How to use a chess engine to study positions?

	How to use a chess engine to study positions? I have the Houdini on the Arena platform. I don't understand what's going on. I don't understand the output and sometimes I can't tell whether it's calculating or not. If anybody could help me out with this or suggest a different chess engine system and how to use it, It would be very helpful. Plus points for the best answer. Thanks. Asked By: Omarstphn - 12/23/2012

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker
You are not alone in your frustration, running Houdini under a different interface will probably not help that much. So far as I have been able to determine, the computer/human interfaces for all of these programs are poor, and the meager pdf manuals are worse . The engines themselves are awesome--far stronger than any humans. It's too bad that the companies making these programs don't spend a little time with making them more usable for people. I have concluded that the designers of the computer/human interfaces for these types of programs fall into three categories. 1. Programers who do not know much about chess. 2. Chess players who do not know much about designing human/computer interfaces. 3. People who do not know much about chess AND do not know much about designing human/computer interfaces. My first suggestion is that you go to your local chess club and find someone who can show you the capabilities that the program does have. I don't think an answer here in a few paragraphs can make up for lack of a decent manual and lack of a decent user interface, but some one on one instruction might help. My second suggestion is for you accept that most of the study and understanding of the game has to come from within your head. The computer won't feed it to you in an understandable manner. Just as merely playing through moves of a game between grandmasters won't help you that much, running them through the computer to find the right move won't help much. You can't possibly memorize all the right moves. Instead if your are studying a grandmaster game, you must force yourself to look at each move in the game you are studying, consider it carefully, decide how you would move, then study the actual move made by the grandmaster plus any commentary available to you. See GM Jonathan Rowson's book titled "Chess for Zebras" for some helpful pointers on how to learn. Most of his book is rather advanced, but the first chapter is useful to players of all levels. After conducting your own analysis of each move and reading what has been written about it in a GM's annotation it might also be helpful to see what Houdini would do in that situation. But it might not. One of the problems with looking at the computer's choice of moves and expecting to be enlightened is that the computer does not necessarily do a good job of telling why one move is better than another. Even if the computer would tell you why a move is better, that might not be very helpful. Unless it is merely taking advantage of another player's blunder, the computer might be looking at a tactical combination that is far beyond your capabilities, or it might be setting up a subtle positional strategy that will insure a winning end game. Just knowing the best moves will not be sufficient to teach you to understand the reasons that they are the best moves. Good luck. Answered By: liberal_60 - 12/23/2012

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Play chess with me now i am online , login to Yahoo massanger and play nw , i can beat u within seconds Answered By: Ameba - 12/23/2012

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