Arena Questions

Hey there! So I have a few questions about Arena, and I'd appreciate if a helpful person could answer!
Ok so, there's a few options on Engine Configuration, in this case, Stockfish 7, that I don't understand.

1. What is Contempt? It says maximum is 100, and minimum is -100.

2. What is MultiPV? Minimum is 1, maximum is 500

3. Skill Level, it's pretty self explanatory, but if anyone could elaborate, I'd appreciate that.

4. What is Move Overhead? It says minimum is 0, and maximum is 5,000

5. What is Slow Mover? It says minimum is 10, maximum is 1,000

6. What is nodestime? It says minimum is 0, maximum is 10,000

I can help with the first three.

1) Contempt is a measure of how much "contempt" the engine has for accepting a draw in an even position. A positive number means that Stockfish will tend to avoid accepting draws, while a negative number means the engine will tend to accept draws. The default is 0. If Stockfish accepts too many draws, you can try setting it at say, +20 or +25.

2) MultiPV is how many analysis lines will be displayed. Anything more than one will slow down the engine a bit.

3) Skill level is, of course, how strong the engine will play. 20 is full strength, and 0 is the weakest setting, equal to roughly 1100 elo or so.

4-6) No clue. I just leave them at the default settings.

I found a discussion thread for "slow mover" -

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?start=0&t=42308&topic_view=flat

I guess the thread is still twitching a little. ;-)

I'm not sure if I'm going to figure this one out or not. I'm not having the problems you're having, but then I'm using the Linux version of Arena.

A few questions, I guess:

What's your OS? (Win 10 or 11?)

What's your version of Arena?

What's the engine and its version number?

When the engine is running, is it running as "UCI2"? (at the top of the analysis window).

That's all the questions I can think of at the moment...

Hmm, Arasan should work okay. (I tried it in my Linux Arena setup.) I don't have Arena set up in Win 10, only Win 7. Even if I don't have any problems in Win 7, there might be permissions differences between 7 and 10. Maybe I could install Arena in my Win 10 PC, but it probably won't happen tonight.

Are you running Arena in an administrative account, or a regular user account?

Oh, also, are you running the portable Arena, or the installable Arena?

Sorry for the delay - The battery in my uninterruptible power supply for my Windows machine went bad, and I had to replace it.

OK, this is interesting...

I installed Arena 3.5.1 into Win 10 as a regular user, then I installed Arasan 23.5. And, I got the same problem that you got. As far as I can tell, it appears to be a bug that you'll just have to live with. However, I don't think it's as bad as you think it is.

Once you've loaded Arasan and set the level to 1000 elo, I think it will stay that way until you change its elo level. I know that if you've closed and restarted Arena and you click on the menu item "Levels --> Limit Playing Strength to ELO...", it will show as 0 ELO and (Engine not loaded), but nothing has actually changed. Despite what Arena is telling you, the engine is actually still loaded and still set to 1000 elo internally. If instead, you just click on "Cancel" (or not even bring up that menu item in the first place), you can just start another game, and the engine will start playing at 1000 elo.

I will admit, it's a weird bug.

Oh, sorry, I forgot about your time control question. I'll have to take a look at that one.

Two clues.

1) As long as I didn't actually click on "OK", but instead clicked on "Cancel", Arasan would still show up in the Analysis Window header as 1000 elo. (Weirdly enough, if you do click on OK, then the "0" that was in the ELO box will also be displayed in the Analysis Window header, although it has nothing to do with the level it's actually playing at.)

2) Also, I just looked at the number of nodes that Arasan was looking at per second, and if that number was typically under 20 nodes/sec, then I knew it was still playing at 1000 elo. (The 3rd column in the analysis window is total nodes for that move, and the 4th column is nodes/sec.)

Regarding your time control question, I can't replicate your problem. It will stay on the same time control until I actually change it. So, I have no idea why it's giving you that problem.

You might not have noticed, but I made a minor edit to the text in the first clue.

I hope I was able to help a little.

Nope, I can't think of a better way than what you've found. :-)

Arena stores its settings in the ArenaGUI.cfg file every time the program closes. Whatever settings you changed in the GUI (apart from engine-specific settings) gets saved in that file. When you open Arena, it loads the settings but it doesn't load the default engine. You can verify this with task manager. That's why you keep seeing '0' as the value in the Limit ELO box. An engine will only be loaded if you start playing a game, or if you specifically load an engine. For your case I would do the following:

1. Load the Arasan engine

Engines>Load Engine...

2. Set the time control to be used by the engine

Levels>Adjust (or just Ctrl-L)

Choose "Time per move," set it to 6 seconds, then click Ok.

3. Limit the engine strength to 1000

4. Close Arena and check the ArenaGUI.cfg file. It's just a simple text file so you can open it with any text editor. Search for these settings to verify (or change) the values.

AktiveEngines1=Arasan 23.4 x64

_SekundenSpinEdit=6

LimitEloSpinEdit=1000

5. Open Arena again and play a game. Don't use "New Rated Game". If you do, you'll be asked again for a time control which will be applied to both Arasan and you. Just use "New Game" or CTRL-N. Make a move if you want to play white. If otherwise, use CTRL-Z (Game>Move Now!) to make Arasan move first. Use F12 to flip the board.

Assuming you don't make changes to the settings, Arena will use the same engine, time control, and elo level every time you start playing a game. Of course, not all engines are capable of time per move and elo-limit features, so you'll have to make sure that the engine you choose accepts those commands.

Yeah, I know about the GUI config file, but I typically don't pay much attention to it. Your explanation makes perfect sense. Thanks for the explanation.

(At one time in the past, I actually backed up the Win 7 GUI and engine config files because of occasional config file corruption. I haven't had any corruption issues yet in Linux, knock on wood.)

I guess I don't quite understand. Is this in "Edit" mode? If so, are you using the backward and forward arrow buttons?

Ha ha, in all my years of playing in Arena, I've never tried taking back moves in the middle of a game.

I tried it in my Arena for Linux, and it let me take back the move after mate. However, maybe it was a bug in the Windows version that got fixed in the Linux version? My Windows machine isn't running right now, so I can't test it in Windows right now. Maybe someone else could check it? (I might get around to it tomorrow.)

Well, I bit the bullet and hooked up my Win 10 machine, and Arena 3.5.1 in Win 10 did let me take back moves after mate. So, no idea why you're having problems.

It *was* sort of fun doing the Bongcloud as soon as possible to steer my game into an early mate. :-)

If Arena doesn't stop glitching, you might just try reinstalling it.

Well, I guess I did a variant of the Bongcloud - I just ran the king into the middle of the board ASAP, lol.

If you choose "New Variation", it will keep the original move as the main line of the game, but it will add the new move as a variation to the game. Try it, and you'll understand.

1st question - It's effectively the same thing. The engine can only give an evaluation of its own moves. However, if the engine is ahead by 3 pawns, then you're behind by 3 pawns.

2nd question - I think the answer is that in the beginning, when all of the moves are in black, the game is still in the "opening book" phase where both sides are making book moves. So, the engine is only choosing moves from the opening book and doesn't have to make any calculations yet. When the game leaves the opening book, then the engine will start making evaluations.