How to navigate Arena

Basically, How do I navigate the arena GUI?

What do you want to do?

Heres a link.

specifically, how do i organize engine tournements/matchs.

I figured out how to load a new engine already.

Click on ENGINES/TOURNAMENTS/

A window will pop up

Click NEW, it will prompt you for a name for the tournament.

Add all the engines you wnt to participte to the left hand window.

Select your time control. (LEVEL)

Select number of rounds, for some strange reason mine defaults to 10, change it to 2 for a RR where each engine plays both Black and White .

Clck Start, and off you go...

Thanks. I tried that and the computer never moved. It just kept thinking forever. i'll try agian; maybe i missed something.

Geez, I dont know I never play against engines.

what is carousel and gautlet?

what is ponder

OK, I think the problem is you engines are not using the opening book.

Click Engines, and on the details tab tick the box for use Arena Mainbook for each of the engines.

Thanks. I don't know why, but when I tried it again, it worked. thanks. Do you know what ponder and gauntelet and carousel are?

Gauntlet: The top engine plays against all other enges only. the lower dont play against each other.

Carousel is just a way of determining the draw.

I think ponder allows the engine to think during the opponent move. I'm not sure if this is available in engine vs engine, I think the the active engine gets all the resources.

Thanks. I'm going to organize another engine tournement.

do you know of a free version of fritz I could download? maybe an old one that has run out of copyright time?

I think Fritz 5.something is now free.

But I would rather use SCID, I think it has more bells and whistles.

Whats SCID?

SCID is a free interface. (a bit like Arena)

SCID (For me) is better for database functions, arena is better for playing.

Ypu can get it here:

http://www.chess.com/download/view/scid-422

Thanks, I just want to play engines against eachother. I have Deep Rybka 4 for other things.

As for ponder, that is what I guessed too, I just wanted some collaboration there.

I think Arena is best for that.

But I am a big SCID fan..... :)

best for playing engines against eachother?

Rybka works great if you have it, but i haven't figured out how to load a new engine to rybka.