Note that ProTools runs best when installed into the C:\ directory. Starting it from the installed Prodeo shortcut will initialize the ugly console screen more eye pleasing.
In continuation of the introduction this page step by step describes how to use ProTools 1.6 creating *.EBF (extended) opening books.
Fundamental
Protools is setup to work with various file formats and each file format has its own folder (directory). For the EBF project we are dealing with 4 types of file formats, PGN, EPD, LOG and EBF and each has its own folder with that name. The folder PGN only contains PGN files, the folder EPD only containns EPD files, etc.
When you start (this special version of) Protools press <F1>, the first 5 functions are the ones for creating EBK books.
1 | Make Arena EPD | Prepare Arena for Automatic Analysis EPD by creating an EPD depth based file from a PGN database. This EPD file then is analysed with Arena 2.01
For this project the work is already done, see the EPD folder and the 0-29 EPD files.
Of course nothing stops you using your own PGN databases as a starting point. |
2 | Split EPD | Split large EPD files into smaller parts to divide the Arena analysis over multiple cores. Results (of course) are stored in the EPD folder. |
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| Arena 2.01 analysis | Run Automatic Analysis from the Engines menu as described below. It will created a logfile that (eventually) needs to be stored in the LOG folder. |
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3 | Arenalog to EPD | The moves and scores of the analysed positions are extracted from the Arena logfile and a new EPD now with moves and scores is created. |
4 | EPD to EBF | Last step, convert the new EPD to EBF. Before doing this in case you have many EPD files to convert ending up with the same amount of EBF books consider an utility like Easy File Joiner , that merges textfiles (PGN and EPD as well) into one file. |
5 | Merge EBF | Merges 2 EBF books into one, named TEMP.EBF In case you want to merge 4 EBF books named A|B|C|D iinto 1 then merge A+B, secondly TEMP+C and as final step TEMP+D. Then rename TEMP.EBF to a for you meaningful name. |
Arena 2.01
The analysis part
Click on the pictures to enlarge
Please note you must use this old Arena 2.01 version since version 3 and 3.5 are bugged.
Run Automatic Analysis from the Engine menu, then setup the Source | Engines | Output | Option tabs as follows.
Select the EPD file you want to analyse.
11.epd for example.
Browse to the Protools LOG folder and pick an useful filename, sf11.log for instance.
Select the engine you want to use, Stockfish 7 in this case plus the time control, 2 seconds in this case.
Make sure Abort Analysis is off and the mainline suppress depth is not set too high, a value of 10 looks safe.
When everything is setup properly click START from the Source tabulator.