Limit Playing Strength

There are three ways to limit the engine's playing strength:

  • Engine-handled UCI-2 way
  • Arena-handled
  • Proprietary engine-handled ways

1) For UCI-2 engines you can limit the playing strength to an ELO-value:

[limitstrenght.bmp]

This is under Main Menu arrow Levels arrow Limit Playing Strength, if an engine supports the extensions of the UCI protocol (called UCI-2, from April 2004). You can set the playing strength of this engine here in a dialogue box that appears. If you cannot select this menu item, the engine is either WinBoard or it is UCI but does not support this function.

The playing strength is handled only by the engine. Arena just passes the command to the engine.

If an engine supports this function, it should be the preferred way to make an engine weaker.


2) Another way to weaken engines that works with all engines (Arena-handled):

Under the engine configuration you have the possibility to reduce the strength of engines which are too good for your personal play. So, you go under Engines / Manage / Details to the engine you want to make weaker. Under the 'Special' tab you have the strength setting. Here you can set the strength to as low a 1% of the original playing strength.

[enginemanagement-strength.bmp]

How does it work?

The engine gets a lower amount of time. The engine thinks it is playing under a lower time control with less time to make a move. With a strength of 50% Arena pretends to the engine, it is running with half the time of the level that is currently set.

Example:

You set the Level '40 moves in one hour'. With a strength of 50% the engine plays like '40 moves in 30 minutes'.

3) Proprietary ways of limiting the playing strength:

  • Delfi: Edit the delfi.ini file and look for the parameter "ELO_STRENGTH"
  • CraftySE : It can load personalities. Some of them have a lower playing strength
  • ProDeo has personality and strength settings