General operation
57
either a bishop or a knight, which are both equivalent to about three pawns. Rooks are worth five and the queen about nine pawns. If the values deviate from whole numbers this is the result of additional positional considerations( mobility, deployment of pieces, king safety, pawn structure, etc.). In addition to the precise pawn values, the evaluation is also given in standard chess symbols: +– means White is winning, –+ means Black is winning, = means the position is drawish.
The search depth tells you how many moves deep the search has progressed. The value is in“ ply” or half-moves. The first number gives you the“ brute force” depth, the second is the depth to which certain critical lines have been investigated. The value is in“ ply” or half-moves. For instance a display of“ depth = 12 / 30” means that the program has looked at every continuation to a depth of 12 ply( six moves), while some promising or dangerous continuations are being examined up to a depth of 30 ply.
After it has played a move, the chess engine shows you which move it expects you to choose( in the field after the depth field).
Finally you can see the speed at which it is running:“ 634kN / s” means the program is generating and evaluating 634,000 positions per second(“ kilo nodes per second”). Right-click this display if you want to see the total number of positions instead.
In the section below the search information you see the“ principle variation”, i. e. the best continuation the program has found so far. Together with the search information the total number of positions is also given. In the above example the engine has looked at 4.061 million positions to come up with the third line. You can right-click the display and select more or less information, and decide whether the history of the search should be scrolled. You can also insert a small“ variation board on which you can play through the main line the program is considering. Right-click menu in the engine window
If you right-click the engine window, you get a menu with a number of functions or options to set. Some of the items will only be available when the program is in Analysis mode( Alt-F2).
Engine: This allows you to switch engines.
© ChessBase 2015