HOW TO START                  Using your PC for Chess Improvement

How to start? Well, just follow the STEPS below. You do not need to buy or pay for any software. We discuss here only about software provided free of charge. The learning of the procedures described in all steps below may take several weeks. So do not rush to learn everything in one day!

If you have a certain knowledge of PC Chess, just skip the steps below, as you think appropriate or go directly down to STEP 8 here. To see the second page HOW TO II, click HERE.

STEP 1

What is needed is that you do not get overwhelmed with so many new things, cumbersome settings of the chess software and do a lot of PC work before starting to play a game.

Therefore, I suggest you to download first a simple chess game that is offered free of charge on the web, with just the minimum of settings, without long (and terrible) Help Files where you can start acquaintance immediately playing with your PC. These chess programs control the legality of moves, so if you make a mistake they correct you accordingly. So you learn better the rules! in case you are uncertain about. 

If you have a poor knowledge of the rules click http://www.fide.com/ to get the official ones (click: Info>Fide Handbook>EI The Laws of Chess. The rules are international. FIDE: Founded in Paris on 20 July 1924, the World Chess Federation (Federation Internationale des Echecs, known as FIDE from its French acronym) is recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the supreme body, responsible for the organization of chess and its championships at global and continental levels. Following its recognition as an International Organization in 1989, FIDE was recognized by the IOC in June 1999 as an International Sports Federation.

So, I suggest you to download the following three- dimensional FreeChess Game (it is said a 3D Board). It includes also.. music! The 3D Chess is found at http://www.freechess.net/. Start from the level of Very Easy and go up the levels to Very Hard (if you wish) as soon as you beat each 'engine' strength level. 

Play at least 10 games with it and then come back here. Remember in half of the games you should play the Black pieces. Don't forget to press the Esc key of your Keyboard to exit this game. 

For this software: you need however to have installed in your system DirectX software at least Version 8.1 If you do not have it you can download (the new version) from Microsoft. To see if you have the DirectX on your PC do the following: Search in Find: Folder or Files: dxdiag.exe (Microsoft DirectX Diagnostic Tool). If you find it, open it and it will tell you what version you have. Normally it is found in your hard disk at C:\Windows\System or System32 (Win XP). Use also Windows Explorer to find it.

If you cannot install this 3D game (*) it is a pity, move then to STEP 2 and try CHESS-IT 3.0, a rather easy two-dimensional (2D) Chess Board.

You will notice that in this as in all PC chess games, you can stop the game, save it in your files and play it later from the point you stopped. When you make a mistake you can move back your piece and play differently.

If in these chess games you find any unknown words, click http://www.logicalchess.com/ to see a Chess Glossary.

STEP 2

If you managed to open and play with FreeChess, you are now familiar in moving pieces and play on a chessboard against your PC. 

At this point we have to move to a two-dimensional (called 2D) chessboard, as it is more practical to study and analyse your moves. It is worth to repeat: Analyse means that the chess engine of the chess program can tell you which is the best move for white or black in a given position. It can correct your mistake and tell you what can be your best move or best variation (said also best line). Some chess engines can be used to solve some problems (mate in 2, 3, 4 moves, etc.). On these electronic chessboards you can import (load) chess games of famous Grandmasters and see how they played! e.g. why Kasparov did a move, etc. You can also stop the game and try your best move in place of the Grandmaster!

Let's start with something easy to play with. Download the free chess program Chess-It 3.0, downloadable from http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Grid/5841/ or elsewhere using a search engine with key words "chess-it", by "Yoto Yotov", version 3.0 (2003). 

In the Menu>Settings of the program you can reduce the "think time" to be able to play and win it! Familiarise a little with this software for some days playing white and black against the PC, before we pass in the next steps to more complicated chess playing software. Chess-It has also voices announcing the moves in English language. It has also voice announcing the moves. So you exercise to learn better the board, where about was f6 or b4, etc. In the mean time you have to become familiar with chess notation and the PGN (portable game notation) describing a chess game, providing all the moves and other useful data. There is also a possibility to store a position with a notation called FEN or with another one (including a next move) called EPD. More information about PGN and FEN is given in the DOCS page of this site. Remember to keep saved in safe place all Zip downloaded chess game files. I believe you have already a Zip Unzip Utility (otherwise search Internet sites e.g.  www.nonags.com to download a free one). 

Do exercise with this "Chess-It" software for let' say several days. Try all menu options (are not so many) to see what each one is doing. Some Help is given at the bottom of the chess window when you place the mouse to a button or on the roll down menu options. When you play try back moves when you make a mistake.  

If you feel you need some Chess free Tutorials there are many given free over the Internet. Open http://www.google.com/ search engine and type "chess lessons". Exclude commercial sites. For free Tutorials visit CHESSVILLE at http://www.chessville.com/ {checking Basic Instruction, Tactical Training and Tactics} and About at http://chess.about.com/ {checking Beginners and Instruction}.

STEP 3

Let's take now a break and see some chess Web pages. Start with http://www.chessville.com/ Look also its Site Map and Links where an extensive list is given. There is also a free weekly Newsletter to subscribe, as well as from http://www.chesscafe.com/ , where there is in this an Electronic Library where you can download a chesscafe free reader to see (only) the chesscafe games collection for free.

As next, and if you have time you can see the sites:

http://www.chessbase.com/ (skip commercial pages this moment) http://www.ex.ac.uk/~dregis/DR/ECC/ecc.html (University of Exeter, UK), and the Database http://www.chessgames.com/index.html where you can retrieve a lot of games. To find more games to download use the search engine and type "chess download pgn games". A lot shall come out. At this stage download only pgn files (pgn extension e.g. karpov.pgn) otherwise you may face problems with other file extensions that maybe refer to commercial chess software. 

Chess software replays automatically the game or games of the pgn file. If you open the pgn file with the Editor you will see its notation. For Example:

[Event "Princeton USA"]
[Date "1933-??-??"]
[Einstein vs. Oppenheimer"]

1 .e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 b5 5.Bb3 Nf6 6.O-O Nxe4 7.Re1 d5 8.a4 b4 9.d3 Nc5 10.Nxe5 Ne7 11.Qf3 f6 12.Qh5+ g6 13.Nxg6 hxg6 14. Qxh8 Nxb3 15.cxb3 Qd6 16.Bh6 Kd7 17.Bxf8 Bb7 18.Qg7 Re8 19.Nd2 c5 20.Rad1 a5 21.Nc4 dxc4 22.dxc4 Qxd1 23.Rxd1+ Kc8 24.Bxe7 Kb8 1-0 {Einstein won}

More about PGN is mentioned below in STEP 5

Regarding Chess Puzzles look at Chesville.com pages to find various sources. It includes The Times, UK and the site of Mr W. Harvey, who can send you weekly puzzles by e-mail. There are many other  good chess sites, but better to avoid bringing up much material here and at this stage.

Now a short note on Chess History: (by Y. Yotov)

The first documented evidence of chess is from around 550-600 A. D. in India and Persia. The chess probably came from chaturanga, a game that had been around in India since 450 A.D. From India, the game spread to China and Korea. The word "Chess" comes from the Persian word "Shah", or "King". "Checkmate" comes from "Shah Mat", meaning "The King is dead."
In the 1400s, the first chess rules appeared: the Queen became powerful, the castling was accepted and the pawn promotion was now one of the objects of chess. In the 18th and 19th century, Central Europe and Germany were the world chess centre with some famous players such as Lasker and Tarrasch. In the 1930s Capablanca and Alekhine became chess champions. Then followed Spassky, Fischer and finally, Karpov and Kasparov.

Searching specific games as well as based on position, etc. you can visit CHESSLAB now or after STEP 5 at   http://www.chesslab.com/PositionSearch.html.

STEP 4

Now you are somehow familiar with above chess software. Now, if you feel that several issues are not clear I want you to download and try to read some illustrative (very good) ... Help Files from a chess software that unfortunately is free to use for 30 days only.  This is the Elite at http://www.arkangles.com/kchess/elite.html .You must chose to have during these 30 days trial period some hours free to work with it. I hope the Elite people could give this software free for additional periods after specific request. What they give free instead are their excellent Help Files, which are written in a very clear way. Save them separately for any future reference you might need later on.

OPTIONAL: At the same time you may download the free software "Der Bringer" or "Bringer" from http://www.reubold.onlinehome.de/  This software has a little or no help but many commands are the same and known to you from the previous mentioned chess software programs. An extra Help is given at http://chess.kearman.com/bringer/bringer-index.html Der Bringer has a unique feature under Menu>Options>Settings>Engine, there is a window: Reduce Strength, Elo: where you can set the ELO strength at wish** (the PC becomes from weak to strong player) and you can exercise and win it. CAUTION: Do not change the standard settings of Bringer if you do not know exactly what you do! Otherwise you have to re-open its Zip downloaded file.

(**)What is ELO?  ELO is an international system for ranking chess players, presented by Arpad Elo. Beginners start from 1000 ELO, Weak club player is at 1250..1400 ELO, Average club player is at 1400..1600 ELO. Strong club player is at 1600..1750. International Grandmasters are typically in the range 2500 to 2700, world champions often over 2700. This ELO is the European ELO, the American USCF ELO is usually increased by 150 points. Thus, a 1800 EU player corresponds to a 1950 USCF player.

Now, for fun download http://www.ludochess.com/ (Telechargement) a mini free chess "Jester" (in Java) but strong! It is only ... Kb. Play with it. Being small without installation requirements you can have it with you in a floppy disk. 

(* Note that the " Bringer" ELO is not corresponding to any real ELO. It is only used as a scale to reduce/increase the strength of the Bringer engine at wish).

STEP 5

At this stage a short review of some other chess software can be useful, so you can feel more comfortable in general if you have familiarized with different chess programs. 

Start now with RD Chess (year 2002) and LC Chess (year 1995) free programs. We shall stay here for a while and at the next Step we shall see some Utilities for chess software and thereafter we shall go to Arena free program and the use of various free chess engines with Arena. Also the free Winboard software shall be mentioned but in this program the installation of various free engines and commands require some experience. 

Generally, for specific questions about options of these chess programs you may contact the Authors directly. See Help>About at these programs.

Download RD Chess (by Posch Rudolf ) from http://groups.msn.com/RudolfPosch  and install it in your PC with the usual procedures. There is a limited Help file, but from Authors above web page you can find copy to your RD chess Folder a Manual (3 parts) that explains a bit more about this program. With your experience up to now you may well use this software. Use also right mouse clicks on the board, etc. The RD Chess Engine is good (around 2,000-2,200 Elo) but not among the few top in strength. Try to familiarise with this software as much as you can. Go through all options of the Menu. Maybe some functions will be not much clear to you in first instance, but to know more about a particular function write to the Author at rudolf_posch@hotmail.com .

At this point you must learn what the PGN file is and how to deal with it.

What is PGN?

PGN is an internationally accepted text format. On the Internet you will find many games in PGN format. Even if these files contain a lot of additional text – tournament reports, tables, general messages – they can still be accessed directly, without any prior conversion. Just make sure the file has the ending “PGN”. The program will ignore all the text in between the games.

PGN (Portable Game Notation) is a comprehensive and internationally accepted format which can be read and edited with a simple (ASCII) Editor/Editpad. This standard file format is used for exchanging chess games files. A file may contain more than one game, e.g. Kasparov.pgn may contain all games of Kasparov.

PGN games start with the game data. The following seven fields are commonly used, although some times less fields are used:

[Event "?"]

[Site "?"]

[Date "????.??.??"]

[Round "?"]

[White "?"]

[Black "?"]

[Result "*"]    Four values are allowed: (1-0, 1/2-1/2, 0-1 or * )

In PGN games additional data fields are possible. For example, if a game starts from a set position (e.g. a puzzle) the following fields are additionally required:

[SetUp "1"]

[FEN "5kr1/R6p/2p2bp1/1p2n3/3N3q/2P5/3Q2PP/5RK1 w - -"]    see note(*)

The game data is terminated with a blank line and moves of the game follow in short algebraic notation followed by the result (1-0, 1/2, 0-1 or *). Without one of these results at the end the game is unreadable by usual chess software.

PGN games can include comments and variations, etc. provided they are all included (before or after each move) in braces {   }. A pgn of one game if opened with the editor may look like:

[White ‘Deep Blue’]

[Black ‘Kasparov, Garry’]

[Result ‘1-0’]

1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Ng5 Ngf6

6.Bd3 e6 7.N1f3 h6 8.Nxe6 Qe7 9.O-O fxe6 10.Bg6+

Kd8 11.Bf4 b5 12.a4 Bb7 13.Re1 Nd5 14.Bg3 Kc8

15.axb5 cxb5 16.Qd3 Bc6 17.Bf5 exf5 18.Rxe7 Bxe7

19.c4 1-0

It is important to note that the PGN standard requires that Castling is written with Os and and not zeros as some game Authors write. That is O-O (King’s side) and O-O-O (Queen’s side) and NOT 0-0 or 0-0-0.

(*) This FEN position is the puzzle of La Bourdonais, 1833, White to play, mate in 4

For the solution move some steps forward to STEP 8, PART II

STEP 6

After you seen RD Chess software and have tried it for some time, take a look now to LC Chess software. You can download it from http://www.lokasoft.nl/uk/downloads.htm or from Winsite at http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?4000000037226 where Winsite download website says:

LC HESS plays a good game of Chess, has many levels of play and is suitable for both beginning as well as

advanced players. Can read and write PGN files. Automatic game analysis. Shows opening name. 

Comprehensive opening book included. Also has a game score histogram. Very compact program, to be saved 

in a single floppy disk. 

The LC Chess program is old; however its engine should be at least 2200 ELO. With this program you can learn [as Winsite says] to handle PGN as database, make Automatic Game Analysis, etc. Once you have installed LC Chess, read carefully the Help file.

To help you start the program, we can tell you the following a) Click Files > Open Database and select at list of files type: Portable Game Notation (PGN). Select your pgn file e.g. Kasparov.pgn or Lasker.pgn, etc. that you can have in your folder (downloaded from a variety of web sites). Click OK and return to the program. Now click Files > 'Games…' (on top). You will see all the games of the pgn file listed in a window (NOTE: if the scrollbars in this games dialog are not visible, click one game and use the PageUP and PageDN keys to scroll through the games).

You have just created a small pgn DATABASE! Click a game of your interest and press OK. Go to Menu>Windows and select Move List. You can play the game from there forward and backward. You can see also its opening title (ECO). Now go to Menu >Game> Analyze Game. Set the time per move (5-20 sec for rapid results – unless you want to analyse a game overnight), Number of moves: include all moves of the game e.g. up to 100, and save search results in the proposed file. You can perform a similar action to analyse a position. These two options are very important in pc-chess software as it gives you the mistakes made in agame and the best move in a given position correspondingly. The effort of programmers nowadays is to build stronger chess engines for a more fast and accurate analysis of this kind.

Now, you should exhaust all menus and options of this LC Chess software. You will get a good experience that you can use in more modern chess programs. You can select Game>new game and play against the computer. It makes some nice moves!

STEP 7

It is worth at this point to mention at least one of the Utilities that deal with the setup of a position of pieces on the chessboard to create a diagram and its corresponding FEN (Forsyth-Edwards Notation). About FEN you can read at CHESSDOCS web page in this site. The experience gained here with this Editor will be very useful in the next STEPS when we deal with Chess Playing Software. One of these utilities is the free FULLCHESS FEN EDITOR to be downloaded from  http://www.fullchess.de/ .

Install the program in a special Folder of Utilities CHESS-UTIL that you can call  D:\CHESS\CHESS-UTIL\CHESS-FenEditor. Open it and set as first Options>English if you so prefer and Help>Hints (help from mouse cursor). Then Options>paths and click Graphics and HTML to set paths in the above folder. Do your Options>Color selection.

1) Make a diagram from FEN: If you have a FEN string from some place, or our FEN string from the La Bourdonais puzzle from STEP 5 above, select it and copy it to the clipboard. Then, in the Fen Editor click Edit>Paste. You will see the board set up and its FEN string in a display at the bottom of the window.
NOTE: FEN is a string (to select copy paste this only as it appears in red between the “…..” , if you find it inside a PGN notation as e.g. [FEN "5kr1/R6p/2p2bp1/1p2n3/3N3q/2P5/3Q2PP/5RK1 w - -"]. Otherwise it is not recognisable as FEN.  Check that in the Current Move (Right side of the window) active color to play W/B is set for the right colour; a white little circle appears right bottom of the diagram to show who to move. Type under HTML-HEADERS the title you want there to appear. Now, press “WEB Preview” and you will see the diagram with circles who to play and the FEN string below (very useful to copy paste the diagram in a Chess Playing Program, for best next move analysis, etc.) .

Save this diagram file as picture bmp or as PNG for further processing (make it smaller, etc,). PNG is Portable Network Graphic (Attention: do not mix it with PGN the Portable Game Notation!!). The PNG image is recommended, because of the small size (up to 8-10 kb).

1) Make a diagram setting up a position: The steps are now easy. Right top under Complete Setup, select Normal or Empty, whatever suits you best. Leave unchecked Fischer Random and check Castling if there is such case. Select the number of the move (if the position comes from a specific game), the colour to play and then set the pieces. Clicking on the Piece Box between the pieces the colour to select changes from White to Black and vice versa. Now you know enough to make diagrams or read a FEN string.

Another nice FEN editor is the free CHESSDIAG program to download from: http://www.marochess.de/chess/tools/chessdiag/ This program has a good Help file so with your above experience you can easily read it. Note that here to setup a position on the chessboard  you have to use the right and left mouse clicking (see the Help file). Try CHESSDIAG to see how it works.

This diagram was created with CHESSDIAG. Normally you get a picture in PNG and then with insert>picture>from file, you get it on your htm page of your Web Editor or Word Document. You have to select it and size it from its corner to make it smaller if you like.

Exercise: Send me a chess position, a puzzle whatever, created with both the
                 FEN EDITOR and the CHESSDIAG.

Rest a little now, as the following STEPS require particular effort and attention.

ATTENTION: In the next Steps we shall examine Chess Software that it does not play chess, as the chess programs we have already seen, but are programs merely working as Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) and where one (or two) free chess engines have to be loaded to implement game moves. These two chess engines can be selected from a list of more than 200 free engines nowadays. This GUI has the advantage that you can load any type of free chess engine available as well as stronger versions of engines as soon as they become available. There are two principal free GUIs:   The WINBOARD and ARENA. We shall look first ARENA because is fairly easy to install and change engines in it during a game analysis. To install engines in WINBOARD requires some perhaps complicated procedures, but once learned they are the same for all compatible chess engines. In the next page HOW TO 2 and under a desciption of Winboard you can find a file with all details step-by-step on how to install engines in Winboard.

STEP 8

A chess playing software to consider now with many options and features is ARENA GUI (Graphical User Interface). Arena is among those recently upgraded programs (2003), has a comprehensive Web Page, a Forum  for ARENA users and generally is fully supported while at the same time is completely free to use without any limitations of features. In ARENA web page there is also a page "F.A.Q. by Aaron Tay", regularly updated. Do not miss it. Go to see ARENA and download it from:  http://www.playwitharena.com/ .  

It is called GUI because it does not have a chess engine of its own but you can load in it easily and immediately any kind of free Chess Engine (more than 200 free engines in total). Chess engine is a chess playing software, capable also to show its analysed moves. Briefly, Chess engines work in the following way:

All chess programs use the so called tree search to find the best move. It  executes e.g. at first a white move, then a black move etc. As this can’t go on for ever, the search will be terminated by the User at a certain ply (depth) and the resulting position is evaluated. The values of the end positions are compared and the best move is selected.

Arena is offered in various languages, provides voice announcements of moves and has a good Help File, so you can find all options there. If you face any kind of problem with ARENA, this is one of the few programs that you can post your question in the Antenna Forum (also as a guest) and you get a reply. Note that some good commercial Chess programs have no Forum. Arena and FCP Forum are found at: http://www.f22.parsimony.net/forum41668/ For Windows XP: Some users had trouble running Arena on Windows XP. Improve compatibility: 1.) Rightclick on the Arena icon and select "Create Shortcut". 2.) Rightclick on the shortcut and select properties. 3). Select compatibility, choose in compatibility mode Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 5) and save.

From 6 Oct. 2003 Arena presented a new version: Arena 095 to download. Added Menu options, new Tournament features and new possibilities with right mouse click on the Board (as e.g. Toolbar visible and mouse movement of the arrows-navigation bar). Also, it loads now non standard PGN notation (AN or SAN) games. Chech it out.

Now we must agree that: From now on and for any chess program discussed here you must be patient and read the HELP FILES! You shall have to do exactly the same work even if you buy chess expensive commercial software. Nothing comes automatically. So, let’s see the following Arena User' s phases: Download and put Arena in a separate Folder. Open the program and get some acquaintance with it.Go to Menu > Help and check Tooltip (mouse cursor help). Now at the menu Options click Appearance. This has various tabs, so move first to Installation tab and save the current default settings pressing “Save Appearance”. This means that when you have made several changes that later you do not want, you can come back here and load the default appearance. Otherwise you have to unzip the downloaded program again. Save any new appearance you create. Make the various settings on all tabs the best way it fits to you. If you do not know what a setting does, do not change it for the time being. Look also the Help file. Regarding Move Announcement you have to download a separate file from Arena Home Page. Note also that several windows or commands appear using Right Mouse on several parts on the Main Window. Regarding the solution of the previous puzzle of La Bourdonais, 1833, White to play, mate in 4, please try the steps mentioned below. You will be surprised to see how nicely the chess engine solves the problem.

STEP 9

When you are using Arena with e.g. loaded two different engines, you must pay attention because there is actually an interaction of three different software programs of different producers. So it is advisable to avoid clicking commands and buttons of the program at the same time as it may occur that engines do not know what exactly you want to do. Normally you should wait that a task is accomplished before starting a new one. For instance while an engine is working making an analysis you should not click to start a tournament with two new and different engines. However, some engines are 'elastic' enough and can overcome new commands while they are running. With a right click mouse on the display of the engine analysis under the chessboard, you can select 'close engine' and so you put the engine off and be able to start something else(*). If move announcement is on, by lots of simultaneous commands it could get confused as well (remain speechless ... with what you do!).

Some Trials:

In first instance it is advisable to load an engine that is a rather elastic one as the SOS-Arena. Download it from Arena web site (make sure it is the UCI type engine and not the old SOS WB) and load it easily: Menu>Engines>Install and select> Details. Then Select (engine) and click OK. See also Help.

At start up press File>New or better click the icon of a little chessboard icon at top left. Select: Menu>Levels>Adjust and the time per move e.g. 4 seconds >OK. Now press Demo button below the board (engine playing against itself) and watch a little what the engine does. After around 20 full moves press STOP under the diagram. You can re-press Demo to go on or the chip icon (engine) to make one move per side of players. In the bottom display of the main window you can see the time set. Click on this bar left or right mouse to make your settings more easily. During the game you can increase the search (thinking time of the engine) when you click the + or - icon (LEV) on top of the main window. This does not cause any crash of the GUI while the engine is running.

Now as said, you stopped at move 20. Everything is still. Press now the Analyze button under the diagram. This runs continuously searching the BEST next move. You will see the Nodes/sec, the Depth of search, the value of move, etc. Right click on Analyze button and you will see a nice Variation Board that opens where it plays the calculated moves, so you can see what is going on. If your position was a puzzle you could see an e.g. M6 (mating in 6). Uncheck Analyze and now you can go to Menu>Position and there you can a) copy the analysed moves, save a diagram of the position, etc. When you save it as graphic does not show the coordinates. At left of the Diagram you can see the opening type ECO of the game (important).

Clicking on the back arrow under the diagram you go one (half) move back. Use your right mouse button to go 5 places back. Now move with the arrow forward to you last position number 20 and press again Demo. Set time 2 seconds so it goes faster to the end and wait till it finishes. Now we make a FULL GAME ANALYSIS:

Click Game>Analyze and select:  Source=Current Game,  Colours=white and black moves, Moves=All moves, Level = as long as you can resist (overnight?) Set now 30 sec to make the example. Direction Forward (min search depth is less important as Level time prevails). Check all the other boxes. Minimize to tray as the process takes some time. At the end open the Protocol file and study your game! This way you can import -load the pgn game of others and have it analysed to see possible mistakes. There is also an EPD multiple positions search. About EPD (Extended Position Description), you can read more HERE. 

For more information about CHESS ENGINES click HERE

STEP 10

ANALYSE A POSITION for the next best move: To analyse a position as the so called deep searching you can do it in two ways: get the position, e.g. from FEN from the Clipboard,  and a) press the Analyse button and let it as long as you like. When you stop it go to Menu> Position>Copy Analysis to Clipboard and paste it in your Notepad or b) Get the FEN position then Menu> Game>Analyze. As before you select Source=Current Game, but now for Moves type From 0 to 1 . Proceed as before and you get the position analysed and Best Move marked.

If you find a puzzle with e.g. mate in 6, set the adjust time level mate in 6 .               

This is the FEN of such a puzzle:  q4r2/2p2kp1/4bnN1/1p1p4/3P3Q/4B3/1P4PP/5RK1 w - - 0 1

Copy here the FEN and paste it to Arena.
In a modern PC this takes for SOS engine 12 seconds at a depth of 17. With right mouse on analysis display select 'make analysed move' and you see moving on the board the right move for checkmate. If you find puzzles without a FEN (unfortunately only few Authors put the FEN under their puzzle diagram) go to Menu > Position> Setup Board and click OK.

(This is an Arena created diagram of the position).

In the above puzzle and generally, if you cannot find the solution let the chess engine do it. Try now La Bourdonais, puzzle. SOS (UCI) engine takes 2-3 sec to find it.

A useful feature of ARENA is that it recognises and shows your Opening (ECO) Code as soon as you have started or imported a game on the Board. Rightclick to refresh the indication. Click here the ECO CODES to see a page with all the opening codes it is capable to handle.

After you have become familiar with above procedures, make again various right click mouse trials on various parts of the Arena Main Window, to see the various options offered. Play with Arena, as the Author suggests with his web site title. To load a pgn file you can use the "drag and drop" feature on Arena icon on your desktop.
---------------------
(*) If the GUI program becomes sticky, there is an engine that did not want to close and runs in the background. Use a process viewer to kill the engine process (in Win XP Ctrl+Alt+Del once opens a table with the processes). Otherwise you have to restart your PC.

To continue: Go Back to the Directory at left and select: HOW TO - 2 or click HERE