Arena GUI troubleshooting

Hi guys

For some reason the NNUE files on Stockfish isn't working in Arena GUI. There were a couple instructions on how to download Stockfish but it said to save all of the NNUE files in the Eval folder and that is nowhere to be found.

It also seems that Stockfish needs game databases in order to make the better judgement calls in games like the chesscom Stockfish does. What file format does it take?

I'm not a Stockfish expert, but I think recent versions of Stockfish have the NNUE file baked into the executable. In other words, it uses the NNUE file by default, and you don't have to do anything special. When you first start the Stockfish engine in analysis mode, it should briefly flash a message in the analysis window (I'm talking like less than a second):

To see the image below better, you can right-click your mouse cursor on the image, then choose "Open Image in New Tab."

Also, I'm afraid I don't understand your second question.

Oh, I forgot to mention that if the Stockfish executable is over 20 MB in size, then you know the NNUE file is in the executable. (Without the NNUE file, the executable will be 1 to 2 MB in size.)

Oh gawd, so there is no way to have it use some other NNUE, or will it still do better if we give it a database?

I really don't know if it can use a different NNUE file. Maybe via a command switch, idk? You'd have to get a Stockfish expert to weigh in on that one.

P.S. You might want to ask a mod to move this thread to the "Chess Books and Equipment" forum.