Welcome!

This is the help system for the chess GUI "Arena".

The Internet site of Arena is:

http://www.playwitharena.com

Current Arena-Version: 3.5.1

Select a help topic on the left side. Some topics have subtopics.

This help file was created on: 2015-12-19, 19:58

Note
Arena is a GUI (Graphical User Interface) for chess programs (engines). It was developed
by Martin Blume, Bochum, Germany since mid 2001. The goal was to develop an easy-to-
use but yet freely available GUI for the ever-growing number of chess engines.

Almost all Winboard and UCI chess engines run under this GUI.

Operating systems supported: Windows XP or higher (32 or 64 Bits) or Linux/Wine 1.0 or

higher (32 or 64 Bits).

Of course you can find freeware chess engines on the Internet.

Good sites to start with are:

 http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:wiki:lists:chess_engine_list
(Computer-Chess Wiki)
 https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Engines (Chess Programming Wiki)
 http://www.top-5000.nl/ (Ed Schröder)
 Jim Ablett (site varying)

Arena © by Martin Blume, 2015

If Arena is distributed or offered in any way, e.g. on the Internet or sold on a CD, the
written agreement of the author is required. You find copyright licenses for Arena in the
folder "Readme" in the file "copyright.txt".
Base Functions
The basic functions can be reached easily with the navigation bar (e.g. navigating within a
game) or the tool bar .
When you start Arena the first time, some engines should already be installed, so that you
can start playing or analysing right away. If not, read chapter installing engines .
Playing a Game

1. Choose the desired level .

2. Select 'File New' from the main menu.

3. If you want to play with black, click on the cog wheel symbol on the navigation bar
or simply press the space bar. The engine will now move with white.

4. Click the piece with the left mouse button

5. Click the desired square you want the piece to move to.

Hint: you can also drag-and-drop a piece with the mouse from its start to its target square.

Also you can type in moves with the keyboard. For the move e2-e4 just type the keys
e,2,e,4.

6. The chess engine will now start to calculate and make its move.

7. Go on with point 4!

 The features "Resign" and "offer draw" can be found under "Game" in the main menu.
Entering a Game
Click on 'Edit' in the navigation bar. This means, you are now editing the current game. The
engine now does not start calculating if you make a move.

You can click the "Edit" button again to switch to the previous state.
Entering a Position
The set up dialogue can be reached by main menu position set up board or a click on the
icon in the tool bar:

The dialogue appears:

The numbers above the OK button indicate the number of white and black pieces, here
16/16 (all pieces still on the board).

Tab Sheet "General":

Here you can set up a new position:

1. If necessary, you click 'clear board'. The board is now completely empty.
2. Click the piece you want to set on the board.
3. Click the square on the chessboard, on which the piece should be placed. A left mouse
click sets a white piece on the board, a right mouse click a black one. If you want to clear
the square, just double-click the square or press the shift key in addition.
4. Repeat pos. 2-3 for all pieces you like to appear on the board.
5. Set black on move, if you like.
6. If not all castling rights should be granted, you can limit them here
7. If a game should not begin with move number 1, you can set a different number under
"Options/First move has no".
8. If you want allow an en passant move, you can set the ep-square under the options. This
square must me on the 3./6. rank.
9. If you don't want to play normal chess, you can also choose Fischer Random Chess or
Shuffle Chess
10. Press OK.
11. Save the new game.

Tab Sheet "Edit":

Move pieces:

 You can also move the pieces up, down, right or left (pieces get lost if pushed over
the edges)
 Mirror the board horizontally or vertically
 switch black and white pieces

Tab Sheet "Load":

 You can load a specific Chess 960 position. Clicking on the pieces right to the
button switches notation from text to figurine
 You can load a FEN-noted position (e.g. paste from the clipboard)
Adjust the Playing Level
This is under Levels Adjust or a click on the clocks with the left mouse button.

Select the mode you like. Depending on the mode chosen the possible settings on the right
side change.

Here is an overview on the different modes:

 Fixed search depth

The engine only calculates to a give search depth in half moves. This is only useful for
testing, not for real games as calculating times may vary greatly. Often not supported by
Winboard engines.

 Time per move

The computer calculates for the given time in seconds and aborts the search then. Not
recommended for Winboard engines, as this feature often is not or badly supported. Never
use this level for engine matches. Engines should use this time as exactly as possible, no
matter what position.

 Blitz (=Fischer-Clock)
In this mode every player has a certain time as a base for the whole game. Additionally for
every move a bonus is given. This has the advantage that a player who has the advantage
either positional or in material terms does not lose on time so easily. Please note that the
base time is given in minutes and seconds, but the bonus in seconds and optional in
milliseconds (1/1000 of a second). This mode is also used frequently for playing on the
Internet (ICS). It was invented by ex- world champion Bobby Fischer therefore it is also
called "Fischer Clock" .

 Mate search

The program only searches mates in a given depth. Some engines run considerably faster if
they can omit the time-consuming positional evaluation.

Winboard engines can't do that mode, because this is not in the Winboard specification.
Arena sets for Winboard engines the mode 'fixed search depth' with twice the depth of the
mate search depth given here. All mates should be found then.

 Infinite

The Computer searches until the maximum search depth of the engine is reached. UCI
engines can do that without problems. For Winboard engines the settings under "Engines
Manage Options" are used. In reality it is a very long blitz level, an emulation.

 Tournament

You can set a maximum of three different time controls. Select in how many minutes the
given number of moves must be executed. If you select 'All' for moves, the given time
counts for the rest of the game.

If you like to have only one time control and the game should be over in one hour, use the
following settings:

Time Control No.1 : Moves : All Minutes: 30 (The time counts per player!)

You can declare every time control as 'repeating'. Then the following time controls are
hidden. If a time control is to be used for the rest of the game (for all remaining moves),
select "Rest".

Arena can watch out for time forfeits, if you select this under 'Engines/ Manage / Options',
set "autoflag=on" for this.

Normally Winboard engines know only about one (repeating) time control. If you selected
"Extended level command for Winboard" an extended level command will be sent to the
engine. A tournament level with 40 moves in 15 minutes, then again 40 moves in
15 minutes, then rest in 15 minutes will be sent as follows:
level 40 15 0 40 15 0 0 15 0

 Nodes

Only the given number of nodes will be searched. Winboard engines can't do that unless
they support the specific command 'sn <n>' of the engine "Crafty ".The command 'sn 0'
means no restriction on the number of nodes searched.

Saving the preferred levels:

If you need some levels frequently, you can make them accessible directly via the main
menu:

1. You select the menu item you want to modify (1-8) in the drop-down box
2. The current usage is shown.
3. You change the mode and settings to the desired level, like 'Blitz 2/12'.
4. Press the 'Save' button.
5. Press OK to close the dialogue.
6. Now you can find your level in the main menu. The first preferred level is on top of the
list, the second one below etc..

Handicap

If you like to run an engine with reduced strength, the time control for this engine becomes
proportionally lower. Instead of 10 minutes for the game the engine gets told to play the
game in 5 minutes. You can set this in the engine management, see limit playing strength .

In the main menu you find the following changeable levels:

 Blitz 2/6
 Blitz 2/12
 Blitz 5/20
 Blitz 20/30
 Tournament Game in 5
 Tournament Game in 15
 Tournament 40/30 40/30 Rest:30
 Tournament 40/120 40/120 Rest:120

You can change these and define your own personal preferred levels, see the description
above on how to change levels.

The following levels in the main menu

 40 moves in 5 minutes
 40 moves in 10 minutes
 40 moves in 20 minutes
 40 moves in 40 minutes
 40 moves in 60 minutes
 40 moves in 120 minutes
 40 moves in 150 minutes

are not changeable as they are most frequently used.

Load and Save Games
Arena can load and save files with the extension EPD, PGN and FCH.

Arena accepts EPD, PGN and FCH files via drag and drop. Just drag the file from Explorer
or File Manager onto the Arena main window, and the file will be loaded. This works also
if Arena is not started, just drop the file on the Arena icon.

Files with the extension EPD, PGN and FCH can be double clicked in the Explorer. In
order to load Arena then, these file types must be associated with the Arena program.
Options Appearance Other settings.

The format 'FCH' is specific to Arena:

It will be saved:

 all moves with all search information like search depths, times, mainlines
 all data like player names etc.
 no variations are saved, so it shouldn't be used in the future

PGN-Format

EPD-Format
Save Dialogue
If you made changes in a game and did not save these changes, this dialogue appears giving
you the chance to preserve the changes.

You have the following options:

 Yes. The game will be saved, you can choose among the following actions
o Back to the same spot in the PGN file: Overwrites the existing game in the
PGN file with the current game.
o Append to loaded PGN file: The game will be appended to the currently
loaded PGN file. The older version still exists at the original place in the
PGN file.
o Select file: You can choose a file for saving.

The action chosen before the dialogue will be executed then, e.g. create a new game or quit
Arena.

 No: The game will not be saved. The action chosen before the dialogue will then be
executed.

 Cancel: The game will not be saved. The action chosen before the dialogue will not
be executed.
Resigning a Game and Offering a Draw
Resigning a Game:

Reachable with Game → Resign or keyboard shortcut Alt+F8.

You can resign a game against an engine here.

Offering a Draw:

You reach this function with Game → Offer Draw Alt+R.

If you have a Winboard engine as opponent, you can offer it a draw. Please note that some
engines don't support that feature.

UCI engines don't support this feature, and in Arena no feature is provided (yet) to support
draw offering to UCI engines.

If the engine accepts the draw offer, the game will immediately end with a draw.
Overview on Available Help
Tool tip help (also called "hints", "quick help" or "pop up help"):

Short pop up help you can select in the main menu in Help Tool Tip help. This activates
the small yellow hints if you remain on a control for a few seconds.

Also, hints appear in the status line, if you scroll over menu items.

You can deactivate this function the same way you activated it. An activated function is
checked in the main menu.

This help in Windows help file format:

Choose Help Help in the main menu to access the starting page of this help file.

Click a 'Help'' button in a dialogue to go to a special help page for the current context.

Additional help on the Internet:

On our Website . Here you can find up-to-date bug lists, help on common problems etc.
Don't hesitate to ask a question there via the contact form.
The Areas of the Arena Main Screen
The Arena GUI has 5 main areas:

1. The Chessboard Window

2. The Engine Analyses
3. The Chess Clocks and Logos Window
4. The Move List/notation
5. The Move Info/ Statistics Window

There are 3 more small areas:

a. The Tool bar
b. The Navigation Bar
c. The Status Bar

Of course Arena has a caption bar (on top of the window, normally in blue) and a main
menu just below, normally in grey. See the sub-chapters for a description.
The Chessboard Window

You can set a number of options for the chessboard under Options Appearance Board,
e.g. switch on/off the coordinates, the to-move display, grid lines or a small board frame
etc.

You can change the chess pieces under Options Appearance Pieces. The True Type font
''Chess Merida'' is to be recommended. You can download this one on the Internet for free.

Under Options Appearance Colours you can set the colours for the white and black
squares, the frame, the colour of the marker showing the square you clicked on and colour
of the marker indicating the last move.

Under Options Appearance Graphics you can choose graphics files for the white and
black squares.

The font for the co-ordinates can be chosen with Options Appearance Fonts.

Under and on the right side of the chessboard area you find the splitters with which you can
adjust the size of the chessboard. According to this size all other area adjust their size, too.
You see the splitters, if you move the mouse over it, the mouse cursor will change.

With Options Flip, the symbol in the task bar or F12 you can rotate the board.
The Chess Clocks
You can pause the running chess clock with Options Pause clock.

The clock will be paused automatically, if you minimise the Arena window and you are to
move and therefore no engine is calculating at the moment.

The Chess Clocks and Logos Window

This area consists of five subareas for every player.

 (a)The name or the logo

 (b)The clock for the total time
 (c)The clock for the current move
 (d)The flag
 (e)The name of the player or the author of the engine

(a) Here the name of the player will be displayed. If can be yourself, an engine or another
player if the game was loaded from a PGN file.

(b) This clock shows the total available time, if you are in blitz or tournament mode. The
time is counted downward. In all other modes the totally used time is displayed. Then the
times used for every move will be added. The clock counts up.

(c) The clock under that shows the time used for the current move.

(d) The flag will be shown if you selected a country for the engine playing. IF your playing
yourself, you should select a country for yourself under Options/Names/Site. To work, you
have to have the flags installed in the Arena subdirectory Flags. You can switch off the
flags can with Options/Appearance/Display/ Show Flags.

(e) In the remaining lower space the name of the author of the engine is displayed, or the
name of the human. If you want to display the name of the engine you should select under
Options/Appearance/Display 'Show name instead of author'.

Under Options/Appearance/Display you can disable the flags (d) as well as the name/author
(e) display.
The whole window can be hidden with Options/Appearance/Display 'Show clocks and
logos'.

You access the pop up-menu with the right mouse button. If 'Clock paused' is checked, then
the clock does not run at the moment. This is advised for short breaks. This is the same
function as under Options in the main menu. The clock is paused automatically if the Arena
main window is minimised. If you restore the Arena main window, the clock runs again.
You can select the position of the clock and logos area here and show the level dialogue
from the pop up menu.
The Move List

In this area you see the moves of the current game. There are 2 types, the free and the fixed
format, selectable under Options → Appearance → View.

Fixed format:

You see the move number, the move, the time and eventually the last mainline the engine
has sent for this move. If it was a ponder hit, a small dot will be shown in front of the
mainline. A 'ponder hit' is when the opponent has made the move the engine predicted
while pondering. Best for evaluating engine play. No variations can be displayed in this
format.

Free format:

Here you see the move numbers, the moves themselves, evaluations, variations and
comments. Best for examining annotated games with variations.

For both formats apply:

With a click on the left mouse button on the move list Arena jumps to the corresponding
move.

With a click on the right mouse button a pop up menu appears. For a 'short comment' you
can select one of the following signs: +-,-+,!,?,!?,?! or delete a sign.

With 'long comment' you can type in a longer comment for the move info window. With
'print diagram' you can mark a move. If you print the game, after this move a diagram with
the current position is inserted. You can replay the game forward or backward with the
corresponding menu items. or switch on/off the permanent statistics window.
The Move Info and Statistics Window
The move info window is quite self-explanatory:

The time is shown in minutes, seconds and milliseconds. If you jump within a game, the
corresponding data of the move is shown. The move info window can also contain
comments on the move. Before the first move, the game data is displayed.

The Statistics Window:

Here you can see a bar graph on the development of the values of the moves in the whole
game. Good values for white have positive, good values for black have negative numbers.

The line and the red bar show the current move.

One small line on the vertical axis indicates a single pawn unit.

You can show or hide the statistics window with a click with the right mouse button on the
move info window.

With a double-click on a bar you can jump to the corresponding move.

The colours of the bars can be changed under Options/ Appearance/ Main Window/ with
''Statistics bar white'' and ''Statistics bar black''.

The bars are not displayed in a real game.

The Toolbar

The toolbar is initially located right under the main menu, but can also be configured to
appear on the left side of the main screen, see below. You can entirely switch it off with
Options Appearance Main Window View, Tool bar.

It consists of the following elements:

New, open file, save file, Infinite level on/off, Level +/-, flip board, set-up position ,
appearance, in/decrease chessboard, Load next/previous PGN game, start/ quit ICS mode,
start/ quit DGT mode, the memory display, the EPD +/- buttons, the Arena version number
display.

In addition you can add navigation arrows (see navigation-bar ) to the tool bar.

New

Creates a new, empty game, normal chess. If you click with the right mouse button, create a
new Fischer-chess game. If you click with the middle mouse button, create a new Shuffle-
Chess game.

Infinite level on/off

With the turned "8" (the mathematical "infinite" sign) you can switch off or on the infinite
mode. The engine will then search for ever or not. With a click on the right mouse button
you can select the level mode (fixed search depth, time per move, blitz, mate search,
Infinite, tournament, nodes).

Level +/-

With a click on the left mouse button you can increase (clicking on the '+' button) or
decrease (clicking on the '-' button) the level. In tournament mode you can change the
minutes with the left mouse button and the moves with the right mouse button. In blitz
mode you can increase or decrease the base time in minutes with the left mouse button and
increase or decrease the bonus time in seconds with the right mouse button.

Flip board

The display direction of the chessboard can be switched here.

Set-up a position

You start the dialogue to manually set up a position.

Appearance

Here you start the appearance dialogue for changing almost all display settings.

In decrease the chessboard

While increasing or decreasing the chessboard, all other elements of the Arena GUI change
accordingly.

Load next/previous PGN game

With the left mouse button you can load the next or previous game in the currently loaded
PGN file. With the right mouse button you can jump to a game from 10 to 10,000 games
forward or backward. If a jump would be too far, Arena will jump to the end or the
beginning of the list. Please take into account that the current sorting order is in effect here.
So if you sorted the PGN list according to player names, all games of a player are one after
the other.

Load next/previous EPD position

You can go to the next or previous position of the currently loaded EPD file here. Useful if
you switched off the display of the EPD list in the Main menu under 'EPD'.

Start/quit ICS mode (currently disabled)

You start the ICS mode here, the display changes and you can select an ICS profile. If you
are already in this mode, you can leave it with this button (like with Ctrl+I).

Start/quit DGT mode

With a click on the left mouse button you can start or quit the DGT mode with the
parameters you set. If you want to change these parameters, click with right mouse button
or use Options/ Configure DGT chessboard.

The memory display

Arena shows the available memory on your computer system here. You can always watch
whether you gave an engine too much hash table memory. If you click on the display it
switches from MB to kB and vice versa. If you have less then 10% free memory on your
computer, the font colour changes to red. The value is rounded, please note that 1MB=1024
kB.

If you switched off the tool bar, the same info is shown in the status bar.

The Arena version number display

It serves not only to inform you about the current version number, but also you can call this
help file with the left mouse button and show the About box with the right mouse button.

Tool bar Configuration:

Under Options /Tool bar or in the pop-up menu of the tool bar you reach this dialogue.

You can switch on or off all elements of the tool bar here. Moving of certain elements is
now possible.

A description of the elements of the tool bar you find here.

Additionally you can switch on small navigation buttons in the tool bar.

The toolbar kan be displayed at the top or on the left side of the Anrea window.
The Navigation Bar

With this bar under the chessboard you can perform some basic functions:

With the first four buttons on the left you can jump within the game, with the '' Demo''
button start a game of the engine against itself, or the engines against themselves, if you
have 2 currently loaded. With the 2 rightmost buttons you can switch to the analyse or edit
mode.

1. Start of game button: Jumps to the start of the game, if clicked with the left mouse
button. If you click on the right mouse button, Arena jumps 5 moves backward.

2. To left button: Jumps one move backward. If you right click on the button, a dialogue is
shown where you can select th move number you want to jump to (same function as Game/
Go to move of CTRL+G).

3. To right button: Jumps one move toward the end of the game. With a right click the go to
move dialogue is shown, too.

4. End button: Jumps to the end of the game. If you click on the right mouse button , Arena
jumps 5 moves forward.

4. "Chip" button: Tells the current engine to start calculating ("Move now" function). If the
engine is already calculating, the button displays a stop-sign. You can also click on the
chip- or stop-sign with the right mouse button to stop the calculations of the engine.

6. Demo button: Starts the demo-mode. The engine will play against itself, or the engines
against themselves, if you loaded two of them. This is suitable for a short series of test
games. For longer series the engine tournament is better. You find it under Engines
Tournament. Right-click on the button to get a small pop-up menu to play a number of
games in demo mode.

7. Analyse button: Starts up or ends the analysis mode with the engine(s). They can not
execute moves on their own in this mode. You can jump forward and backward in the game
with the navigation buttons or select the move right away in the game list without having to
stop analysis mode. You can also select a different position in the the EPD list without
stopping analysis beforehand. Please note that the engines are heavily loaded and only react
slowly to your commands. So don't click too rapidly in succession on the navigation
buttons. It is possible that this way the engines get out of sync with Arena. If that should
happen, the best to do is to restart the engine(s).
8.Edit button: If this button is down, you can enter a game without interference of the
engine(s). This would be the case if the edit button is not pressed and you enter a move.
They would simply answer your move like in a normal game.
The Status Bar
The status bar, shown at the bottom of the main Arena window, is divided into two areas.
In ICS mode a third area appears. On the left side the current level is displayed. On the
right side the file you saved last time is displayed. If this was an EPD file, the current
number of the loaded position is displayed (here 1), the total number of positions (30), and
the best move (Nf5xg7). If the position has an "avoid move", the move is followed by a "?".

If you switched off the tool bar, the Arena version number and the 'Available Memory'
information is shown on the left side of the status bar.

In ICS (chess server) mode the name of the user is displayed in the form user@server.
Eventually a computer account string is shown, if you're running an engine on the ICS.

If you click on the level display with the right mouse button, the level dialogue will be
shown. With a click on the right mouse button you can select the level mode (fixed search
depth, time per move, blitz, mate search, Infinite, tournament, nodes).

If you click on the file display, you can load a different file.

You can change the font of the status bar with Options/ Appearance/ Main Window/ Other.
Configure the Appearance of Arena
With a click on the right mouse button on the chessboard, then selecting "Appearance"
from the pop-up menu or in the main menu under Options Appearance you reach this
dialogue.

On the left side you can click 7 main pages, which are be described here:

Main Page "Chessboard"

Tab Sheet "Pieces":

You can select 3 different types of pieces:

1. Default graphics (are built-in)

2. Calculated True Type-Fonts using normal squares as background
3. True Type-Fonts in the original version with diagonal hatched black squares

Using True Type Fonts under Arena

On the Internet (e.g. www.chessvariants.com or www.enpassant.dk ) you will certainly find

chess fonts you like. Download them and save them to a folder (e.g. c:\temp). Unpack them
with an unpack program.

To use True Type- Fonts, they have to be installed in your Windows operating system, of
course.

This can be done the following way: Under Start ►Settings ►Control Panel ►Fonts
►File ►'Install new font" you get to the dialogue to select this font file you just
downloaded. Search you folder (e.g. c:\temp) and press "OK".

You need to choose your font under Arena: In the "Appearance" dialogue, tab "Pieces" you
select "calculated graphics of True Type-fonts". Click "Select font" and choose your
previously installed font.

Arena recognises some fonts and sets parameters like scale, offset etc. automatically. If
your pieces look something like that
you have won and may skip the following paragraph. You do not need to specify the mask,
but if you do so correctly, Arena can display the pieces quicker.

The freeware-fonts of Armando Hernandez Marroquin are also supported as the fonts of
Eric Bentzen are. The fonts of Marroquin are: Chess Kingdom, Chess Leipzig, Chess
Magnetic, Chess Mark, Chess Marroquin, Chess Medieval, Chess Merida, Chess Millenia,
Chess Motif, Chess Utrecht. Bentzen has created the fonts Chess Alpha and Chess Berlin.
Chess-7 by Sizenko Alexander is also supported.

Other fonts can be selected on this tab. The scaling factor and the piece letters used by the
chess font programmer have to be correct. Some standard patterns are chosen automatically
when you select a font, some can by selected directly by clicking on the buttons. Some
fonts do not use the Marroquin- ,'Chess Alpha' or other standard, so you have to select the
piece letters by hand, preferably by the character map window. Click the button "Browse
character map":
You insert the currently selected character with a double-click. The button "copy" copies
the characters to the clipboard. You can then insert them into the e.g. white piece edit line:

The Font 'Chess Merida' is a very good font for every purpose. It is installed if you installed
Arena by the setup program.

Unicode fonts:

Arena also supports Unicode fonts, check the check box "This is a Unicode font". This is
done automatically, if you select a know Unicode font. The piece letters are fixed in
Unicode, so there is no need to set the piece letters. Common Unicode fonts are Arial
Unicode, Meiryo, MS Gothic (by Microsoft) or Chess Merida Unicode.

If you have problems with the fonts, like translucent pieces, you probably have a problem
with 'Font smoothing'. Windows supports 'Font smoothing' only with a minimal colour
depth of your graphics card of at least 32768 colours. So under control panel desktop
settings you have to select a colour depth of at least 32768 colours to avoid translucent
pieces.

Shadows are displayed to the right and under a piece, if you set the appropriate check box.
A gradient can be added. Then the pieces look a bit brighter on the left side than on the
right side.

Colours can be set for the brighter parts of the white and black pieces and the darker part of
them independently.

Sliding pieces

You can select if pieces should slide (being animated) or not. You should choose the value
by experimenting. Different PC's and graphics cards can have very different speeds these
days. Most people prefer a faster play in matches, so you can give a smaller value in the
input edit underneath.

"Fast drawing" preferes a slightly faster way to display the pieces, but the quality is a bit
lower.

Tab Sheet "Squares":

You can select the following areas: Light and dark squares are self-explanatory.
Chessboard means the space between the squares and a possible one-pixel-wide frame and
the edge of the board.

In addition, the one-pixel-wide frame around the board can be selected. Grid lines and the
highlight last move features (style, frame thickness) can be turned on and off here.
The small 3D-effect at the edges of he board can be turned off, thus making the board
appear flat.

You can also select graphics for the chessboard, light and dark squares. The respective
colours are ignored then.

Tab Sheet "Marks":

You can set the mark of the last move on the chessboard as follows:

 The setting "Highlight last move" switches marking the last move on and off in
general
 Style: The way the square is marked: Rectangle frame, rounded frame, filled square,
cycle frame, filled cycle, no marks, hooks or coordinates.
 Frame thickness: The width of framing marks can be set
 Arrow: An arrow is set for the last move, it can be adjusted in thickness and colour.
 Fill style: You can select a pattern: solid, diagonal, diagonal2, cross, diagonal cross,
horizontal, vertical, 10%, 25%,50% or 75%
 Fill background colour: Second colour, if a pattern is used
 Transparency: How much the square background is seen through

Mark for the clicked square

The mark for the square you clicked on, e.g. to select the piece you wanted to move. The
options are quiet the same as for the as for the mark for the last move, see previous
paragraph.

Mark for the next move

 "Highlight next move" switches this option completely on or off

 Arrow: Shows the mark as arrow.
 Dotted: Shows a dotted arrow.
 Arrow colour: Sets the colour for the arrow

Tab Sheet "Additional":

You can set here if and where (on top, left, right or bottom) the board coordinates a-h and
1-8 are displayed. The font and its colour for the coordinates can also be set.

With "ABCDEFGH" you can select capital letters for the coordinates.

"Within the chessboard" shows the coordinates on the edge squares, thus saving space.
Otherwise the coordinates are next to the edge squares.
If you drag a piece from one square to the other, the mouse cursor can be left unchanged, or
change to a special symbol or be hidden completely for the dragging operation.

Under "Features/ Show side to move" you can select, if the side to move should be shown
with a dot besides the squares on the chessboard.

"Additional Board Frame" extends the board frame on the expense of the squares.

"Board frame has same width on all sides" sets the same margins between squares and
board edge. They might be different otherwise because of different widths and heights of
the coordinates and enlarges all areas.

"Show player names above/under board" shows a small line with player names above and
under the board.

If you selected this option, you have a few additional choices: You can choose the colour
for the square with the active player, show flags, ratings and evaluation symbols. You can
set the font size for the clocks, the font for the clocks will be the same as set under "Fonts".

Tab Sheet "Arrows":

You can make Arena show arrows to indicate the best move during analysis, calculation
and/or pondering.

To distinguish between the engines, you can set a different colour for every engine.

If you select the style "translucent", please keep in mind that displaying the arrows takes a
bit more CPU time, the "simple" style is faster.

For the "translucent" style you can set the transparency, 100 means the arrows are not
visible, 0 means arrows are opaque.

Tab Sheet "Move Input":

"Allow target square first" means, that you can (not must) make moves by first clicking the
target square and then the start square.

"Allow one-click input" checks for every mouse click onto a square, if the piece on that
square can only make one single move and immediately executes this move. Also if only a
single piece can move on a square (empty or occupied by an opponent piece), the move will
be executed immediately.

"Enable move input with keyboard" allows you to make a move with the keyboard. For the
move e2e4 simply press the keys "e","2","e" and "4" one after the other.

If you selected "Auto completion" Arena searches for the move, even when you typed only
parts of it. E.g. you pressed "e" and then "4" in short notation. If "Only evaluate complete
moves" is selected, this feature is disabled and you have to type the whole move in long
notation.

Main Page "Move list"

Font Settings:

You change the font for the moves, values and comments simply by clicking on the
according test shape.

If you choose a figurine font for the moves (the name of the font contains the string
"figurine", "CA Chess" or "CADialog"), graphical symbols are shown instead of the piece
letter (e.g. inststead of "R" for rook). Prerequisite is that you have installed an appropriate
font, like "Arena Chess Figurine", "CA Chess" or "CADialog". The latter two can be
downloaded from Convecta. The move list then looks like this:

The fonts CA Chess, CA Dialog, Figurine CB Aries, Figurine CB Letter, Figurine CB Time
work fine. The FigurineSymbol S1-S3 and FigurineSymbol T1-T3 fonts do not work for
displaying figurine symbols.

Options:

Show values/times shows the base data of a move value, search depth and time or hides
them if not checked.

"Show comments in the move list" switches comments that might be existent off or on.
Frequently comments are embedded in PGN-files. Arena can read and save then, also in
variations.

"Show book name for book moves" shows the name of the Arena book, from which the
move has been played, if the move has been played from an Arena book.

If you checked "Mainline in boldface if variations present", the font for the notation in the
main game will turn to bold . Variations are not displayed in bold. This increases
readability. You shouldn't select a boldface font for the moves then.

"Indent first level variations": If this option is checked, variations on the highest level
(direct variations of the main game) start in a new line. If the option is not set, variations do
not start in a new line.

Short notation can be switched on for the move list, otherwise long notation will be used.

Fixed format: The general format of the move list can be set. The fixed format always
shows the move and then the mainline calculated by the engine in one line. The free format
shows all moves one after the other only with the basic data value, search depth and time.
The formated views show the same data as the free format, but only one move is shown per
line.
Show castling with zeros: Castling notation with zeros (0-0) instead of the letter "O" (O-O).
Reload the game to apply this setting.

Colour Settings:

"Marked move colour" defines the colour of the current move in the move list.

"Marked move background" defines the colour of the background of the current move in
the move list.

Main Page "Main Window"

Tab Sheet "Colours":

On the right you see a preview of how your desktop might look after the changes you made.

Click on the button for the part of the desktop you want to change, e.g. on 'Background'.
Now you can select a colour with the normal colour select dialogue box.

The clock for the side to move can be displayed differently than the clock for the side not to
move. The last move you can mark with a different colour.

In the permanent statistics window you can set the colours for the bars representing the
values calculated by the white and the black engine. The engine playing with white gets a
different colour than the engine playing with black.

The colours for the splitters and the program frame can be chosen. The splitters are used to
resize the program areas and can be highlighted or not, as you like it.

Tab Sheet "View":

Show clocks and logos, large logos, flags, author, opening classification and tool bar can be
switched on or off.

'Show engine name instead of author' refers to the line underneath the logo and the clicks. It
shows the engine name, if an engine is loaded. Otherwise the author of the engine is shown.

The additional items: The tool bar can be switched on or off. The side to move next to
clocks (the king symbol) can be switched on or off.

The material difference can be hidden or shown. This works also with a mouse-right-click
on this item.

You can also switch on or off the area with the opening classification and/or the current
FEN.
The status line can be switched enabled or disabled here.

The scale of the statistics window can be set here in pawn units.

Tab Sheet "Other":

The bitmaps for the Arena background, tool bar and clock and logo area can be changed
here.

The main fonts Arena uses for various items can be changed here. You see a sample text
formatted with this font underneath.

Splitter and Frame sizes determine the size of the corresponding elements in pixels. The
frame is the frame of the Arena main window. Splitters (used to change board area sizes)
are e.g. between board and analyses output.

With 3D style and thickness you can adjust a lot of different effects for the Arena main
window. The areas like board, move list etc. can appear risen, lowered or with a small
frame.

Main Page "PGN"

You can determine the action taken if you load a game. The PGN window can be closed or
minimised then. Also Arena can do a jump to a certain move. If you always want to jump to
the end, just select a high value here.

Additionally if you want to save a game in PGN format, you can choose to save the
mainline to every move, the value/depth and the time taken by the player or the engine, if
this information is available.

"Save mainline as variation": If you set this option, the mainline provided by an engine is
saved as a PGN variation. If this option is not checked, the mainline is saved as comment to
the move (if saving mainlines is enabled at all by the option above). Saving then mainline
as variation makes it possible to replay the mainline of engines if you load the PGN file
later.

The Auto save function offers additional features: You can save the current game in PGN
format after every move. Useful for a backup of the current game.

Also all games can be logged (auto saved) in PGN format. So no game is lost if you happen
to forget saving it.

It is also possible to save only the selected PGN tags. However, the seven tag roster is
mandatory in the PGN specification and these tags are saved always. It contains:

 Event (the name of the tournament or match event)

  Site (the location of the event)
 Date (the starting date of the game)
 Round (the playing round ordinal of the game)
 White (the player of the white pieces)
 Black (the player of the black pieces)
 Result (the result of the game)

Additionally, you can allow or disallow Arena to change some game tags altogether. So
Arena will only load them e.g. from a PGN file and then never change. Uncheck the tags
you would like to write-protect.

Main Page "Sounds"

Tab Sheet "General"

In certain situation sounds can be played. Wave or Midi-files are accepted here.

 At a check
 During a normal move
 During a capture move
 A new board is set-up
 Won
 Lost
 Draw
 At start of Arena

It is also possible to play simple beep sounds by the PC speaker. They have the form:

beep: frequency:duration

"frequency" is given in Hz, "duration" in milliseconds. Example:

beep: 620:320

Tab Sheet "Announcements"

If you want to announce moves by sounds, you can select the directory where they reside. If
the announcement should only be short, like 'Nf3', you can check the check box 'Short
announcement'. If the word 'pawn' should be announced, check 'Announce pawn'. Very
good move announcements are available on our website.

In case move announcements are cut off, you can set the delay for each letter to a higher
value, e.g. to 120%.

You can find a list of necessary files for move announcements here .

Main Page "Other settings"

Tab Sheet "Chess"

Check legality checks all moves for legality.

"Continuing finished games allowed" permits you and the engines to continue a game even
if it would be finished according to the rules, like the 50 moves rule or by repetition.

With 'Operator time' you can choose a time in seconds that will be subtracted for the human
player for every move. This compensates for the time a human player needs to make a
move. However, time for the human player does not get negative.

If 'Values always from white's point of view' is selected then the values submitted by the
engines are converted to values from white's point of view. Positive values mean 'white has
advantage', negative ones stand for 'black has advantage'. If this point is not checked the
values are given from the side of currently calculating engine. Then positive values mean
that the engine thinks the position is good for it, negative values mean the engine thinks it
is behind.

"Check 50 moves rule": This option determines whether Arena assigns a draw
automatically if 50 moves or more have been played without pawn move or capture. For
some studies this option should be switched off. The automatic draw assignment will be
switched off automatically with the middle option "only games from starting position":
Studies are normally not loaded from the starting position, but from set-up positions, e.g.
from EPD files.

Tab Sheet "System"

"Level infinite at loading EPD files" sets the Level to "infinite", if you load an EPD file,
e.g. if you want to analyse positions from this kind of file.

"Load last game at program start": The last game when Arena was exited will be load at the
next start of Arena.
Confirm if a game is not saved gives you a warning if you try to load a different game and
hereby overwriting the one already loaded or if you try to close Arena having made
unsaved changes to a file.

Confirming aborting a match asks you, if you really like to terminate a tournament, thus
loosing the last game of the tournament.

Under External Editor you can select you favourite editor or word processor. In all cases
when a file has to be displayed this editor is used, e.g. when you edit a configuration file of
a Winboard engine.

Under "HTML-Editor" you can select you favourite editor for HTML files. This program
ist started under Tournament ►Files ►Tournament Table:

"Extra text copied into the clipboard in addition to analyses": This text is copied to the
Clipboard when you execute the function "Position/ Copy analyses to clipboard", e.g. to
insert repeated data on the test configuration. A "^n" inserts a newline.

The setting for "Speed during manual replay" is used while replaying the moves forward or
backward while holding a navigation button pressed.

The "Speed during auto replay" is the speed used while replaying the moves forward or
backward automatically with Game / Replay /Replay forward or Game / Replay /Replay
backward .

If you associate Arena with the file types FCH , PGN, EPD and/or FEN, the following
happens: If you double-click a file with one of these extensions Arena will load them.
These file extensions are registered here for use with Arena. If a different program already
uses these file types, a message is displayed and you are asked if you want to replace this
file association.

Main Page "ICS"

You can choose the font colours for several occurrences in the ICS console, like shouts or
tells.
Using Arena
.. is intuitive. The configuration dialogues have been set to reasonable defaults. Almost all
functions can be reached via the main menu.

Some main menu items contain sub menus with more commands.

You can also call many functions from the pop-up menus by right clicking in a window or
on an element.

Mouse wheel:

Using the mouse wheel, you can navigate within the move list, except if you are in the in
the PGN, EPD or one of the ICS lists.

If you press the Ctrl key while you use the mouse wheel, the chessboard is enlarged or
shrinked.

If you press the Shift key while you use the mouse wheel, the visible part of the move list is
moved.
The Arena Engine System
Arena is designed as a multi-engine system.

This means that the GUI and the chess playing program are strictly separated from each
other. They communicate with a defined interface with each other. In Arena it is possible to
run eight chess engines in parallel, e.g. for analysis.

Therefore Arena offers ideal possibilities to run a lot of engines under a single program.

Arena supports two different types of protocols:

 UCI Engines

 Winboard Engines
Analysing
You can analyse games or positions manually by pressing the "analyze" button in the

navigation bar.

You can then move around the game, and the engines will always analyse the position after
the current move. End the analysis mode by clicking again the "analyze" button in the
navigation bar or press the ESC-key.

Do not use the chip button { or } for analysis, the engine will move and replace
the game's move with it's own.

Automatic Analysis of games or PGN or EPD files can be performed via the main menu
under Engines / Automatic Analysis.

The Variation Board is another tool for manually analysing positions.

Engine Tournaments
Under Engines Tournament (or keyboard shortcut F9) you can run a tournament between
any number of engines.

The tournament may be saved as an .at (Arena Tournament) file and resumed or edited
later. This clearly gives the you the advantage of saving your favourite tournament set - up,
say a best of WB engine tournament and having the ability to adjust it easily and quickly.

Tab Sheet Settings:

The tournament can be named and the highlighted available engines selected or deselected
with a mouse-click.

Should you desire a match between two engines only then select the two engines and either
Round robin or Gauntlet.

For more than two engines however the two modes produce different results.

A Round robin format means that each engine plays every other engine and will produce a
much higher number of games than the Gauntlet where the first engine in the list plays
every other engine for the specified number of rounds.

Carousel is an alternative method for calculating the pairings in Round Robin tournaments.

The number of rounds is the number of games per pairing. After every game (within a
pairing) the colours are switched. In order to avoid awarding an advantage for the first
engine, an even number of games should be selected, because white has a small advantage
because of the right to move first.

With three engines (e.g. Chispa, Crafty and Ruffian) the following pairings are
generated:

 Chispa ------ Crafty

 Ruffian ------ Chispa
 Crafty ------ Ruffian

Every round consists of three games. If you select 2 rounds, the following games will be
played:

First Round:

 Chispa - Crafty
 Ruffian - Chispa
 Crafty - Ruffian
Second Round:

 Crafty - Chispa
 Chispa - Ruffian
 Ruffian - Crafty

You see that the colours have been switched in the second round. The same applies for all
even rounds, if you selected more rounds.

"Level" selects the desired time control for the tournament.

The button "Delete results" deletes the stored results in the at file. The tournament table
will be emptied. All results of this tournament will be lost!

If you select a name for the tournament, it will be used in the PGN file as "Site" tag, if not,
the name specified under Option / User Data will be used.

The PGN "Round" tag will be set to the according Tournament round.

If you click the "New" button, a new tournament will be created. The default filenames will
be set for saving the various output, see below.

The same applies for the "Duplicate" button, but here the participants will not be deleted.

The button "Replace engine with newer version" can be used to replace an engine with a
newer version. The new engine (e.g. Delfi 4.2 instead of Delfi 4.1) gets the results of the
old engine. In this way you can introduce engine updates into a ongoing tournament.

The button "Add player" adds a (human) player to the tournament. If you want to
participate yourself in a tournament, don't hesitate... You will be told if it is your turn to
play.

The button "Add board computer" adds a board computer player to the tournament. But
operating the board computer is still your task!

With the button "Show results" you can generate the tournament result files once again,
without having to re-start the tournament. Arena shows the main window, where you can
view e.g. the tournament table. For this table and the individual results there are separate
tab sheets under the move list. Also the HTML file will be generated newly, which you can
view by your Internet browser, e.g. in Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Firefox or
Opera.

Tab Sheet Options:

On top of this tab you can select the chess variants: normal chess, Chess 960 or Shuffle
Chess.
You can select the starting position for each game here. "Default" means the normal chess
starting position, of course. "Load from PGN/EPD file, load sequentially" means that Arena
loads the starting positions from a PGN or EPD file. If you want to perform a tournament
with defined starting positions, you can do so this way. If you want the starting position
chosen at random, you can select the third possibility "Load from PGN/EPD file, choose
randomly". Arena then chooses a starting position at random to start the game with. In the
line below you can select the file to be loaded. Frequently tournaments are performed with
the well-known John Nunn starting positions. If you want to check engines without their
opening book, this is the way to do so.

"Repeat start position with switched colours" means that in the next round the same starting
position as the current comes on the board, if the next round number is even. So if you want
to do a tournament with defined starting positions and where each engine gets the same
starting position once with white and once with black, then you should choose this option.
The engines switch sides every round, so the same two engines play two games with the
same starting position, but with switched sides. The number of rounds must of course be set
to a value greater than one.

If you selected 'Adjudicate game', the game will be terminated if the respective value in
centipawns is reached. The value must be negative in order to work correctly!

Important: This works only, if both engines put out correct values under this threshold. If
one engine gives wrong values for some reason, this feature does not work. Check in a
normal test outside of a tournament if a good position for the engine is always positive, and
an bad position for the engine is alway negative. Check if this is true regardless if the
engine plays white or black. If the engine sends positive values even if it is playing with the
black pieces in a bad position, the engine sends values always from white's point of view.
Then you have to check the check box: Engines→Manage→Special→"Values absolute".

In addition, this value must fall below the threshold for 6 half moves.

The value should of course be low enough, e.g. -500 (negative!). A game will then be
resigned for the weaker side if the values of the engines is lower than 5 pawns for 6 half
moves.

'Adjudicate a draw when X moves played': If the maximum game length is exceeded, the
game is adjudicated a draw. This setting has no further condition. The game is always
adjudicated a draw after 'X' moves.

'Adjudicate early draw when X moves played and value 0.00': If this game length 'X' is
exceeded AND the values of both engines are exactly zero, the game is adjudicated a draw.
In addition, this value must be zero for 6 half moves.

The Autoflag setting you select here will be used for the tournament. Please note that
"Autoflag" should be set to "on" normally, because even with the best engines there might
happen some problems and the tournament can not continue if an engine hangs.
You can set the "Ponder" option separately for tournaments. This does not affect the
general setting under Engines / Ponder. Pondering makes of course only sense if you are the
lucky owner of a computer with at least two CPUs or cores. If you have only one CPU, this
option does not make sense, because the time for the engines is often not evenly distributed
(50%-50%). This can happen even under Windows NT/2000/XP operating systems.

Tab Sheet Files:

The general recommendation is to save all tournament files in the Arena subdirectory
"Tournaments".

You can save all games in a PGN file. All data you have chosen under Options
Appearance PGN will be saved. You must use this option, if you want to calculate ratings
with ELOStat later.

The protocol file saves all results of the games and some statistics. The search statistics in
the protocol file is only valid for opening stage and middle game, not for the endgame. A
position is regarded as an endgame position if at most 6 pieces (not pawns, white and black
together) are present on the board. The queen counts twice.

The tournament table exists in two different forms: One simple for display in the Arena
GUI (alternative to the move list, the tab "Table") during tournaments and one more
complex in HTML form. The latter can be displayed in your Internet browser.

The button "Set default filenames" sets the following filenames to their default
settings:

 (Arena directory)\Tournaments\(Tournamentname).pgn for the games in PGN

format
 (Arena directory)\Tournaments\(Tournamentname).log for the protocol file
 (Arena directory)\Tournaments\(Tournamentname).txt for the tournament table in
text format
 (Arena directory)\Tournaments\(Tournamentname). html for the tournament table in
HTML format

(Arena directory)\Tournaments\(Tournamentname).res for the individual results of the

engines shown also under the tab "Results".

These names are also set by "Settings / New" or "Settings / Duplicate".

Tab Sheet Table:

For the HTML table there are some options:

 "Insert country": Shows the country from the participant in the table.
  "Use flags": The flags of the countries are shown instead of the names.
 "Flags from website": Loads the flag files not from the local PC, but from the Arena
website. This is important if you want to publish your tournaments on the Internet.
 "Use English language": Shows the table in English language, not in your local
language. This is useful if you want to publish your tournaments to an international
audience.
 "Short results in table" doesn't show all the game results explicitly, e.g. 100=10
(1:win,0:loss, =:draw), but only as a summary, e.g. 2-3-1. The latter means 2 wins,
3 losses and one draw. This option saves table space.
 "Only points" means that the format is changed to the format "my points/possible
points". This would be in the above example, "2.5/6".
 Show PGN filename: Shows a line in the tournament with the PGN filename.
 PGN-URL: You can add a filename on the Internet here pointing to where you have
published the PGN file.
 Insert author:Adds a column with the Author of the engine
 Show the Web page of the author
 Show Axon Benchmark: Shows the speed of your system
 Show Win percent: Shows a % column in the table indicating the percent of won
games
 Show tournament conditions: Shows the tournament conditions as you enter them in
the following line
 A click on "Get" sets the conditions to: hash size, table bases on/off , ponder on/off,
possible starting positions
 Top line colourised: Select a colour for the top line of the tournament table.

The "S-B" column contains the Sonneborn-Berger fine rating value.

Tab Sheet Pairings:

Here you see the list of all pairings of the tournament. The number of games yet to play is
shown on top of the list. Behind the pairings the history of the results is shown: 1 means a
win for the first engine,
0 a win of the second, 1/2 for a draw and ? stands for a game that has not been finished.
Games that are not finished will be repeated.

With the button "Edit result" you can change the result of a pairing, because e.g. a game has
not been started correctly or a different error has happened. In such a case you simply
remember the round number of the game (or look it up in the PGN file) and set the result at
this place to "?". Then this game will be replayed.

If you load a (partially) played tournament, only the games that are yet to be played will be
played, if you don't change any settings. Eventually no games will be played, if the
tournament is already finished. If you want to replay the tournament, you can press the
"Reset to tournament start" button on the "Settings" tab.
 Tab Sheet Start/Quit:

If your computer should be shut down after the tournament has been finished, you can
choose "Shutdown computer after tournament".

You can also shut down your computer after a number of games. This is helpful if you want
to run your tournament in chunks and not all games in a row. Eventually the tournament
will not be played to the end, but you can restart it any time later.

If you select " Quit Arena after tournament", Arena quits when the tournament is finished.

"Restart Arena after so many games": here you can set the number of games after that
Arena quits and restarts itself. Arena then reloads the tournament and continues it. This is a
great help for avoiding problems that may arise (memory leaks, not enough resources) if a
tournament runs for a long time, e.g. days or weeks.

"Restart Arena at this hour": here you can set the hour Arena quits and restarts itself. You
can avoid long-term problems this way too. If a game runs at this time, Arena waits until
the game is over and then restarts itself.

Engines are restarted before every new pairing. If you want your engines to be restarted
after each game, you also can select this here.

Tab Sheet Blunder-Check:

This feature enables you to collect critical positions in which an engine has made an error
(blunder) and save them in an EPD file. You can examine this file later and e.g. check an
updated version of this engine and see if it makes less blunders.

If you check Enable Engine Blunder-Check this feature is activated.

Hint: Take a look at the Permanent Statistics window and imagine how you recognise a
blunder. Normally you identify blunders by jumps in the evaluation.

When the conditions under "Trigger" are met, the position will be saved into the EPD file.
You can set the threshold (if value decreases X centipawns), and the number of moves
(within X moves) in which the decrease in value could have happened in. If you e.g. choose
a high value for the decrease (say 500) here, only big blunders are saved to the EPD file, in
this case in the range of the loss of a rook. If you choose a small value here, small mistakes
are saved also. If you choose a higher number of moves (e.g. 10) also gradual changes in
the position value are counted as errors and saved to the EPD file. The setting No blunder if
already X centipawns down excludes bad moves that are made from a position that is
already bad, since moves that worsen your position are often unavoidable if you are down
quite a bit in your position.
Under Save critical position(s) in EPD file.. you can set from which move, going backward,
the positions are saved. So you can save several positions, always going back one full
move, as far back as you want. Often the error didn' t happen in the current move but one or
two moves back. So it is recommended to save at least the current position and one full
move back (resulting in the dialogue settings: from move 0 to move 1 move before).

The critical positions are saved into a file, which name is determined through the name of
the engine and "_white" or "_black" appended. The file is located in the Arena-directory
under "\Tournaments\Epd\", e.g.:

C:\Arena\Tournaments\Epd\Ruffian 2.0_white.epd and C:\Arena\Tournaments\Epd\Ruffian

2.0_black.epd.
File Formats
Arena can load and save the following file types :

 EPD
 PGN
 FCH

In the PGN-format single games can be replaced or appended. Because of the large size of
these PGN-files, not the whole file is saved completely, only the changed parts.

The format 'FCH' is specific to Arena and it shouldn't be used in the future because no
variations can be saved in this format.
Printing
With File Print you reach this dialogue with the tabs described below.

General Information:

The notation with selected diagrams will be printed. You can select diagrams for printing
by clicking on the move in the move list with the right mouse button and then select 'Move:
Print Diagram'. You can unselect the diagram in the same way.

To print diagrams you have to install a chess true-type-font like 'Chess Merida' in your
Windows system. A lot of fonts work properly, like 'Chess Merida', 'Chess Kingdom',
'DiagramTTHabsburg', 'DiagramTTOldstyle', 'DiagramTTUSCF'.

Tab Sheet "Print"

Here you can start the printer configuration dialogue of your printer and define headlines
and foot lines.

Headlines and foot lines consist of three areas each: A left, a middle and a right one. In all
areas you can write any text you like. Certain variables are replaced by some interesting
information:

 /f : The current filename will be printed.

 /n : The page number will be printed.
 /d : The current date will be printed.
 /t : The current time will be printed.
 /p : Game information will be printed.

Tab Sheet "Mode"

Under this tab sheet you can determine the format of the output and whether or not the
mainlines, values or comments are displayed. Also the font type and size of text can be set.

Tab Sheet "Margins/Columns"

Here you can adjust margins, number of columns and the margin between the columns.

Tab Sheet "Header"

You can select the fields to be printed before the game notation.
 Tab Sheet "Diagrams"

The size of the diagrams can be adjusted here and whether they are printed with or without
co-ordinates. Since Arena 1.99beta5 you also can choose to use the same font as you have
selected for the chessboard on the monitor or to choose a different font.

In order to have diagrams printed, you have to select the move after which the diagram is to
be printed with a mouse-right-click and then select "Move:Print Diagram". A "(D)" appears
after the move.
 The DGT Chessboard
With the electronic chessboard from DGT you
can play games with real pieces at a real
chessboard and yet you can take advantage of the
variety of modern chess programs and engines.
The electronic chessboard from DGT relays all
moves you make by hand to your PC.

To activate the DGT-support, choose 'Extras

Configure DGT chessboard'. You need the driver
from DGT . You may use also a DGT chess
clock, see below.

Then start the DGT support under 'Extras DGT Chessboard'. The position on your DGT
chessboard is now shown in Arena.

Arena supports the following features:

 You can make moves.

 If you choose the 'edit' mode in Arena, you can make moves without a chess engine
interfering with what you do by beginning to calculate or making a move.
 If you are not in 'edit' mode, the selected engine begins to calculate after you have
made a move. The move will be announced after the engine played it out.
 You can take back the moves and replay them again.
 You can set up a position
 Arena can announce the moves if you have installed the sound files from DGT and
have chosen the corresponding option

Making moves:

If you make moves, Arena takes a little while to recognise that you are e.g. not just sliding
with your rook along the line, but the process of making a move is finished. This time is
adjustable in milliseconds in the options tab in the DGT- driver- dialogue. If you want to
have the recognition of a move signalled with a sound, you can choose a sound file under
Options►Configure DGT chessboard, too.

Setting up a position:

Please save a previously played game. If you want to set up a position, remove the kings
from the board. Arena is now in set-up mode and doesn't recognise any moves . You can
now set up a position, of course also the normal starting position.

At last you place the kings on the DGT-chessboard. You place the king of the side to move
on the board last. If black is to move, you place first the white, then the black king on the
DGT board.
Move announcement:

If an engine has made a move, it is reasonable to let it announce by Arena, so you don't
have to look on the computer screen again and again. You can download English and other
move announcements from the Arena Website ( , section User files). The DGT XL chess
clock can even show the moves on the clock , see below.

Move announcements are also found on the DGT website. Go to DGTProjects and select
'download'. There you find files like 'MoveAnnouncements_English'. Download and install
them. All you have to do now is tell Arena where to find the files. Select
'Options/Appearance' and the tab 'sounds' and type or select the appropriate path. If you
always want a move announcement, check the check box there. If you only want to have
sounds announced if you're playing with the DGT chessboard, select the corresponding
option in the DGT configuration dialogue.

A hint on reversing the DGT board:

If one day you choose to reverse the DGT board and the white and black pieces are now on
the opposite side than they were before, set up the initial chess position once. Arena now
remembers the board orientation for future games, even if you leave the Arena program.

Leaving the DGT mode:

You can leave the DGT mode the same way you started it: 'Options/DGT Chessboard'.

DGT 2000 Chess Clock:

Arena supports this special chess clock. The times of the clock are transformed into times
used for the corresponding move.

DGT XL Chess Clock:

Arena supports the special DGT XL chess clock. Moves and evaluations can be displayed
on the clock. If you check "Show evaluation", Arena constantly shows the evaluation from
the engine.
The Novag Citrine
With the electronic board chess computer "Citrine" from Novag you can play games with
real pieces at a real chessboard and yet you can take advantage of the variety of modern
chess programs and engines. The board chess computer relays all moves you make by hand
to your PC.

Set-up your Citrine:

 Connect your Citrine to your PC,

 plug the chessboard into the mains,
 set the chess pieces up and
 turn the Citrine ON.

Set-up Arena:

 Double click the Arena program to open.

 Once opened, click Extras in the main menu
 Under Extras, click Novag-Chessboard
 Click on “Start Novag Support” and wait until the program has registered your
Citrine. Once registered you can hide this window.
 Arena is now ready to display, print and save your game: Each time you make a
move (or make a move for the Citrine), that move will be displayed in the Arena
GUI as well as on your chessboard.
Chess Servers
With Arena you can log in to many different Internet Chess Servers (ICS) and play there as
guest or registered user against players in the whole world.

And that's the way it works:

 Connect to the Internet

 Start Arena.
 With the Globe of the Tool bar, Extras / Internet Chess Server or Ctrl+I you reach
the dialogue for choosing the Internet Chess Server.
 Select the server and log-in
 Now you can play chess in the way you know it. You can also observe games, chat
etc. If you're not so familiar with chess servers, just type 'help' at the command line.
Also you can select from a variety of pre-defined commands from a pop up menu if
you click the right mouse button.
 With the globe of the Tool bar, Extras / Internet Chess Server or Ctrl+I you end the
ICS Mode .

Bughouse and Crazyhouse are not supported. Only normal chess is supported, maybe some
'wild' variants work.

Logging-in

Screen areas

Options

Defining buttons
Opening Book
Concept:

In Arena you can load one main book. The content of the main book is shown on the
"Book" tab sheet as an alternative to the move list or together with the move list in the
"Mix 1" tab sheet. In this list you can see all moves, priorities, probabilities etc. This book
is called here "Arena Main book". All engines will use this book, if they are configured to
do so in the engine configuration dialogue.

Additionally you may define a separate book for every engine. This book will be read
before every move, when the engine is to move. This book is called here "Arena Engine
book". These settings can also be changed individually for each engine in the engine
configuration dialogue.

Arena Main books and Arena Engine books have the same Arena-specific file format and
can only be handled by Arena, not by the engines.

The previous statements refer to Arena's own book management. A different topic is that
many engines might use their own internal book. This book is here called "Internal Engine
book". You can set this book for UCI Engines in Arena in another dialogue. There is no
standardised way of selecting a book for Winboard engines, refer to the documentation of
the engine.
Tablebases
Arena supports endgame table bases using the help of the engine Gaviota of Miguel A.
Ballicora. Gaviota is part of any Arena distribution.

The result of the database query (if there is one) is displayed in the area of the opening
classification/ EPD string:

The results of the possible contermoves are displayed in the area of the opening book:

A move is executed on the board by a double click on it.

Configuration:

Under Options / Configure Table bases you get to the following dialogue:
With the option "Use Table bases" you can switch table bases on or off.

With the setting "Databases including up to X pieces are installed" you can limit the
amount of pieces up to which table bases are used, even if table bases for more are
installed.

You can change the compression used by Gaviota.

Hint: If the logo is displayed, Gaviota is loaded:

You can set a maximum of three paths to endgame table bases.

For testing purposes you can start or terminate Gaviota, and send commands to Gaviota.

To investigate problems, you can watch the communication between Arena and Gaviota on
the tab sheet "Log" (Similar to the engines debug window for normal engines):
File Structure (Default):

 \TB : Folder for Gaviota engine (gaviota.tb) and diverse auxiliary Gaviota files
 \TB\gtb.cp4 : Folder for level 4 compressed Gaviota Table bases
 \TB\gtb.cp4\gtb3 : Folder for Gaviota Table bases with 3 men (supplied with Arena)
 \TB\gtb.cp4\gtb4 : Folder for Gaviota Table bases with 4 men (not supplied with
Arena)
 \TB\gtb.cp4\gtb5 : Folder for Gaviota Table bases with 5 men (not supplied with
Arena)

The 4 and 5 men table bases not supplied with Arena can be generated by Gaviota's table
base generator or downloaded on the web.

You can find further information to Gaviota in the file \TB\gaviota-readme.txt.

Miscellaneous Information
Program Limitations:

 Maximum number of engines running simultaneously : 8

 Maximum number of installed engines : 20000
 Maximum number of moves in a game : unlimited
 Maximum length of a variation in a game : 2000 moves
 Maximum number of games in a PGN-database: unlimited, depends only on the
available memory

Program Files:

 Arena.exe : The chess GUI, main program file

 ArenaGUI.cfg : Configuration file of Arena GUI settings
 ArenaENG.cfg : Configuration file for Arena GUI engine settings
 Readme\English.chm : Help file in English language
 Readme\German.chm : Help file in German language
 Readme\Readme.txt : Hints in English language
 Readme\Liesmich.txt : Hints in German language
 Readme\copyright.txt : Copyright Licenses for Arena and the engines
 Languages\English.lng: English language file
 bundle.ini : File used for the automated installation of engines in a bundled package
 engines.ini: File with information about engines, helps Arena installing engines
 ecocodes9.txt : English opening classification
 my.txt : Text file for your personal notes
 timeseal. exe : Used for avoiding lag on Internet chess servers
 timestamp. exe : Like the above, used by chessclub.com
 accuclck. exe : Like the above, used by chess.net
 ICSLoginScript.txt : Contains the login script used while logging-in to chess servers

Suggested Folders Under the Root Folder of Arena:

 Anthems: National anthems to play e.g. if an engine starts

 Arlokal: Tool for translators for localising Arena
 Engines: The engines should be installed here, a sub folder for each engine.
 Flags: National flags
 Graphics: Graphics for the background, squares etc. of Arena
 Graphics\Schemes: Graphics for colour schemes
 Graphics\Players: Player photo files from SCID, e.g. wikipedia.spf,
FIDE.spf,historic.spf,download
 Languages: Language files, including English
 Logos: Engine logo files
 Readme: Readme file, copyright file, help files
 Shelf: Folder to save games ("Temp" in main screen)
 Sounds: Sounds to play at various occasions
  Speedtest: Files of the Arena Speed Test
 TB: Table bases and Gaviota engine
 Tournaments: Very much recommended folder for your tournament files

Windows Versions:

 Minimal Version: XP
 64 bit: supported, Arena can start 64-bit engines

Wine Versions:

 Minimum Version: 1.0, newer is better

Glossary
Engine

A chess engine calculates a move. It sends search information for the user to the GUI.
Opposite: GUI. Engines communicate with the GUI with protocols, e.g. Winboard or UCI.
Engine examples: SOS, Ruffian, Spike.

Gaviota

Chess engine by Miguel A. Ballicora, see also tablebases

GUI

Graphical User Interface. The GUI shows the user the chessboard, move list, information
on the search process of the engine. Arena and Winboard are GUIs for chess.

Half move

A half move is always a move from white or black. A move is generally two half moves,
one from white and one from black.

Pondering, Permanent Brain

Calculating while the opponent is to move. E.g. while the opponent thinks on his move, the
chess engine can calculate counter moves. The result is often a greater playing strength.

ProDeo

A chess engine by Ed Schröder. It is a descendant of the world-famous " Rebel" chess

program.

Protocol

Protocols are used to organise the communication between engine and GUI.The most
important ones are: UCI and Winboard.

SOS

SOS - That's the name of a strong chess engine, programmed by Rudolf Huber. SOS was
the first engine to become Arena Partner and is included in most Arena packages.

Table bases

Tables containing the result of each position. Arena uses the chess engine Gaviota, to query
the Gaviota table bases and display within the GUI.
Index
"Autoflag"
"Chip" button
Carousel System
Common parameters for all UCI-engines
Demo button
DGT 2000 Chess Clock
DGT XL Chess Clock
Engine
Export
External Editor
Gaviota
GUI
Half move
HTML-Editor
Lock an engine to a position
Mouse wheel
Move list
Offering a Draw
Pause an engine and resume it later on
Pondering
Pondering
ProDeo
Protocol
Protocol file
Rebel
Resigning a Game
S-B
Sonneborn-Berger
SOS
Table bases
The Chess Clocks and Logos Window
The Tournament-Info-Window
Tool bar Configuration
UCI Filter
Values always from white's point of view