Playing stockfish level 3000 on Arena 3.5.1

Question

I downloaded Arena 3.5.1, and then downloaded stockfish from https://stockfishchess.org/ it had 4 files:

stockfish_8_x32.exe stockfish_8_x64.exe stockfish_8_x64_bmi2.exe stockfish_8_x64_popcnt.exe

I loaded the four engines to Arena, but it always says at the top (2000), which means level 2000, how do I make it level 3000+?

Also when I am playing on Arena, it takes 15 seconds and more for each step from the computer to play, is this right?

Thanks, am still new to all these things.

Answer 1

You need only one of the four engine files. The four executables are compiles of the same source code for different CPUs. They differ in speed only; sorted in descending order these are: stockfish_8_x64_bmi2.exe, stockfish_8_x64_popcnt.exe, stockfish_8_x64.exe, stockfish_8_x32.exe. Keep the fastest which runs on your system and delete the other three.

I loaded the four engines to Arena, but it always says at the top (2000), which means level 2000, how do I make it level 3000+?

This number doesn't set the playing strength. It has informative purposes only. You can change it as follows:

1. Open 'Engine Management' (F11).
2. Click the 'Details' tab and select Stockfish from the list.
3. Click the 'Information' tab in the right part and type the desired value into the 'Rating' field. If this field is empty, a default value of 2000 will be used.
4. Close the dialog and start a new game to display your new setting.

You can't set Stockfish to play at a given Elo level. If you want to weaken it, change the Skill Level in the engine settings (Ctrl+1, if it's loaded as 1st engine). '0' is the weakest setting and the default value '20' means full strength.

Answer 2

Are you beating it when it says 2000?

As of December 2016 Stockfish 8's Elo computer rating was 3478 as seen CCRL. This was calculated by pitting Stockfish against other Chess engines under controlled conditions and compiling statistics. The testing framework used by Stockfish in those competitions can be found HERE.

Rest assured that the 2000 you're seeing is more a problem with Arena's inability to calculate a meaningful rating, than Stockfish's ability to play at the highest levels.

In order for any rating to be believable, lots of games (data) in controlled conditions needs to be seen (for humans those are competitions). I'm apt to believe the CCRL rating before Athena.

Athena is known to struggle with accurate rating calculations. So to answer you: be wary of believing Athena.