Running chess engine via command window only

[whittenizer]

Hi there,

I'm curious about why any uci compliant chess engine plays much weaker via the command window when one can simply type in commands like "position fen somefenstring" then "go", etc... than when run through an app like Arena, what have ya. Particularly, Stockfish since this is the one Im playing around with at the moment. I've looked at the UCI options, and it appears as though the default settings are already set for maximum peformance. I'm not sure why of the huge performance difference between using only the command window and a GUI. I mean Stockfish was giving up pieces and playing poorly using only the command window but when run through Arena, it's wicked strong.

THanks for any insight into this.

[kinderchocolate]

Hi there,

I'm curious about why any uci compliant chess engine plays much weaker via the command window when one can simply type in commands like "position fen somefenstring" then "go", etc... than when run through an app like Arena, what have ya. Particularly, Stockfish since this is the one Im playing around with at the moment. I've looked at the UCI options, and it appears as though the default settings are already set for maximum peformance. I'm not sure why of the huge performance difference between using only the command window and a GUI. I mean Stockfish was giving up pieces and playing poorly using only the command window but when run through Arena, it's wicked strong.

THanks for any insight into this.

Could that be Arena sends "position startpos ...." rather than "position fen ..."?

[hgm]

I'll bet you this is because Arena never makes any typos!

[whittenizer]

Not sure what this is supposed to mean.

[whittenizer]

Hum,

I'm not sure what goes on behind the scenes in GUI's. I'll look into the "position startpos..." and see what that does.

Thanks,

[hgm]

Not sure what this is supposed to mean.

It means that UCI engines should play exactly the same moves from the command-line or under a GUI. If it makes stupid moves,it can only mean you feed it wrong input.

[whittenizer]

I think I may have not supplied enough information. I'm setting the fen as in:

"position fen somefentext" then "go". I just found out there's alot more things that can go with the "go" command. Ill play around with those and see what I get.

Thanks for your input.

[hgm]

Indeed, you are supposed to tell how long the engine must think (wtime, btime). If you don't, it might very well think zero msec, and play after a 1-ply search.

[Desperado]

I think I may have not supplied enough information. I'm setting the fen as in:

"position fen somefentext" then "go". I just found out there's alot more things that can go with the "go" command. Ill play around with those and see what I get.

Thanks for your input.

here

uci specification

you can read about the commands too ...

Michael

[whittenizer]

I can see that now. I'll play around with this a bit more. Thanks alot for your input.