Hi, i was wondering how to interprete the pluses and the negatives on a chess engine. my gui is arena if anyone can help.

Thank You,KFC

Usually if it's a plus it means white is winning and if it's a minus black is winning.  Each point represents the strength of one pawn (I believe).  The larger the value, the greater one person is winning. 

+-(++-) strong white advantage

+=(+/=) white advantage

= equal

-= black advantage

-+(--+) strong black advantage

As far as stuff like +2.17, that means white is winning by 2.17 pawns according to the engine.

Apparently Fritz 11 also uses =/+ and such, meaning minor advantage white/black.

Well, I've got a late version of Arena, and it switches the perspective of the evaluation with each half move... it'll be let's say for example:  -1.50 with white to move, and then after whites move it immediately become +1.50 for black, and let's say Black wins some material -- a N, now the new evaluatin is -4.50 on white's move, immediately changing to +4.50 on black's move. So the + and - don't relate to black and white, they relate to the current player with the move, switching every ply. It was driving me batsh*t. No other GUI I've found does it this way. I completely stopped using arena because of this (and because the program is unstable). 

There has to be a configuration setting on Arean somewhere that will change this evaluation stuff to the normal way where + means in favor of White - in favor of black... but I've looked hard for how to change the configuration and haven't mangaged to find it. I didn't try going to the arena forums though. 

Anybody know the solution?

Engines >> Manage >> Details >> Special

There is a box to check: "Values absolute (always from white's side)"

Mine is gray, however, so I'm not certain what I must do to be able to check this box. Perhaps it depends on which engine.

I haven't had problems with program instability, except a bit with the beta 1.99. 1.2 was stable, and ran hundreds of hours on my machine. Sometimes for 24 hours or longer. I'm now using version 2.0, but not using it much. I don't seem as interested in the engine tournaments that I had been running.

Thanks a lot~  yes the gray out is peculiar, grayed out on mine too, for all engines except Ruffian. Odd. I installed some new engines (toga, crafy) and their Values absolute box is grayed out too... I think possibly the check box for Ruffian works globablly.  Not sure.

wow thnks for the tips it worked on my arena