Answers.Body: <p>I don't think there is anything like that, and it'll never be implemented.</p>
  
  <p>If you insist, you may want to look at how Stockfish does quiescence search. A "tactical" position would mean a dozen of long series of recursive calls. A "quiet" position would mean otherwise. However, this is a very dirty trick which might not work very well, you'd also need to do some programming.</p>
  
  <p>There're other ideas, such as looking at the average branch factor, number of captures in the principal variation, the distribution of the scores... None of which is absolutely satisfactory. </p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-03-21T04:43:11.653Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2016-03-21T04:43:11.653Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: SmallChess
Answers.Body: <p>Stockfish supports an <code>eval</code> command which dumps the static positional evaluation (not in a format that is meant for computer parsing, but it's still doable). You can parse the output of that, and then do a <code>go depth 1</code>. If the results differ by more than say half a pawn, the position is not quiet.</p>
  <p>An alternative may be to look at the <code>pv</code> line returned by <code>go depth 1</code>. If it is longer than 1 move, the line is not quiet.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2023-03-14T11:19:52.790Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2023-03-14T11:19:52.790Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: gcp
Answers.Body: <p>No, there is not. This page describes commands: <a href="http://support.stockfishchess.org/kb/advanced-topics/uci-protocol" rel="nofollow">http://support.stockfishchess.org/kb/advanced-topics/uci-protocol</a></p>
  
  <p>Also you can get information about Stockfish, with these commands, if you are on Linux:</p>
  
  <pre><code>stockfish --help
  man stockfish
  </code></pre>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-03-21T03:08:12.843Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2016-03-21T13:53:17.427Z
Answers.LastEditDate: 2016-03-21T13:53:17.427Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: ferit
Body: <p>Is there a way to ask stockfish from the command line if a position is "quiet"? I am running a script like <a href="https://gist.github.com/notbanker/3b87146ab0e2a4fd9740" rel="nofollow">stockfish_fen.sh</a> to return the analysis, but I would like to also know if stockfish considers this position to be of positional or tactical nature. </p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2016-03-21T07:38:20.553Z
Comments.Text: As others said the answer is no, and I'm not sure how in the first place you would define "quiet" so that is can be implemented algorithmically. But one idea might be to turn up the number of lines shown to 3 or 4 and look at the gradient of the evaluation from best to worst. A rapid change suggests forcing lines and other fun things going on while a flat distribution suggests quieter, less immediately critical things are happening. Far, far, far from full proof but might be of some use.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Ian Bush
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2016-03-22T00:49:40.793Z
Comments.Text: Yes that might be a decent proxy. I had imagined that there would be some logic in the code already to prevent horizon effects. Maybe I'll snoop around the code base and try to reformulate the question more precisely.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Peter Cotton
Tags: <positional-play><stockfish>
Title: Is there a way to ask stockfish from the command line if a position is "quiet"?
ThreadText: # Is there a way to ask stockfish from the command line if a position is "quiet"?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2016-03-21)
  
  Is there a way to ask stockfish from the command line if a position is "quiet"? I am running a script like [stockfish\_fen.sh](https://gist.github.com/notbanker/3b87146ab0e2a4fd9740) to return the analysis, but I would like to also know if stockfish considers this position to be of positional or tactical nature.
  
  **Tags:** positional-play, stockfish
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: As others said the answer is no, and I'm not sure how in the first place you would define "quiet" so that is can be implemented algorithmically. But one idea might be to turn up the number of lines shown to 3 or 4 and look at the gradient of the evaluation from best to worst. A rapid change suggests forcing lines and other fun things going on while a flat distribution suggests quieter, less immediately critical things are happening. Far, far, far from full proof but might be of some use.  
  > **username_0**: Yes that might be a decent proxy. I had imagined that there would be some logic in the code already to prevent horizon effects. Maybe I'll snoop around the code base and try to reformulate the question more precisely.  
  
  ---
  
  ## 3 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2016-03-21. Score: 4
  
  I don't think there is anything like that, and it'll never be implemented.
  
  If you insist, you may want to look at how Stockfish does quiescence search. A "tactical" position would mean a dozen of long series of recursive calls. A "quiet" position would mean otherwise. However, this is a very dirty trick which might not work very well, you'd also need to do some programming.
  
  There're other ideas, such as looking at the average branch factor, number of captures in the principal variation, the distribution of the scores... None of which is absolutely satisfactory.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_3 on 2023-03-14. Score: 3
  
  Stockfish supports an `eval` command which dumps the static positional evaluation (not in a format that is meant for computer parsing, but it's still doable). You can parse the output of that, and then do a `go depth 1`. If the results differ by more than say half a pawn, the position is not quiet.
  
  An alternative may be to look at the `pv` line returned by `go depth 1`. If it is longer than 1 move, the line is not quiet.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_4 on 2016-03-21. Score: 2
  
  No, there is not. This page describes commands: <http://support.stockfishchess.org/kb/advanced-topics/uci-protocol>
  
  Also you can get information about Stockfish, with these commands, if you are on Linux:
  
  ```
  stockfish --help
  man stockfish
  
  ```
  
  
  ---
  
  