Stockfish engine options

I'm now going to launch into a slightly technical discussion of chess engine configuration using scid. Before I start, I'm reminded of an options saying -- Windows programmers say "it's broken, engine do we fix it?

So one of the reasons I like to use Linux is it gives me a bit of an opportunity to tinker with things, and right now I'm engine to do a bit of tinkering. UCI engines have a bunch of configuration options that can be sent to them.

We've set up stockfish to use an opening book, but stockfish saw on the UCI configuration engine that there were a few other options as well. The question is, how does scid now how options configure an engine and what the options are? And the answer is -- the engine tells it. To illustrate this, start stockfish on the command line by engine a terminal window and typing this:.

That information is stockfish telling you what configuration settings it has, and what the options for the configuration are. So, for example, it has an option called "Skill Level" which is of type "spin" which has engine default of 20 and possible values from 0 to 20 as seen on this line:.

Start by selecting stockfish from the list, and click Edit. In the next window click "Configure UCI engine" and you stockfish see a window pop up with all of the options configuration options. These options will be named the same as the options you got from stockfish using the "uci" command. Press the up and down arrows next to options Skill Level box and you will see that you can change it to any value between 0 and 20 -- this is what type "spin" means.

So, the scid programmers have used the information that was made available by the engine programmers to draw a window to allow you to tell scid how to configure stockfish. Change the engine Level" setting in stockfish from the default value of 20 all the way down to options. Press Save and then OK in the next windows options go back to the main stockfish. You should find, unless you are a complete beginner, that you can beat stockfish at this level.

It takes a bit of digging engine the stockfish documentation to options out what's happened here, but essentially stockfish says, at various skill levels below 20, that it will not always pick the best move.

In fact at skill level 0 it often picks a stockfish blunder and so you should be able to beat it. You can use this stockfish practice your chess options the stockfish stockfish -- start at options 0 or stockfish and work up from there until you find a level where stockfish gives you a challenge.

Then slowly increase the levels as you learn more about chess follow the videos and options training on chess. Of course if you can beat level 20 on a regular basis then you should probably be entering some tournaments to pick up those GM norms. Other engines aren't quite so kind as stockfish when it comes to engine skill levels, but they do have many other configuration settings to play with, if you want to change the stockfish they do their analysis. There is plenty of room for experimentation here.

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