What is the best "beginner" engine for use with Arena GUI?

I downloaded Arena, and right now I am just using SOS 5.1, which I think is the default engine that comes with Arena. Others that come with Arena include AnMon 5.75, Hermann 2.8 and Ruffian 1.05.  Now I'm reading about Stockfish and others. But to me, an engine is an engine. 

I am rated around 730 here on chess.com. I am interested in just a basic engine to use in analyzing games, my own and those of others. I don't want or need something that goes 20 moves deep and covers every alternate line and alternates to the alternate lines.  

Really, while I am not a newcomer to chess, I know nothing about engines. I keep reading about how Stockfish and Alpha Zero (?) are so incredibly powerful, but what are some good easy-to-use engines for basic analysis? And also to play against?

Just simple, basic analysis.

For a beginner, the default engines that come with Arena are just fine. They'll point out your tactical oversights and show you better, alternate continuations. Stockfish nevertheless is completely free so it doesn't hurt to install it as well. Besides the Arena engines tend to crash a lot while Stockfish is more stable. Alpha Zero is Google's chess supercomputer, it's not available to the public.

Thank you very much! I didn't know that the Arena engines crash a lot. So far I have had no problems with SOS 5.1. 

I am really new to the world of engines. I used Arena a couple years ago on my old computer, but only to play through games I had downloaded.  

Every chess instruction video I watch says analysis using engines should be a part of improving, so I am trying to figure out how using an engine can help me. I am not obsessed about improving my rating. At my age I don't have any illusions about becoming a great player.  But a little improvement never hurt anyone!

You've hit upon a topic for which I have a soft spot in my heart. (Or, should I say, a soft spot in my head, idk.) This may be a rather long post, so I hope I don't get any "TLDR" responses. ;-)

Firstly, let me say that I'm not a huge fan of using analysis engines to try to improve your chess, at least for us lower rated players. The main problem is that, although the engine can tell you the best moves, it can't tell you *why* a move is good. All it can do is spit out lines and variations. Engines do have a limited usefulness for performing blunder checks so you can spot any tactics that you missed. But there's even a potential disadvantage to having an engine do blunder checking - If the tactic is so deep that you never would have found it OTB in a million years, what good does it do to have the missed tactic pointed out to you?

I recently switched to Linux, so I don't run Arena for Windows very much any more. Nevertheless, I'll be glad to throw in my two cents.

I haven't noticed any particular problems with the Arena-bundled engines crashing any more than other engines. I guess your mileage may vary. Most of the bundled engines are in the 2400 to 2600 range, which should be good enough for analyzing games for us mere mortals. Rybka and Spike 1.4 are more in the range of the 2900s. However, I have a philosophical bias against using Rybka, and I will not use it. Many others don't agree with my bias and will happily use it. To each his own, I guess. Spike 1.4 may be good for analysis, but its LimitStrength feature (required for amateurs to play against the engine) is completely broken and doesn't work at all.

Finding engines to play against is a more complicated topic. If it's important to you for your engine to make human-like moves, probably the two best engines are HIARCS and Delfi Trainer. Both engines are/were commercial engines. Delfi Trainer is no longer available for sale. (The demo version is still downloadable, but it only plays at a 1000 elo level and at full strength.) The HIARCS engine is still available as a part of the commercial HIARCS Chess Explorer GUI. I have the HIARCS 13.2 engine, which I think is one or two versions old. The 13.2 version was a bit too strong for beginners. (A beginner *could* beat the engine on its lowest setting, but it wouldn't happen very often.) I don't know if the newer versions are easier for a beginner to beat.

If you don't get obsessed with engines needing to play human-like moves, there are a number of engines that would work as playing opponents. A few I can mention are Hamsters and Phalanx, although they're both difficult to install and configure.

One playing engine that I like that's easy to install and configure is Ufim 8.02. It's both a Winboard and UCI engine, but you'll want to install it as a UCI engine. The Ufim engine has reduced-strength settings from 700 to 2000, and at full strength plays at about 2500+. Once you install the Ufim engine in your chess program, you'll have to configure the Ufim engine and set the engine's strength setting. When configuring the Ufim engine, make sure you check the "DelayOnWeakLevels" box so the engine doesn't move instantly. The nice thing about the Ufim engine is that, on its weakest level, it plays really badly, so pretty much anyone is capable of beating it. :-)

Oh, and for any engine that can be dumbed down, the elo estimates are usually just guesses. The levels could be fairly close to reality, but often they're off by a considerable amount. You'll just have to find your level through trial and error.

Here's a download link for the Ufim 8.02 engine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140329072350/http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/Ufim.html

And in case you're a fan of logos, here are a few:

I could suggest other playable engines for a beginner, but Ufim is one of my favorites.

Oh, and as @Way-of-Pain pointed out, there's really no downside to also downloading Stockfish. It's super strong for analysis, but it can also be dumbed down for playing against. (Strength levels are 0 to 20.) The only thing is that even Level 0 might be a tad bit strong for a beginner.

And when you're manually analyzing with an engine like Stockfish, it's often desirable to activate the Multi-PV feature so that you can look at a number of different candidate moves simultaneously. It typically will tell you how much better one candidate move is over another candidate move.

Thank you, EscherehcsE, for taking the time and effort to explain the various engines to me. As long as it's not one giant block of text, I don't mind reading long posts! 

Yes, when I read about engines, it has occurred to me that they don't tell you why one particular move is better than another. In a way, that limits their usefulness to me. I suspect that much modern annotation is drawn from engine analysis. It is so deep, with so many alternate lines, that I just cannot follow the logic of anything that is being presented.  Most modern annotation is therefore useless to me, because I can't determine why the favored line is better. It reads like experts talking to each other. 

I will have to investigate Ufim, maybe after playing around a bit more with the Arena-installed engines.  Ease of installation and ease of configuration are very, very important to me.  Also, I'm only interested in free engines. I'm not aspiring to become a chess professional. I'm in my 60s, learned how to play at least 50 years ago, and have left and returned to the game several times over the decades. 

But I refuse to believe that only young people and experts can learn by using engines to analyze games. 

Does Ufim play human-like moves? I would love to have that feature in an engine I am playing against. Strength levels are also essential. I know SOS 5.1 lets you set strength levels, but it seems complicated and I'm not sure I have done it correctly. 

I tried to find out of Arena has a version for Android. It doesn't look like they do. So I installed Droidfish on my tablet. 

EDIT: I looked up Ufim. Is that a Russian program? I am very reluctant to download anything from a Russian site. Oh well. 

Well, the Ufim moves aren't quite as natural as HIARCS, but they aren't really so computer-like that it would be too noticeable. If I hadn't mentioned it, you might not have even noticed. :-)

As an aside, I don't think the SOS engine lets you set weak levels. The Arena GUI will allow weak levels by setting the time controls so that the nodes per second are limited or by setting a predetermined search depth, but that's the GUI doing that, not the engine.

Yes, the Ufim programmer is Russian, but in all my years of being around computer chess, I've never heard of anyone casting suspicions on Ufim or its programmer. Also, the Ridderkerk download site wasn't a Russian site. (I think it was a Dutch site, I'm not sure.) Leo Dijksman has passed away, but he and his Ridderkerk site were well known in computer chess circles.

[Edit - Yeah, Ridderkerk had a .nl extension - the Netherlands.]

Here's the Chess Programming Wiki entry for the Ridderkerk site:

https://www.chessprogramming.org/WBEC

And an entry about Leo:

https://www.chessprogramming.org/Leo_Dijksman

Another engine you might want to consider is Arasan:

https://arasanchess.org/

I didn't give it a detailed look - I only played a couple of games against it at its lowest level of 1000 elo. It seemed to make fairly reasonable moves. It wouldn't see things like mate-in-one and pawn forks, and it just hung a pawn in the second game. I never got to an endgame, so I don't know how it handles that phase of the game. But, the moves didn't seem too goofy.

As an analysis engine, it's fairly strong - not as strong as Stockfish, but stronger than any of the Arena packaged engines.

And if it eases your concerns, Jon Dart is in the U.S.A. :-)

Thank you! 

Sorry, but I'm just very nervous about anything Russian when it comes to software, especially at this very sad time. 

So I take it that you aren't using Kaspersky Anti-Virus? I actually can't fault you if you're avoiding that one, haha.

On the Ufim issue, not a problem. Everyone has to stay in his comfort zone. I hope Arasan works for you. Like I said before, there are a few others that might be okay, but they typically will have some problem - either they're a bit harder to install, or the strength level doesn't go low enough. And, there are some others that I've heard about but haven't had a chance to look at, especially since I'm in the Linux world now.

I use Linux exclusively for chess.com. Both Scid and Arena have versions that work with Linux and they both have a version that works with Winblows. If you play play here use Stock fish at lowest level. Stockfish is the best "free" engine you can get and it works with Linux and Winblows version for each.

Yeah, I use both GUIs in Linux Mint. That's what reminded me of the Arasan engine. Strangely enough, Arena for Linux has Arasan preinstalled, but Arena for Windows doesn't. Go figure...

Arasan is not worth it that is why.

Arasan may not be quite as strong as Stockfish, but it's not a bad engine. 3100+ on the CCRL Blitz rating list isn't exactly chopped liver...

https://ccrl.chessdom.com/ccrl/404/rating_list_all.html

And that's no bull...

@OP, I'm doing a quickie tournament between Stockfish 12 at its lowest setting (1350 elo, or alternatively, skill level 0, without the neural net) and Arasan 21.4 at its lowest setting (1000 elo). I'd like to get some more games under my belt, but looking at the early results, it seems there's not much difference between the two engines at those lowest settings. So you could probably play either engine at its lowest level and get roughly the same degree of difficulty. It would just depend on which engine you prefer playing.

If you want play stockfish even weaker than its lowest level, try increasing multiPV value. The greater the value, the greater chance of picking up a worse move. Although even with value of 30 as multiPV, I don't get it play randomly at all. Still it seems to be much weaker than with its default multiPV value of 4 (it is automatically raised to 4 if given less number).

The time I give to the engine is 1+3. Without 3s added to each move it starts to play too badly as the time comes to an end.

I asked a question about it on stockfish forum, but no answers yet.

helo, i like this topic, i'm about 700 rating on ches.com and i can win againts the engine of chess.com with 1000 rating, and the 1100 can do a dificult game to me.

I donwload the arena chess just because i want to see one of the best engine of the world against ech other, engines fights are very very very very much beatful to me, so i like to see and i wante to see the best. So i donwlaod the stockfish 15.1 and lilazero ( at now i have 1 tie and 1 win for stockfish, but the two game are buring kkk i want to see queens sacrifices, damm) but ok. but ok, one day will come.

But when i see the software arena chess, i like, the colors sistem, i want to play against some engine of my level... something like the engine of ches.com with 1000 of rating. But i don't know nothing about how configur the software arena chess. I try to set the elo of stockfish to 500 to do a teste, but the software says "minumum is 1350" ok ok dam.

so i come here looking for a normal engine.

i will try the ulfim.

And

i'm from Brazil. I writhe this on my owon so probabli has muchs gramatic error.

You might also want to try out Lucas Chess. It has lots of engines preinstalled, with many low rated settings. I think it may even have low settings for Hamsters and Ufim.

https://lucaschess.pythonanywhere.com/

i like this ulfim, i set him for elo 1000 and have a good game. (my real elo on ches.com is 770+-) look:

From my experience, I can suggest following:

1. In Arena GUI, you can set different elo rating level for stockfish and Rybka engines. (Also you can reduce its strength by lowering percentage in engine management under special tab). Another engine for beginners is Ufmi. You can download it online and install in arena GUI. Ufmi has elo rating range between 700 to 2000, which is good for beginners and intermediate and even for experts.

2. Lucas chess is really good software. You can play with different pre-installed engines with various levels.

3. GNU chess can be downloaded online. And set depth=1 or 2 if you are beginner.

4. Try arasan chess.