Engines like Arena

Question

So i have implemented an intelligent chess agent using reinforcement learning. For the training part of the agent, i want to play as many games as possible.

I am aware of three options:

• Self playing, where the agent plays against itself and in the process learns the game of chess.
• Play against human,where the agent plays against a human player and learns.
• Play against other agents,where the agent plays against other intelligent agents and learns the game.

I want to try out the third of these options and have my agent play against other agents.

One good way to do this is loading my agent into the Arena chess engine. My problem is that Arena requires the agent to support UCI, and my agent doesn't.

Are there any alternatives that i can use except Arena?

Answer 1

We usually say "engine" rather than "agent". Agent is a term used in academic papers.

I've used cutechess to train my models. It offers more than Arena and it's faster to run, but it's command line only.

You'll need to implement UCI or Winboard protocol to make it happen. It's really not that hard. Your engine will be given a position or moves to start thinking. You'll do your search then return a move. Very simple. Please google "UCI specification" for details.