Aquarium and Engine Matches

[hgm]

For engine matches, I mostly use Winboard, which is reliable and stable. I've also used Arena, although I don't use all its features. Its main advantage for me is that it can capture the evals from all engines.

Which are the engines that do not properly report their evals to WinBoard? Is it known what the problem is? Are there many of those?

[cpuchess]

Personally I find the whole Aquarium interface confusing to use. I think the Chessbase interface is so much easier and clearer.

[Nimzovik]

OH no! You didn't buy a newly released GUI did you? AND you expected no bugs? I bet you buy frozen silly putty too!

[bnst]

I find the Aquarium user interface to be so obscure that I haven't bothered to use it. I use Winboard, Arena and Shredder GUIs and all these are easy and intuitive, so I manage to use them without reading any instructions.

The Aquarium GUI is terrible and it also seems that I can't configure it - f.ex. to get rid of the terrible figurine notation.

Regards
Andreas

[ernest]

and it also seems that I can't configure it - f.ex. to get rid of the terrible figurine notation.

Click on the Fish (in the left/above corner), Options, Display Options and in the Notation language pull-down menu, choose "English" instead of "Chess"

[oreopoulos]

Shredder GUIs and all these are easy and intuitive,

They just dont compare. Shredder was very very few fuctions.

. Also, Aquarium outputs non-standard PGN for annotated games

This is not true. You assume that chessbase outputs standard pgn format , but it does not. They just dont cooperate fully (for the moment) but it will change

adjudication when the eval goes below the given score, random selection from PGN openings etc.

adjudication is there. You can set eval score above which we have adjudication

[Ovyron]

Shredder GUIs and all these are easy and intuitive,

They just dont compare. Shredder was very very few fuctions.

We're not talking about power, but usability. In theory, all Aquarium's features could be added to Shredder UCI GUI and they would be a lot more usable. And it would seem easier than making Aquarium as usable as Shredder UCI GUI.

[oreopoulos]

We're not talking about power, but usability. In theory, all Aquarium's features could be added to Shredder UCI GUI and they would be a lot more usable. And it would seem easier than making Aquarium as usable as Shredder UCI GUI.

Joking of course i guess.

One function -> One button -> Great usability
1Million functions -> One million Buttons......

There is no analog there.

Can you compare MS Paint with Photoshop?
Notepad with Word?

If and when Shredder GUI has similar functionality , then you can compare usability.

[ozziejoe]

For people interested in improving at chess, Aquarium is simply the most important step in Gui in the last, say , 10 years. The interactive deep analysis feature is amazing and very stable. You can keep the analysis running whilst you explore different variations, and you can instruct IDEA to change focus, without having to stop any analysis. This matches very closely to how one studies a game.

I have been doing massive analysis with IDEA, and can confirm it is quite robust. Few bugs, if any.

Other features.

The interface is intuitive (a bit like the tab interface of office 2007).

I love the tree interface, which is simple to use and lets you customize columns and put , say , human percentages next to computer analysis evaluations


Concerning engine versus engine tournaments, I agree, it probably is not better than arena or chessbase. I've had some crashes.

But if you are really into studying chess, it crushes everything.

best
J

[oreopoulos]

and it also seems that I can't configure it - f.ex. to get rid of the terrible figurine notation.

Click on the Fish (in the left/above corner), Options, Display Options and in the Notation language pull-down menu, choose "English" instead of "Chess" Idea

You can also right click , when in notation, select Settings->Language