 3189

He is now running a second tournamnt and results so far are at:

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... ?tid=11263

Thanks for the link, I downloaded the "DONBOOK 4" and it works great!

However, I have heard that one can improve books buy letting them learn from games!
Is it possible that someone can tell me how to do that in Fritz9, or maýbe just give me a few pointers? Would be much appreciated!

Also while we are on the subject, is it possible to convert Fritz books .ctg to pocket fritz3 books?

Thanks in advance!

[goldminer999]

Hi Zappa,

When you load a book there are book settings that affect how the book plays. The book settings in Fritz 9 are in Tools/Book settings (or just press F4). If playing online they are in the dialogue box when you load the engine under Book Settings. If you click "optimize" then this sets Book Learning on. This means that the weights assigned to each move in the book (ie. how likely it is that a move will be chosen by the engine) are changed depending on the results of each game. So in effect the book "learns" to play the moves that resulted in wins more often than those that resulted in losses. However be careful as clicking "optimise" also sets the "minimum number of games" (number of games that must be present in the book for a move to be selected) to 3, and sets "Up to move number" (determines how long it should be in book) to 35. Many books specify "Optimised 0/100" or "Optimised 1/100". This means that to play the book you click "optimised" but then need to adjust he minimum number of games to 0 or 1 and the Up to move number to 100.

The full set of Book options are here - Book Learning options are the Influence of learn value and Learning strength. These are middle and lower sllder bars. Hope all this makes sense and helps you:

Menu: Tools – Book settings (or press F4)
Use book determines whether the openings book will be used.
Tournament book instructs the program not to play moves that have been excluded from
tournament play. If the option is off, the moves might sometimes be played.
Minimum games tells the program how many games must be available for a move for it to be
played.
Up to move number determines how long it should be in book.
Variety of play determines which moves will be chosen: only the ones with the highest statistical
values, or the seldom moves as well (slider right = varied).
Influence of learn value determines how the learning weights in the tree influence the probability
of a move being played (right = maximum).
Learning strength determines how strong the weights are adjusted on the basis of individual
games (right = maximum).
Optimize sets the last three parameters to their original values, for optimal playing strength.
Normal is for informal games.
Handicap for games on the handicap levels.