Beginner's Chess Engine
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play on deep shredder on easy
Thanks for the advice stain, unfortunately it looks like the HS-Masterbook isn't available for Arena (which I use), but I've downloaded the normal HS Book, and try that.
May 22, 2008
0
#23
I'm a beginner, and I've found two programs to be very, very helpful.
First, the Chessmaster engine is helpful and fun, especially because of its various "personalities" that do a pretty good job of simulating the human factor in chess playing. By "human factor," I mean that CM tries to emulate a variety of playing styles (defensive, aggressive, avoids this-or-that, etc.) just as you would find in a human player.
Secondly, I have Shredder which I prefer to use to explore different lines. Granted, at full speed, Shredder would destroy me; however, you can adjust the difficulty level to a given ELO rating suited to your level.
Well I've only just bought Chessmaster, so I should probably hold off on buying anything else chess-y for a while. I have an income of zilch/zero/nada/nothing
use an engine where you can limit the ply depth - initially to 2-play, then as she improves - to 4 ply - a majority engines have it. [that way it wont make mistakes and then play well - it will be consistently as mediocre as you want it to be.] Crafty is one of the most flexible in this regard --- but turn extensions off [put extensions 0 0 or something in .craftyrc]
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Sep 21, 2009
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#27
Definitly Rybka/Aquarium!
Accept from beeing the strongest engine an the GUI with the most functions these two programms can be customized perfectly for players of all strenghts. A handycap for the engine can be done in two different ways, either by material or by skill.
When You select hadycap by material, there are 39 different starting positions tho choose from. They are divided into eight levels from "very easy" to "top grandmaster"
When You choose to handycap by skill there are three options. You can play the very nice Delfin engine and select the ELO from 700 to 1900, or you play the rybka engine on a level from 1200 to 2400 or you can choose the multivaroitaion mode where the program plays weaker lines.
In addition you can select handycap opening books so that you oponent has even a very limited opening repertoire.
Sep 21, 2009
0
#28
FOR sure Chessmaster. I've seen it for 5-10 bucks at almost all software stores. Here's a product review:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/786899/chessmaster_10th_edition_product_review.html?cat=19
So i downloaded houdini 1.5a. I want to play on this.
I being a noob. Please guide me.
When i start the exe file. Nothing starts. A 'Dos' sort of window starts. How to do this? I wanna play with this engine.
Your help will be greatly appreciated.
Hi ab_ak92,
It sounds to me like you are running the engine standalone... which is not how the vast majority of engines are designed to be used.
Engines are usually a text-based app that takes in and spits out messages in an encoded format - usually WinBoard (also known as Xboard and CECP), or UCI. This means that they cannot be run on their own. You need a GUI (graphical user interface) in order to connect to the engine so you can play it with a proper looking board.
There are a number of choices of GUIs, the best ones for Windows are Arena, Scid, and Aquarium. Aquarium and Scid also have database and other features, so can be quite complex for a "noob". Also Aquarium is good, but costs money (which I don't like being parted with!!!!).
I think your best choice of GUI is Arena. It's recently come out as a new 3.0 version. It looks nice, is powerful and is (best of all) free. Check out: http://www.playwitharena.com/
Ruffian 1.1 seems good for beginners...
If you want to play engines the right choice is the very nice and completely free software Lucas Chess, downloadable here: http://lucaschess.host22.com/
It has several very nice training features (tactics training, opening training, guess the best move, etc.), and more than one way to play games against the included compilation of engines arranged by increasing difficulty.
Beside this (and other things I didn't use yet) it allows to see your pgn files and have Stockfish, Critter or other strong engines (included or added by you) do an analysis of them, when for each move the program shows a list of the possible continuations and you can see how good (high on the list) or bad (lower on the list) your move was according to the engine.
But it's not a program which can do database work, so it's not comparable with Chessbase, Chessassistant, Scid, etc.: it's most of all a training tool.
(I'm not connected in any way with this program's author, and this is not spam: it is free)
