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1. Go to
30, FQ Time of poll:
Topic are our older fora system
from Parsimony: 1. 258 votes of ~ 5.390
different IP's in the latest two weeks. 2. Interesting is: How many
of this ~ 5.390 persons saw this poll? My opinion shortly: Fora are "more" popular in the time 1996/7 up to ~ 2003. For many users very interesting to discuss with others about all the different topics. Today a forum isn't really an long time event (for a webpage with many visits). The most users discuss in mails and don't search the way to open systems, like fora. One of the reasons chess server have so many success. Furthermorre, you will find in the "bigger" available fora the same names or users. For our "little" team a webpage without forum is more easy to handle. We hope that our News-Ticker system and the other information we will offer for you are interesting enough. Of course, our older Arena Support with ~ 40.000 messages are interesting. To use a forum for a developement is just a great idea. We have to say thanks to all members of our older fora which try to help us. But I it is the right way to closed our older two fora because 10-15 hours weekly for a administration is to many work. In this time we can try other thinks around Arena Chess GUI and ... our private live. Thanks for your understanding!
29, FQ To late for the Dutch Gladiators. The ecocodes.txt is now in Dutch available!
28, FQ Johan Havegheer (Belgium) sent us the Dutch menu translation of Arena 1.1. This is the first translation of Johan. In the past Mijke de Witt (The Netherlands) translated different versions of Arena. We have 28.163 hits on
our main page from The Netherlands = 4.5% and ranking 5 of 161 countrys!
So the Belgium flag in the right
flag for this message!
Johan have won this cup too and sent me this pic for around one year :-) To the newest record: If we got the Polish and Norwegian menu translations, Arena is in 18 languages available !!! But the Polish and Norwegian
fans of Arena Chess GUI can used the older translations for Arena 1.1 too. Johan Havegheer is one of the first "Winboarders" and likes to test engines. He made a fantanstic work for us in the time during testing Ruffian 2.x for our first CD-Rom. The cup in Leiden 2003 (Dutch-ch) won by Johan Havegheer, Leo Dijskmann and myself with Perola Valdfridson engine Ruffian. Johan is a trusted friend, tester and team worker! Thanks Johan
...
27, FQ First: Thanks to all helping "Gladiators" for sending bug reports by mail in the lastest three weeks. It seems that our new system works fine and the older support forum isn't necessary. We can work faster without loosing much time for non Arena topics and quarrelings. Furthermore, we got a lot of very, very interesting wishes
to Arena Chess
GUI. Second: You know, Martin will work on three main points
during this year: In combination with point three Martin have to improved some other important positions in his GUI. A good example are the analyze features. Let us look on the graphic of the ALPHA version of Arena 1.2.
Please click on this pic and you can see more details (1280x1024,
0,39 Mb *.jpg file)!
WOW, a lot of things you
never saw in Arena Chess GUI !!! 01.
Orange / green arrows (on the screen you can see orange arrows only). 02. Endangered / attacked fields in green, yellow and red. The black queen can take the white pawn on d4, the field d4 have the red color. The field e6 is yellow because only the pawn on f7 can cover the pawn of e6. 03.
Oh what's this? A box for move comments? This must be new too ... RIGHT! 04.
Arena must have an own figurine notation for such options, if so? 05.
The pieces on the board must be new for Arena? Martin is working on much more
interesting things. Bigger improvements to other main feature or bug fixes and
smaller
changes! In the latest
three weeks, Martin works daily in the evening on
the developement of Arena Chess GUI four hours (not on weekends). To the numbers
of Arena versions: Arena 1.2
Beta 1 will be availabe in around six weeks!
26, FQ The only reason to make changes in Arena Setup files / *.zip file is: We used the name FRC (Fischer Random Chess) in readme files,
setup and copyright files, logos for FRC engines. We take the opportunity and made other changes too: - engines.ini version 94
by Pedro Beltran updated. Sorry, but a name is important! NOTE:
25, FQ Hans-Walter Schmitt is
executive chairman of ChessTigers, Mainz! Furthermore, Hans-Walter is the
protagonist of Chess960, Interview with Hans-Walter
Schmitt can be found under:
I am sure Ar"u"na will like
Ar"e"na :-) Arena Chess GUI by Martin
Blume is around two years compatible to Chess960.
Reason enough to give our Gladiators a little bit more information about Chess960!
24, FQ Alexander Schmidt (Arena
Team) sent a review about "Arena Engine Tournaments".
This is the start point for our
new "Review selection". In the next 1-2 days can be found an Interview with Hans-Walter Schmitt (ChessTigers, organizer from the Chess960 events in Mainz, Germany and "The Catalyser" of the Chess960 idea by World Champion Robert Fischer (USA). Visit from time to time our new review selection! Thanks Alex
23, FQ Again a big help for our team! Massimo Luise (Italy) sent the ecocodes.txt in Italian language. This main work done by Christopher Conkie (Scotland) is now available in eight languages. So far Arena is in 15 languages available. Possible that we will get soon the Polish and Dutch translation. At the moment the Arena
"Gladiators" are the persons for "to walk a talk"
(I believe the American like this sentence, not sure I am right). Massimo and the other helpers
gave us so far a lot of power. January 25th,
2005 (23:30 MEZ): What can I say (without to write a long story) ... Thanks Massimo
22, FQ Very
interesting is the "Arena rating list" after ATL League A round 6. Fruit 2.0
by Fabien LETOUZEY (France) on ranking 4 !!! Shredder 8.0
isn't ""so"" phenomenal if we compare the results with other ratings we can
found in WWW. Another reason can be the great opening book by Sandro Necci (Italy). This opening book is optimized of the playing style by Shredder. The opening book by Harry Schnapp I used is optimized for all available engines. Harry tried to find out the best opening lines for most of the available engines.
21, FQ Here are the final results of ATL
League A round 6 (as guest played Gandalf 6.0 and Movei 00.8.295). Without Gandalf and Movei is
Ruffian 2.1.0 the winner. ATL League B round 6 started on January 23rd, 2005 (23:30).
380 games played / Tournament finished Tournament start: 2005.01.12, 20:43:27 Latest update: 2005.01.22, 20:59:42 Site/ Country: Schweich, Germany Level: Turnier 40/10 Hardware: 4x Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz mit 2.047 MB Speicher Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (Build 2600) Axon Benchmark: Axon-Benchmark-4 (00:00:38.9 sec.) [2367545 pps.] PowX= 7.376 Table created with: Arena 1.1
20, FQ The ecocodes.txt is now in seven languages available. 1. Catalan, version 1.15 New are the translation in Portuguese by Dilso A. Borges (Brazil) and Swedish by one of our Arena main testers Hans Ericson (Sweden). Very helpful is the Excel table by Agustín Gomila (Argentina), see News-Ticker message 19! Each day we have really a news we can public and for the future we have a lot of nice ideas for our "new" News-Ticker information system. About the poll we are a little bit disappointed but the results are clear for us. Since the poll is running we have 4.134 different IPs / visitors on our webpage. Only 122 gave a vote to poll 1/2005 = 2,95% of visitors. 1,5% of Arena webpage visitors only have interest on a forum. Same in the time our older Parsimony forum is still running. We had around 730 members, active members around 50-75. This are 1% of different visitors in the year 2004. We need around 10-15 hours weekly to managed a forum with mails, answers of support questions and so on. For a little team (we all have a job) to many work. But let us wait of the final result of poll 1/2005. One information more: Arena
webpage have at the moment 253 Mb webspace
in used.
Have fun with Arena and Arena webpage! An user asked
me for provider information after my message:
19, FQ Under
Hint:
Written by
Agustín Gomila
(Argentina): This Excel file can help the translators to make the translation of the ecocodes file. The file has the ECO codes (version 1.16) in English, Spanish and French as example. The first 3 columns should not
be modified. Then, the following 3 columns
have the names of the openings in English, Spanish and French, these columns can
be modified. Example: You can replace anyone of the three columns with the new translated openings, the translator can choose which of the languages it will use as source. It is very easy in Excel search
and replace some words like "Variation", "Opening", "Attack", etc. to the new
language The following column (seventh
column) has another special character "}" The eighth column has the movements (in English) (necessary, don't change and don't translate) It is very easy also to replace texts like Nf6 (in Spanish, Cf6), but to be careful to modify the eighth column, for this reason the Excel file has a backup copy of the columns that you should not be modified. I recommend that once finished the translation, the backup copy is used to restore this columns. Finally when the translation is concluded, simply hide the unnecessary columns (in other languages), select all the cells and copy to a text editor like Notepad. Then, eliminate the "Tab" characters of the text file created. The text file should be saved with the following name: "ecocodesXX.txt". Where XX is the number of the language. Example, English=9, Spanish=10, French=12, German=7, Catalan=3."
18, FQ Harry Schnapp wrote us an
interesting text for our News-Ticker in German and English!
Hallo Schachfreunde, Es ist auf der Basis des Mainbook 4.0 mit gleichen Konfigurationen aufgebaut aber um ca. 80% erweitert mit Partien aus zwei riesigen PGN Dateien. Trotz seiner Größe behält das Buch die Proportion zwischen kurze, mittlere und lange Varianten. Es wird oft mit Recht gesagt: Masse bedeutet nicht unbedingt Steigerung der Klasse (Qualität!). Nur der Verbraucher kann beurteilen, ob er überhaupt ein überdimensionales Buch benötigt! Auf jeden Fall bedanke ich mich bei meinem älteren Sohn, der unter meiner Aufsicht die Schwerstarbeit geleistet hat und bei den zwei alten Schachfreunde und Partner die mir diese PGN Dateien zur Verfügung gestellt haben!
Hello my chess friends, A second version, the Mainbook "Giant" is now at the disposal of singulars who have DSL for rapid download, and enough available memory. Capacity: 82,2 Mb (6,1 Mb *.rar) with 232.489 variations and 2.843.020 moves. Hard to decide precisely if such a big book is necessary. It is constructed on the basis of Mainbook 4.0 with the same configuration, but extended with games from two big PGN files. Despite its big volume, the book preserves proportion between short, medium and long variations. With good reason, one says that quantity does not necessarily lead to better quality. Only the user has to decide, if he needs such a big book. Anyway, thanks to my older son who, following my indications, performed the hardest work, and also my heart-felt thanks to the two chess friends and old partners, who put at my disposal the PGN files.
January 16th, 2005 Back to
Arena Chess GUI is compatible to UCI 1, 2, WinBoard 1, 2 protocol. The most visitors have interest to find out the strongest available engine for Arena Chess GUI. Commercial:
It seems that Shredder 9.0 will be available soon! 01.
The next and perhaps most interesting chess program in middlegame in this times is Gandalf 6.0 by Steen Suurballe (Denmark). Steen's program is very strongth for long time analyses, middlegame / strategic positions and have a very good opening book. Book author Dan Wulff develops the book for Gandalf since more as 10 years. I believe Shredder 7.04 / 8.0 is maybe 30 ELO stronger as Gandalf 6.0 but Gandalf have the more spektakular playing style in middlegame. In combination with Shredder / Gandalf you have the optimal analyze tool. The opening book by Dan is compatible to Arena Chess GUI.
Gandalf 6.0
is a short time available. 01.
Free available: But the most fun I have at the moment with Movei by Uri Blass (Israel). Movei is a good example for step by step developing. Each version is stronger and Uri do really a good job.
Movei is playing as ATL League B engine as guest in ATL League A and it seems that all the "cracks" have problems with Movei. Not easy to make a full point vs. Movei.
7x Remis, 7x loosed and 2x won! Go to
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