Understanding Jose chess analysis

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Avatar of SuperPowerMan

Hi, I'm not sure how to read the chess analysis in Jose.  It guess that the better moves are the + rated moves, but it has several times recommended illegal moves and really bad moves as highly rated.  And the moves really were bad, not just sacrifices, and many times illegal.  Also the analysis only rates the next move, there is no rating for the move I made or a score of who is better, white or black.  I know they might be noobie questions, but any help is appreciated.

 

Thanks

Avatar of Martin_Stahl

It looks like Jose comes with the Crafty chess engine. Most engines, Crafty included, evaluate a postion from the outlook of White. A + evaluation means that White is ahead that many centi-pawns (a centi-pawn is 1/100th the value of a pawn). It doesn't rate moves, just the postion after the last move. If you see and evaluation change after a move, that will tell if the move was good or bad (if the move was White's and the evaluation decreased it wasn't the best; if the move was Black's and the evaluation increased  it wasn't the best)

I have never used Jose but assuming you didn't configure something incorrectly, I don't see the engine suggesting clearly illegal moves. Also, while Crafty isn't the best engine, I don't see it recommending really bad moves in most situations.

Avatar of TomBarrister

Jose hasn't been updated in a long time.

Get SCID-vs-PC from Sourceforge and use Houdini or Stockfish, and you won't have a problem.