Arena and UCI commands.

[Josu? Forte]

Hi,

Can someone tell me how can I enable the UCI command "searchmoves" in Arena?
I tried but I did not find a way to do that.

From UCI protocol:
* searchmoves <move1> .... <movei>
restrict search to this moves only
Example: After "position startpos" and "go infinite searchmoves e2e4 d2d4"
the engine should only search the two moves e2e4 and d2d4 in the initial position.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Josu

[Fabien Letouzey]

Can someone tell me how can I enable the UCI command "searchmoves" in Arena?
I tried but I did not find a way to do that.

From UCI protocol:
* searchmoves <move1> .... <movei>
...

Hi,

I know nothing about Windows software, but I can help you with UCI.

It's not like this command has to be activated or not. It's just not needed for normal game play (e.g. engine matches).

I can see some potential use for book learning or "2nd best move" analysis, but many (if not most) engines and probably most GUIs as well don't use this command at all (guess).

Maybe experienced users can comment on other GUIs sending it and explain in which circounstances they do so ... I would say Shredder Classic is the most probable.

Fabien.

[Anonymous]

It's not like this command [searchmoves] has to be activated or not. It's just not needed for normal game play (e.g. engine matches).

I can see some potential use for book learning or "2nd best move" analysis, but many (if not most) engines and probably most GUIs as well don't use this command at all (guess).

Exatly, Fabien. I think, it is very useful for some analysis. It is very easy to implement in the engine (much easier than an efficient multi-PV mode) and can serve as a "poor man's multi PV mode". In Shredder Classic, if I want to know, if there is a good alternative to the move shown by the engine, I press shift and input the move with the mouse, and a search will be started with that move excluded.

BTW. Other than multi-PV mode, which an engine does not need to support, according to the UCI protocol, every engine must support searchmoves. I think, it better would have been a voluntary engine feature. In practice, engines will work well, without this feature. Shredder Classic uses it for analysis. When the game move and the engine move differ, Shredder will start the same search to fixed depth (the same depth that was reached before) with only the game move inside search moves. This should give the best comparision of the two scores. Depending on the score difference and analysis options, an annotation will be written to the game score. I personally think, this is better, than the alternative of doing the game move, and starting a fixed depth search of depth-1, because (for example) search extensions may differ. Of course, it might differ a bit anyway (although not for my engine, I think).

To the original question: I had asked Martin Blume, and he said, searchmoves is not supported in Arena. It seemed not high on his list. But this was some time ago - certainly over a year.

Cheers,
Dieter

[Josu? Forte]

Hi Dieter and Fabien,

First of all, thank you for the comments!

Since the last release of my engine (april/2004) I am working in a completly new version written from scracht. It is a hard work since I do not have much free time to work on it, but it gives me pleasure anyway.

I am trying to write a readable and understandable source code (in English) in order to make it publicly available when it is ready (I do not know when).

Now I am working on a swap function in order to make a better move ordering and to make the use of quiescent search efficient.

Arena and UCI protocol have helped me so much in the development of my engine. I do not use Arena as a UCI GUI only, I use it all the time as a development tool, making my life easier in chess programming, debugging and testing.

That is why I have been so insistent on the UCI and Arena matter in this forum. I am sorry if I am boring someone with these non common questions.

I have sent Martin Blume a message about "searchmoves" command, as well. Hope that this subject gets a higher priority in his "todo" list.

By the way, I have implement "searchmoves" command in my beta engine. If someone can test it to me, please just drop a message at
josue@petrobras.com.br

Regards,
Josu