"I used to be a King. I could not be a Queen because of my gender. I could not be a Bishop because of my religion. I like to be a passed pawn because I would have a future."

It is very difficult to win against a strong opponent in the correspondence or centaur chess today (our game is no exception).

The web sites for downloading Houdini, Stockfish, and Arena are:

Houdini chess engine: http://www.cruxis.com/chess/houdini.... The current latest version is Houdini 1.5a. Stockfish chess engine: http://www.stockfishchess.com/. The current latest version is Stockfish 2.0.1. Arena chess GUI: http://www.playwitharena.com/. The current latest version is Arena 3.0.

I’m assuming that you have a Windows computer. If you have a Mac or Linux computer, the pages above will give you instructions about downloading a Mac-specific or Linux-specific version, if available. The instructions below may be too elementary for you, in which case just skip around the parts that you already know. And I’m running Windows XP so if you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7, some of the terminology might be different.

First set up the folder structure that you will use. You can use the defaults if you want, but I am going on the assumption that you will have multiple engines (and possibly multiple GUIs) and eventually different versions of each (you might want to keep your earlier versions until you’re sure that the newer versions work as well or better!). I’m also going to assume that you will have items other than chess-oriented items on your disk! Of course, these are only suggestions, but they’re the result of a 40-year career in software development, and I’ve gotten used to them.

I suggest creating a My Documents\Chess folder for all your chess-related files. Then create the following subfolders: ...\Chess\Arena
...\Chess\Arena\Arena 3.0
...\Chess\Houdini
...\Chess\Stockfish

And, of course, if you later download other engines or GUIs, each will have it’s own folder.

Start by downloading the engines from the web sites listed above, Houdini 1.5 to the ...\Houdini folder and Stockfish 2.0.1 to the ...\Stockfish folder. They’re not very big so the download shouldn’t take too long. The downloaded files will be in *.zip format so you will need to extract them. It’s easiest to extract them into the same folder, and you can delete the *.zip files after you extract them.

In the ...\Houdini folder you will find the file Houdini_15a.zip. When you unzip it you will see the folder ...\Houdini\Houdini_15a. Inside there’s a 32-bit executable version (Houdini_15a_w32.exe ) and a 64-bit executable version (Houdini_15a_x64.exe). It’s one of these that you will specify as the Houdini engine in Arena, depending on what type of computer you have.

In the ...\Stockfish folder you will find the file stockfish-201-win.zip. When you unzip it you will see the folder ...\Stockfish\stockfish-201-win. Inside it there’s another stockfish-201-win folder and, inside that, a Windows folder containing the 32-bit executable version (stockfish-201-32-ja.exe) and the 64-bit executable version (stockfish-201-64-ja.exe). It’s one of these that you will specify as the Stockfish engine in Arena, depending on what type of computer you have.

The Arena installation will have set up an Arena shortcut icon on your desktop. I suggest that you rename it “Arena 3.0” so that you can remember which version you’re using (and it will preserve it when you load future versions). Click on the icon to run Arena and select our language. The only choices are English and German, so don’t get your hopes up.

Once you run Arena there are many appearance items that you can customize, go ahead and set up your preferences. I’m of the “minimalist” school and I use the engines only for analysis, so one of the first things I do the first time I run any program is to get rid of all the extra icons on the toolbar and set the colors to my liking. But you can do this later once you decide which features you will typically use and leave them on your toolbar (or add others).

Arena comes with several engines pre-installed, all of them old free versions and not the current best engines. To install Houdini 1.5 and make it available from within Arena, select the Engines/Install New Engine from the top menu line and navigate to the folder where the Houdini executables were saved when you downloaded them, then select either the 32-bit version or 64-bit version depending on what type of computer you have. Select the UCI interface when given the choice between UCI and Winboard and specify that Houdini should Start. That’s all there’s to it.

Use the same process for Stockfish. Select the Engines/Install New engine from the top menu line, navigate to the folder where the Stockfish executables were saved, and select either the 32-bit or 64-bit version depending on what type of computer you have. Also select the UCI interface when given the choice between UCI and Winboard and specify that Stockfish should Start. You are now running Stockfish.

If you want to go back to Houdini select the Engines/Load Engine from the top menu line and you will get a list of available engines, with (hopefully!) both Houdini and Stockfish listed. Double-click on the Houdini entry (don’t use the Load button) and Houdini will now be the active engine.

I typically run only one engine at a time but with Arena you can run at least 3 engines simultaneously (it appears that you can run 8 engines simultaneously but I’m not sure, choices 5-8 are grayed out). You can, for example, set up Houdini as Engine 1 and Stockfish as Engine 2, and analyze a position with both engines simultaneously. This probably would only be effective if you have a fast computer with multiple cores; I run the analyses sequentially.

With your interest in computers, I thought you'd find it interesting (I'm sure you know this) that a lot of the early chess computer development occurred in Minnesota. I remember a buddy's dad of mine taking us to his Honeywell office in the late 70's to play one of their proprietary chess programs (the machine filled an entire room!). A couple of the first occurences of computers playing humans actually occurred in Minnesota (and they had some decent successes against some strong players). I played Belle to an interesting draw when that program was world champ I believe (I think it was probably rated 1800 or 1900 then). Anyway, it's been interesting to reminisce.

Let me know if you want me to look up some of our state associations old print publications. I'm pretty sure I can find some tournament summaries (and maybe games) from back then.

I haven't got into really using an engine. I do have Fritz 12, but have barely used it. I think you're encouragement may get me going with an engine.

I was fairly active in chess during high school mostly through the efforts of the Piatagorsky foundation but I pretty much gave up the game once I started college. I was one of the student workers at the 2nd Piatagorsky Cup tournament in Santa Monica 1966, where Fischer, Reshevsky, Petrosian, Spassky, Larsen, and several other top grandmasters participated, and that’s my fondest chess-related memory. I witnessed first hand Fischer’s remarkable comeback after having only 4 points after 10 rounds to finish with 10.5/18 and almost overhaul Spassky for first place. And I had a little “altercation” with Fischer in which I had the last word, possibly the last time that happened. But I’ll teasingly save that story for another time.

Alas, I was always a patzer, peaking at about 1800. I also played correspondence chess but wasn’t much better at it. Although I had great imagination, my problem (besides the lack of talent!) was inconsistency; I would occasionally beat masters and then lose to much lower rated players. I also lacked Fischer’s killer instinct; often when I got a won position I would relax (maybe subconsciously feeling sorry for my opponent), stop playing the best moves, and lose. Not conducive to improving your rating. I have no idea what my OTB playing strength would be now.

Yes, I am aware of the early chess program development in Minnesota and the influence that Honeywell and Cray Corporation had in advancing the development of chess software, particularly in Minnesota. I’ve had many a chuckle playing some of those early computer games, my favorite being the one played between COKO III and GENIE in 1971, reprinted many times, in which COKO III had queen, bishop, rook, and 5 pawns against GENIE’s king and 5 pawns. COKO III had a mate in one but evaluated the actual mate no higher than the threat of mate in one. So it vacillated moving its king back and forth, repeatedly threatening mate in one, while GENIE queened one of its pawns, captured white’s bishop, rook, and several pawns, exchanged queens, and was on the verge of queening a second pawn when COKO III’s developers resigned. I don’t think there was ever a COKO IV.

I do too, as long as those that have quit the game refrain from returning and haranguing us to vote draw!

<Maybe not perfect but I don’t know how to improve it.>

My original thought is the general voting base wouldn’t have a ‘draw-offer’ button at all. <OCF> responded he didn’t think it was feasible and I have to agree. The next best thing would be for a pool of experienced players to voice their opinion via joint message posted prior to a vote. It would read something like this: “A pool of 15 veteran players have voted 48.Ne6 (14-1 in favor of a draw)”. This would be useful information to help the “general” voters make their decision. Of course they could still not offer the draw.

<And imagine the uproar if your suggested senior team ignores a majority vote for a draw offer and the game then results in a loss for us.>

That’s the opposite of the issue I was raising and a very unlikely, if not impossible scenario to imagine. We’d have to believe that a minority of senior members think there’s a valid reason to keep playing, and then lose the game despite being advised from the “lesser players” that we should have offered the draw. <Imag>, <Kb2ct>, <Dpleo> and yourself for that matter would never let that happen. The situation I was addressing is where the game is very drawish but a draw offer is not being extended.

However, if your scenario were to actually occur, the uproar would be huge! We’d be the laughing-stocks of the internet chess community. We’d lose credibility and would probably have a hard time finding GM players to contest. (Curiously though, if that did occur, one could argue that GM’s would be lined up at the door licking their chops for a chance at us!)

On a final note, I’m reminded of an odd draw situation that really happened in GM-level competition. I forget their names, but it involved 2 women a few years back. Player A offered a draw and Player B declined. Player A then resigned…and she had a winning position starting with a simple 2-move sequence! Strange, huh?

The other requirement for the process is that it be as simple as possible. What could be simpler than direct voting and majority rule? True, it may not necessarily always result in the best moves (and it may result in ill-considered draw offers or lack of draw offers) but at least it’s something that everybody understands and accepts.

And, yes, I read <WinKing>’s and your response to <newton296>. I thought about replying to <newton296> but since the two of you had already replied, I didn’t. When I joined the game I was surprised at the level of what I consider childish behavior on the part of some of the posters and how rude they could often be. But I have a thick skin and unless the post is totally wrong or nasty (or both!) I just ignore them. And <newton296>, like all of us, is entitled to his opinion, even if he should perhaps have expressed it a little (a lot!) more constructively and less rudely.

I expressed my thoughts about what I considered the choices for team members such as <newton296> who felt that the game had gone too long even though it was “obviously” a draw in the post that you quoted from:

The World vs N Pogonina, 2010

I thought that since, like me, you have only recently become a premium member, I might show you another capability that you have as a premium member. Here’s how <kutztown46> showed me to include a link to a specific post rather than just reference a page number. It uses the fact that every post has a unique identifier (a primary key in database terminology) associated with it.

1. From the main menu bar, select Search Kibitzing. If it doesn’t show, customize your enhanced menu to indicate that it should be shown. You’ll use this feature a lot!

2. Enter the name of the user whose post you want to find. This will filter out all posts except those that contain the user name that you entered. I suspect that, like Google, you can enter additional words to narrow down the posts listed but I don’t know how to do that.

3. Search and find the post that you want to set the link to.

4. Select the post’s message tab in the left margin, right click, and select Copy Shortcut. This copies the unique post identifier to the clipboard.

5. Paste the link into your new post.

So, I agree with you, its not really feasible or necessary. Leave it as it is.

About links, I've used them; I love'm. I should've used it here. I'll make it a point to always use them. Thanks for the heads up on that.

BTW its more convenient to post responses at the other members forum (if they have one). It makes it easier to respond to correspondence since they are consolidated in one place. Just click the avatar, and UR there.

For practice and to shake off the rust I copied the link:

My interest is to determine which engine(s) are best for analysis and correspondence chess at long time controls, and I don’t know that the engines that rank the highest in engine-engine tournaments are necessarily the best engines to use for analysis or CC. Inspired by <johnlspouge:>, I ran some tests on chessgames.com’s puzzle on Sunday, Jan-30-11, the game I Rogers vs G Milos, 1992. for white’s 26th move.

click for larger view

I think (but that’s to be proven) that ranking engine performance in solving puzzles using Infinite Analysis mode is a more accurate method of determining the “best” engine for analysis and CC than using the results of engine-engine tournaments at much faster time controls. And how the heck did black get his LSB stuck at h7 behind his pawns?

What are the minimum requirements and considerations for ranking engine’s strength in analysis/CC? Here’s my criteria and I would love to get some feedback:

Best Engine: The engine that provides the correct move in the shortest possible time with a reasonable evaluation of the position. Of secondary interest is which engine most closely followed the actual game continuation, but this is more an evaluation of the player than the engine since the player may not have found the best continuation!

Of course, without providing the correct move to solve a puzzle nothing else is important. But since we typically want to run multiple analyses speed is also important, all other things being equal. And consistent reasonable evaluations of positions inspires confidence that other analyses will be correct more often than not.

I analyzed the I Rogers vs G Milos, 1992 position following black’s 25th move to see how well several engines (all but Rybka free, I’m not made of money) would do in coming up with white’s 26.Bxc6. The analyses were done using an Intel Q9400 4-core, 2.66 GHz 32-bit processor system with 4GB RAM and a 1024 KB hash table under Windows XP. All the engines but one (Protector 1.4) initially considered 26.Bh3 to be the best move.

Below are the results, with the engine’s ranking according to the latest IPON ((http://www.inwoba.de/ ) tournaments in parenthesis. I listed the performance rank not following the initial discovery of 26.Bxc6 (Protector 1.4 selected 26.Bxc6 as early as the first move at d=1!) but the first suggestion of 26.Bxc6 after the engine had settled on it as the best next move by white along with a positive evaluation for white (Protector 1.4 didn’t give 26.Bxc6 a positive eval until d=23)

One note regarding the IPON rankings: I used the highest ranking for each engine, and this would usually correspond to the 64-bit version of that engine, not the 32-bit version. Sorry that the “table” looks so ugly, but there aren’t many formatting options.

Rank Engine Eval Time (mins)
1 (2) Rybka_4 [+2.77] 0.454
2 (7) Critter_0.90 [+2.59] 0.556
3 (4) Stockfish_2.0.1 [+3.87] 0.784
4 (1) Houdini_1.5a [+4.62] 1.564
5 (45) Hannibal_1.0a [+2.33] 2.015
6 (17) Gull_1.1 [+0.33] 6.304
7 (62) Umko_1.1 [+2.62] 10.158
8 (N/A) Toga II_1.34 [+2.53] 10.832
9 (53) Toga II_1.4.5c (beta) [+2.82] 11.420
10 (28) Protector_1.4 [+3.84] 34.510
11 (11) Komodo_1.3 [+3.88] 49.264
12 (74) Crafty_23.4 [+3.90] 421.918

Summary and Observations:

a. Rybka 4 was the fastest in finding 26.Bxc6.

b. Gull 1.1 had a suspiciously low evaluation of white’s position ([+0.33]) compared to the other engines, but this evaluation didn’t rise substantially at greater depths. Gull 1.1 was also the engine that most closely followed the actual game, up until black’s move 32.

I'm really not sure if I should jump right into R or SF or H or FR or start with a more user-friendly CE and then progress from there...or just say what the heck, start trying any engine and see what happens. OK, thats it, no more questions on this. I appreciate your judgement. I think you handled your engine analysis very well.

I use the Arena GUI for no other reason that it’s free, plus I read some reviews and they recommended Arena because it had the most features but, as a result, it was the hardest to learn to use. I’ll say! It was quite an uphill learning curve for me, particularly since there’s no good documentation around that I could find. I learned by trial and error (mostly error) and I only know how to use a small portion of it’s capabilities. But since it’s the GUI that you interface with, that’s what you have to learn to use. Once you learn how to use a GUI, installing the various engines and switching between them is trivial, at least with Arena. In fact, when I asked the ChessBase people (who market Rybka) how to interface Rybka with Arena, they apparently had never tried it! But it was equally simple to interface Rybka with Arena as it was to interface Houdini, Stockfish, and all the others (although I think the Crafty developers didn’t implement their UCI protocol 100% accurately; there’s at least one command that works with all other engines that doesn’t work with Crafty).

I’ve downloaded 2 other GUIs, Tarrasch and ChessPad but I haven’t tried to do much with them. They’re simpler, but it depends on what you want to do with them.

<cro777> had told me that the reason that he suggested Toga to you is that it didn’t require too many computer resources since it used only one processor core, and that Stockfish was a big computer resource hog, using as many processor cores as there were available. As a result, I suspect that his computer’s performance was very sluggish when running other programs together with Stockfish. But all of the newer engines do that to get the most performance and, at least with Arena, it’s simple to change the priority of the engine so that it runs in the background and doesn’t interfere with other programs. The proof is that I ran much of my analysis on my wife’s computer while she was using it, and she never complained of sluggish performance. And if you know my wife and her expectations with regard to computer performance then you would recognize what an achievement that was!

But from what I’ve seen Toga doesn’t look like that great of a performer, as far as engine rankings in engine-engine tournaments are concerned. Houdini and Stockfish are typically among the top 5 ranked programs so I don’t think that you can go wrong with those. Once I finish with my new puzzle project or at least when I’ve analyzed more puzzles (I’ve only done 2 so far) then I may have more objective recommendations.

Well, it wasn’t too long ago that I didn’t know what UCI was either. And as far as money is concerned, all of the engines and GUIs that I use except for Rybka are free, so that shouldn’t be a concern. Of course, your time is also money so you don’t want to spend too much of it too freely. But if you’re spending your time doing something that you enjoy doing, then that’s a good thing.

I remember many years ago in the middle 80s working on a proposal for the US Post Office where one of the requirements was that we provide “an exquisitely user friendly interface”, whatever “exquisitely” means in this context. Well, the interface clearly had to be graphical (a relative novelty in those days) and when I say that the acronym for “Graphical User Friendly Interface” was “GUFI” I just couldn’t pass it up. So, I managed to convince the powers that be that our proposal should contain the phrase “We will provide a Graphical User Friendly Interface (GUFI). An example of a GUFI screen is shown in figure ..." followed by a screen capture of the prototype for our “GUFI”. Alas, we didn’t win the contract.