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HOW TO START Using your PC for Chess Improvement
STEP 11
Dealing with puzzles generally it is advisable to test it with different engines (if a solution cannot be found). This because engines have a different knowledge about tactics and may prefer the capture of a strong opponent's piece rather than take a long tour to find the checkmate path. We suggest you to download and use with Arena in first instance the following engines a) CRAFTY 18 (and 19), b) DELFI, c) YACE, d) RUFFIAN and e) TAO. Other engines you can see later. Try the puzzles with these engines and a solution is surely found. These Engines have the analysis option built in. Some engines can not do any analysis, so you may not load them in Arena for the analysis mode. Such engines cannot play chess from a given position but only from the beginning of a game.
This is not an ARENA Help file, so it is better to see a little the WINBOARD chess program. You get it from http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html. Winboard has also a good Help file. Browse it. More about Winboard and many relevant you can get from http://www.aarontay.per.sg/Winboard/Winboard2.html .
Winboard was the first created free GUI to load engines and engine producers test mainly their engines for smooth functioning with Winboard, so normally this GUI is very stable with most engines. Winboard has less features than Arena and a complicated method to install or load engines. Here, once the engines are loaded you cannot change them as you did with ARENA but you have to exit and re-open the program.
Due to this complicated feature many people use Winboard as a PGN Viewer. It has the capacity to recognise and load also pgn formats wrongly written and has a large capacity window to present the Comments of the game. It has also a convenient way for the Position Setup. Move the pieces on the board or right click mouse on the board to set them up. Winboard is the only GUI that has a BLINDFOLD feature (Menu>General>Blindfold). About Blindfold you can see the CHESSDOCS in the present Web Site.
A faster way to install engines for Winboard is the following: Note that Winboard comes with an engine already installed the GNUChess. As soon as you unzip Winboard you just click on "winboard.exe" (GNUChess should have been unzipped in the same Folder). A Start-Up-Dialog of Winboard pops up: click on "Play against a Chess engine". It will give you a list of one engine "GNUChess". Select it
and a game will start right away with you playing white against that computer program.
To add your own Engine (such as Crafty): put your chess program in the same folder as is the "winboard.exe". Then open and edit a file called "winboard.ini": do a "search" for the GNU program that was on the menu when you run winboard, then: in place of the GNU program name (in the file "winboard.ini), type "wcrafty.exe" (or what ever your programs name is).
Then your program will be on the selection menu at the Start-Up-Dialog when you run "winboard.exe".
As it could happen that you can ruin the winboard ini file, save the original ini some place else or Zip it for reserve. However, a more correct and very detailed procedure 'step-by-step' on HOW TO install engines in WINBOARD is presented HERE.
Winboard has sliding pieces and shows last move same as Arena. A picture of Winboard is:
Exercise: This position as you can see is white to play. It mates in 11 moves. Use Crafty to find out how.
(The white knight at top corner left of the window shows that is white to play)
Winboard is widely used software, so many people can reply to your questions in a Chess Forum). Winboard has no voice announcement. You can organise engine tournaments with special settings in the dialog box (load two engines and in the pop up dialog box) check Additional options. There type /mg n (where n is the number of games e.g. type /mg 6 and you have 6 rounds. After each game engines change colour. The result is on top of the window as (X-Y-Z) where X is number of wins for white, Y for black and Z of draws.
There is also a Winboard Forum at: http://f11.parsimony.net/forum16635/
Winboard is historically a top program, but you need some experience to load the engines.
STEP 12
Be sure to have read the Help files for Arena and Winboard. Otherwise move two steps back.
Let's make a break: Have you subscribed to any Chess Forum? You can subscribe with a Nickname as User name. Try these ones:
1) Chessville Forum at http://www.chessville.com/forum.htm
2) Computer Chess Club at http://www.talkchess.com/ and press 'enter the club'
3) Chess About at http://chess.about.com/ and click Forum
Post your questions. Normally there is always someone who replies. Try to figure out the style of each Forum so you can address your questions where you judge more appropriate. As mentioned there is also ARENA and WINBOARD Fora or Forums for their specific issues.
Looking back to ARENA: You will notice that some engines are called WB (winboard) engines and some UCI (Universal Chess Interface) as these are two different protocols. UCI maybe has more functions than WinBoard. Arena plays with both protocols the WB and UCI. engines. Some commercial chess programs cannot play with WB engines so a converter WB to UCI (wb2uci) has been created and freely provided, but it is not our case here.
You may notice a controversy between chess players of how good could be an engine for analysis. Highly rated players tend not to recognise the good work of engines, but this thought is diminishing as long as the engines become everytime stronger and also stronger PCs become available.
You need however sometimes a less strong engine to play against and win, but the weak engines are also unstable. There is an engine called T-Rex that is stable and weak in ELO, maybe 1500. Download it and try it. Another possibility is DELFI. This engine has an ini file. Open it with your editor read the instructions and then you can reduce the engine strength as you like. The engine can become weak but still maintains its strong opening book moves. In a different folder you can have DELFI with a different ini file so you can have two engines to load in ARENA: DELFI-Max and DELFI-Min. Other weak engines are Cassandre, Nero, and Larsen VB. Engines have a rating list from organised tournaments and you can see such a Rating list of May 2003 clicking HERE.
ARENA issues: With Arena you can organise matches or tournaments between engines. Go to Menu > Engines and click Tournament. At this point check that you have closed all still running engines. In the Options Tab set for Startposition: Normal starting position and test mode leave it unchecked. Adjudicate game: unchecked and for adjudicate a draw set e.g. 110 moves played. Then check only Restart engines after each game (better for some engines). In the Tab files select if you need a game to be saved and how. Now in the first Tab Settings select the participating engines, set the level in seconds, the number of rounds and remember to set reset tournament to start. You must save the file also (save as) otherwise for this particular tournament the system might get confused if you changed engines for a previous tournament, etc. Click now Start and the tournament starts and after each game is changing the colour of the engines up alternating up to the end of the rounds, as set.
If the tournament does not start, it seems that a previously open engine did not close. You have to shut down Arena and reopen it again. To avoid problems with engines while you are learning this process it is advisable that you use some UCI engines as e.g. SOS for Arena and TAO. There after you can try many other engines as well. It works with almost all of them. If you need to start from a given position EPD (Tab Options>Startposition) you must be sure that the selected engine can start from a given position as some engines start only from the first typical chess start game position).
As in all cases you should also read the corresponding Help file for tournaments. At Menu>Help>Notes you can write and save your remarks about the usage of the Arena program, etc.
Variation: When you play and you want to test a different move without destroying the current game position click an icon on top of the Arena window that looks like a tree branch. The cursor of the mouse on this icon says "start different line" and by clicking the tree icon it becomes red. When you finished with your test, click again the red tree icon and you get back to your previous move. The red colour disappears. You can also activate Variation from Menu>Options>Variation. In Menu>Options you will also see the Overview. Click it and you shall see a board for each position of the game. Clicking one of the boards shown, it takes you to that position.
Arena presents itself also as a "Client" software to play chess on line. Press Options>Internet. There is a new version of Arena on the way (Sept. 2003), so please check their website.
Arena cannot be used as a Database. It can only open PGN files even the most large ones and there, in a selectable headings of a table, you can arrange the sorting of players by colour, date, site, result, event, etc. It has also a search facility. However Arena is not a Database program and such program is the free SCID that we can see in the next STEP 13.
STEP 13
There are a few Database free software programs to use. The most comprehensive one is SCID to download from http://scid.sourceforge.net/. There are also some other ones as Chess Dragon, Chesspad and CDB. Normally if you get familiar with SCID which is rather comprehensive you can well manage to work with the other ones. Chesspad has not any help file so you have to find your way alone. For SCID the latest version is of Jan. 2003. You need first of all to see the above mentioned web page of SCID.
There is a mailing list for discussing Scid: scid-users@lists.sourceforge.net It has around 200 subscribers. Read how to subscribe, or browse the message archive.
This is a small picture of the SCID main window. Various screenshots are available from above SCID web site. There is an extensive Help file and questions may be put to SCID users at above mentioned mailing list. The Author is not always present but the experienced users have always a good reply.
HOW TO START: The main point of a database is how to create a database! This means that you have to collect a large number of games to put together. The SCID software to work fast for the processing of game data is using a file format of its own that is free in any case. This format is called si3, e.g. Karpov games are found as "karpov.si3". This si3 format consists of 3 files. Read in Help file: Quick Guide, Database Format. There is a web site to download only si3 files but the vast majority of available files is in pgn format. SCID can convert pgn file to scid files and vice versa of any size. Recently a single pgn file of 500.000 games was easily converted to SCID winning also a lot of disk space.
It is therefore our main and important task to create a good database of games. The rest will come easily. Some SCID users prefer to make one single database file with 600.000 or even more than one million, maybe 3 or 4 million games, if they can find them. SCID can handle with no limitation one file with a huge virtually unlimited number of games. Some Users create different databases, e.g. games of Grandmasters, games played at the Internet, games of classic players, as Steinitz, etc. Our suggestion is the following: If you use the Database to help you find-analyse specific moves it is better that you put in one only Database all games that are from good players e.g. those that are at least above 2400 ELO. It makes a little sense to search for a best move games from low rated friend players games, some of 1800 ELO. Another database can be created for tactics another for endgames another for blitz 3-5 min. games and so on. To get a further idea of different database set, look Menu>Windows>Database Switcher. Then rightclick on a database icon and select "change icon". The various icons that appear give you an idea of how you could divide your database.
NOTE: If a SCID window appears very large on your screen, you have to go to Menu>Options>Fonts and reduce the size of fonts.
So, the first move is to collect any available scid (si3) file of games. A place with 2,5 million games is http://www.uib.no/people/pfvaf/chesslib/ In any case and as said pgn is the international standard for chess games, so it is necessary to get the pgn files and convert and add them in the scid (si3) file or files. There are here in this site also more than 600.000 GAMES in SCID format to download, together with Instructions on How-To convert them fastly in PGN files, if you want. Click HERE to go the download page.
The steps to follow for the conversion of pgn files to scid files are the following:
1) Select a specific Folder for your operations. Bring there your pgn file or files.
2) Go to Menu>File>Open a pgn file {that you have obtained from some other place} as a pgn database with SCID in the same folder.
2) Create now a new empty scid (si3) database with Menu>File>New and name it (New or Raw or SCIDAT-1, etc).
3) Go to Menu>Windows>Database Switcher (or click on the first of the icons [page+pencil] in the middle of the window). When you open the Database switcher you will see a window as this:
What you see at left is one pgn database called Total.pgn with 11.600 games and a second called DeepBlue. pgn with 6 games and another database (scid) called SCIDAT-1, that is empty. Now place your cursor on Total.pgn and drag it to SCIDAT-1. A small windows opens and asks "do you want to copy the total.pgn file to SCIDAT-1? click Copy Games. Now SCIDAT-1 shows 11.600 games. Do the same drag and drop the DeepBlue.pgn to SCIDAT-1. SCIDAT-1 will show now 11.606 games. Continue to get pgn files loaded and transfer them to SCIDAT-1. As you can see and reading also the Help files about si3 and pgn files, si3 need less space than the pgn.
Note that some pgn files may not load as they are not valid or good pgn files (according to the standards; you can repair them in many cases with Winboard (*)). Remember also that to Paste in SCID a PGN game you have to go to Tools > Import ONE PGN game..and paste there. This is equivalent of Winboard' s File > Paste Game from Clipboard and Arena' s Game > Get PGN from Clipboard.
After you have created the SCIDAT-1 file there is a question of duplicate files. Maybe you want to clean them. How? There is a back and forth process. The pgn database in SCID is a read only file and cannot delete duplicates. Then you have to create as you did previously with SCIDAT-1 a new (empty) SCID database that you can call TEMP.si3 and in this you have to drag and drop your pgn files. Load TEMP and clean the duplicates from TEMP file using Menu>File>Maintenance>Delete twin games. A window opens and you select what you consider to be twin and click OK. Twins are deleted. Now Negate the filter (at Menu>Search>negate, click negate) and then go to Menu>Tools>Export all filter games...>Export Filter to pgn file and save your new clean pgn file in the folder. Now back again! Erase the TEMP scid file, create a new empty scid file as SCIDAT-2, open your clean pgn and drag and drop it in your SCIDAT-2. Now you have a nice and clean scid database file. If you want to get rid of the comments inside the games go to Edit>Strip>Comments. An icon with letters and a corner board at the second line of icons on top of the window, brings the coordinates to the chess board. If you need to edit the tag header of a game (if pgn it is read-only so move it to Clipbase) Open Game> Save: Replace.
The SCID chess software has an optional program called pgnscid.exe ; You can use this to create automatically the pgn files in scid files. How to: 1) Find the pgnscid.exe from your downloaded files
2) Put it in a Folder together with the pgn file to convert (e.g. Karpov.pgn) 3) Go to RUN from start Menu of your PC and browse to find the address of pgnscid.exe and type/add the pgn file you have (Karpov.pgn) for example D:\CHESS\SCID\DATA\PGNSCID.EXE KARPOV.PGN 6) Press OK, the scid file (3 equivalent scid files) shall appear in the folder of DATA immediately.
When you create a LARGE database, it is advisable to ZIP the 3 scid files and keep the Zipped file in a safe place, in case your Database gets corrupted (if you change e.g. the Players name using non English fonts, etc.). It is also advisable when you open the Database to mark it as Read-Only in the Menu>File to avoid corruption of files. Next time you open it is no more Read-Only, unless you mark it again. There some more details about SCID Database Maintenance HERE.
When you have many small pgn files it is perhaps cumbersome to load them one after the other. However, there is a nice utility to add pgn files from many to a big single one. You can get for instance 300 pgn files from various sources and create only one big pgn file with all the games included. STEPS: Write in a Notepad: better copy-paste from here this text between the lines:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
for %%f IN (*.PGN) DO type %%f>>collect.out
ren collect.out collect.pgn
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Save this text as a bat file (bat file extension "*.bat") with the name Glue.bat ; Create a Folder and copy in this folder all pgn files, you need to add, together with Glue.bat. Press Glue.bat and wait. A new pgn appears with all files and games added with the new name collect.pgn. Now move this file to your SCID database folder and delete all single pgn from the Glue.bat folder. Change the name collect to whatever else you like (collect has to be free as it will created again next time you add pgn files).
(*) You can correct a badly written pgn game as follows. Load it to Winboard. Winboard accepts several kind of notations that are not exactly as the pgn standards define. See if the game is playable. Then save the 'current' game as pgn. So, the game will be saved including all pgn norms. If the game is not playable there is a serious error inside and you have to open it with the editor and repair it manually (for instance you cannot have a Rook moving from a4 to c5).
There is a SCID Database FORUM (click HERE to visit it), where you can post a message with your remarks and questions.
Move now to HOW TO - PART III
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