Advice on how to use Arena GUI for engine-engine matches

[Graham Banks]

I recall from when I used Arena, you had to right-click in the pane of a loaded engine to set its parameters.

[EN]

Note that UCI does not offer any method for engines to resign, so that to make UCI engines resign at all GUI interference is required. So I guess this indeed is a sort of one-sided adjudication, the decision not to continue the game purely taken by the GUI. This is different for WB engines, which can notify the GUI that they want to resign, and thus can be assumed to want to continue the game when they don't do that.

Note that more modern WB engines tend to display the resign threshold with the engine-defined options.

I think this is standard. Otherwise, an engine has to have the option to resign - which can be used by the engine itself or gui.

By the way, I was the opposite was my concern: that the losing engine resigns. Either that, or it was the gui. In any event, I wanted fully played games - checkmate inclusive. This concern was solved in one of Arena's Menu options, and games now play to checkmate.

[EN]

I recall from when I used Arena, you had to right-click in the pane of a loaded engine to set its parameters.

Thank you, Graham! Arena is superb! I'm no longer daunted by the numerous options, although I have yet to explore all gui options and understand them. I noticed you used past-tense (as in, "when I used Arena"). I take it you no longer use Arena now? If so, may I ask why? and what other gui would you recommend in addition? Thank you.

PS: I'm using Sedat Canbaz's Perfect2017.abk and noticed the settings he had for it reflects the settings for Perfect2015. Worse, the matches between two engines keeps playing the same opening over and over. Or at least 90% of the time, if I'm not mistaken. Any suggestions or settings to remedy this? Again, thanks for any input.

[Graham Banks]

I recall from when I used Arena, you had to right-click in the pane of a loaded engine to set its parameters.

Thank you, Graham! Arena is superb! I'm no longer daunted by the numerous options, although I have yet to explore all gui options and understand them. I noticed you used past-tense (as in, "when I used Arena"). I take it you no longer use Arena now? If so, may I ask why? and what other gui would you recommend in addition? Thank you.

PS: I'm using Sedat Canbaz's Perfect2017.abk and noticed the settings he had for it reflects the settings for Perfect2015. Worse, the matches between two engines keeps playing the same opening over and over. Or at least 90% of the time, if I'm not mistaken. Any suggestions or settings to remedy this? Again, thanks for any input.

I switched to using ChessGUI because it has the option of tablebases adjudication.
At that time, Arena didn't have that option and the programmer had indicated he had no intention of implementing it.

I can't recall the book setting options, and can't check because I no longer have Arena installed. Sorry.

[EN]

I recall from when I used Arena, you had to right-click in the pane of a loaded engine to set its parameters.

Thank you, Graham! Arena is superb! I'm no longer daunted by the numerous options, although I have yet to explore all gui options and understand them. I noticed you used past-tense (as in, "when I used Arena"). I take it you no longer use Arena now? If so, may I ask why? and what other gui would you recommend in addition? Thank you.

PS: I'm using Sedat Canbaz's Perfect2017.abk and noticed the settings he had for it reflects the settings for Perfect2015. Worse, the matches between two engines keeps playing the same opening over and over. Or at least 90% of the time, if I'm not mistaken. Any suggestions or settings to remedy this? Again, thanks for any input.

I switched to using ChessGUI because it has the option of tablebases adjudication.
At that time, Arena didn't have that option and the programmer had indicated he had no intention of implementing it.

I can't recall the book setting options, and can't check because I no longer have Arena installed. Sorry.

For years, I have been using Winboard gui with Polyglot, including the recent re-introduction of the WB2UCI adapter + Winboad, and just recently switched to Arena gui. I'm getting used to the automatic things (i.e., the "Switch sides" - as I like to view games from Black's side - lasts for the duration of tournaments between engines, among others functions), and the general ease of procedures, i.e., installation of engines etc.

It's just too bad authors of engines and/or GUI, for the most part, tend not to take their product consumers seriously enough to fix bugs (excluding dire cases of obvious bugs), or implement features that consumers find useful.

Anyway, thank you your help/input.


Best,
EN