Arena 1.99beta5

[Spock]

AFAIK,it's not possible Ray....

Unfortunate.....

It will work sequentially through an openings pgn, so I guess you could select 15 openings, put them each twice in a pgn, and the GUI would work through them, presumably it alternates A vs B then B vs A the A vs B etc so if so, that may work. Not sure I'd use that for CCRL though, I prefer random book openings just in case the 15 I selected were "good" for one of the engines

[David Dahlem]

Can I ask an Arena question for the experts here ?

In Chessbase and Shredder GUIs you can run an engine match between 2 engines, say 30 games, and choose "switch sides" or "alternate colours" to have the engines play the same opening with white and black (i.e. 15 openings x 2). This is how I prefer to run my CCRL matches

Is this possible with Arena ? I see in Arena you need tournament mode with the 2 engines, but I don't see the switch sides option. Is this possible ?

thanks

Yes, it is possible. But not with Arena .abk books. You must disable the GUI book, and use the pgn book option under Tournament/Options. Use a pgn book with lines of your choice, and set Arena to choose the line randomly or sequentially. I use this option in Arena 1.1, and it works great!

Regards
Dave

[Spock]

AFAIK,it's not possible Ray....

Unfortunate.....

It will work sequentially through an openings pgn, so I guess you could select 15 openings, put them each twice in a pgn, and the GUI would work through them, presumably it alternates A vs B then B vs A the A vs B etc so if so, that may work. Not sure I'd use that for CCRL though, I prefer random book openings just in case the 15 I selected were "good" for one of the engines

[Spock]

Yes, it is possible. But not with Arena .abk books. You must disable the GUI book, and use the pgn book option under Tournament/Options. Use a pgn book with lines of your choice, and set Arena to choose the line randomly or sequentially. I use this option in Arena 1.1, and it works great!

Regards
Dave

Ah, see above. So 15 positions in a pgn and Arena would play 30 games, switching sides for each opening ?

[David Dahlem]

Yes, it is possible. But not with Arena .abk books. You must disable the GUI book, and use the pgn book option under Tournament/Options. Use a pgn book with lines of your choice, and set Arena to choose the line randomly or sequentially. I use this option in Arena 1.1, and it works great!

Regards
Dave

Ah, see above. So 15 positions in a pgn and Arena would play 30 games, switching sides for each opening ?

Yes, that's right, if you use the sequential option. If you use the random option, of course you can have many more positions in the pgn file.

I use an empty .abk book when using the pgn book option.

Regards
Dave

[Spock]

Yes, that's right, if you use the sequential option. If you use the random option, of course you can have many more positions in the pgn file.

I use an empty .abk book when using the pgn book option.

Regards
Dave

OK - but if I have a big pgn and I choose random option, it won't play each opening twice with reversed sides, this only works with sequential ?

PS Is it just me or is this board slow as treacle...

[Ovyron]

PS Is it just me or is this board slow as treacle...

It's very slow for me also.

About Arena, I find ChessPartner better, but there are some engines that only will work properly in Arena so I've been using it.

[David Dahlem]

Yes, that's right, if you use the sequential option. If you use the random option, of course you can have many more positions in the pgn file.

I use an empty .abk book when using the pgn book option.

Regards
Dave

OK - but if I have a big pgn and I choose random option, it won't play each opening twice with reversed sides, this only works with sequential ?

PS Is it just me or is this board slow as treacle...

Yes, it works with random too. Arena will pick a random line from the pgn file, and both engines will play the same line as black and as white.

Regards
Dave