Computer tournament with only London system?

I have Banksia program to run computer tournaments but if I know the first 5 moves I want the white and black side to do then basically I want them to play it out from that point on what do I do? Incredibly frustrating, haven't been able to figure it out! I can see where you can upload a book but they want a bin file and after countless searching I can't seem to figure out how to do it.

Hm, the Banksia GUI - I've seen it discussed on the Talkchess forums, but I haven't tried it myself. However, because you say it uses a bin book, it sounds like a polyglot bin book. Maybe this link will give you a few ideas:

http://www.talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?t=63635

I read through that one but it doesn't really describe how to do it. Seems like what I want to do would be super easy. Essentially I want the computer to start at the position d4 d5 bf4 nf6 e3 nc6 nf3 and play out from there.

Do you want the engines to play the complete line from the beginning, or just start after Nf3?

You could continue trying to make a bin book, BUT...

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=72350

I just read the first post in that Banksia GUI thread. It claims to support the following books: PGN, EPD, and bin. If so, it might be as simple as making a PGN file of the moves you mentioned, and using that PGN file as the opening book for the engine tournament. It would be great if it's really that simple.

Does it really support PGN opening books?

For info, I just made a bin book for the London line you gave. It wasn't very much work. It seems to work in Scid vs. PC, although I didn't try it in the Banksia GUI.

The first step is to make a pgn file with the specified line. I named it London.pgn, and the contents were as follows:

[Event "?"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "?"]
[Black "?"]
[Result "*"]

1. d4 d5 2. Bf4 Nf6 3. e3 Nc6 4. Nf3 *

The next step was to download a copy of the polyglot executable. I used version 1.4w29, although I'm not sure the version number is all that important. The actual name of the executable that I used was polyglot1.4w.exe.

Now, put the polyglot executable file into the same folder as your London.pgn file.

The last step is to open a DOS command line in Windows and change the path to your folder with the two files. Then you type the magic command, which for me, was:

polyglot1.4w.exe make-book -pgn London.pgn -bin London.bin -max-ply 100 -min-game 1

And that's it. Polyglot will create a London.bin file that you can use in your GUI.

I've installed BanksiaGUI into my Linux box, and I'm trying to get familiar with it. Supposedly you should be able to create bin and pgn opening books within the GUI, although I haven't been able to do either. However, I *did* confirm that the bin book I manually created in my previous post *does* work in BanksiaGUI.

Super helpful, I really appreciate it. I was able to create the bin file. When I set up a match between two engines and I get to the section that says Book/Egtb and add opening with the bin that was created though it says book may be existent already or broken. I wonder if there is a different program and just overall easier way to set up computer matches to just run through the london opening.

Okay just figured it out, apparently I had to use your format exactly using notepad.exe. Originally I played the moves in banksia, saved as a PGN then cleaned it up with pgn-extract, then created bin with polyglot and it doesn't seem to work, easier to just use your method, thank you.

Yeah, I haven't been able to figure out any of the pgn or bin stuff created within BanksiaGUI. Nothing works - don't have a clue what I'm doing wrong. Of course, there's not even a Help file...I'm ready to give up on that aspect of it. On the positive side, I was able to install a couple of engines and run a short tournament. But I don't like how the graphics boxes are designed. Frankly, I think I'll stick with Arena. (Btw, you can create a London book in Arena abk format, and at least I can easily understand how to do that.)

Okay I will work with Arena and see if I can figure it out and then I'll shoot you questions if I have them on here since you know that one better. Again thanks!

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/using-stockfish-12

Post #4 in this thread - two ways to do it.