Winboard and Chess Engines FAQ

[A.1] What is this Faq about?

[A.2] What is Winboard and where else can I download it if Tim Mann's Site is down?

[A.3] What is the difference between Winboard and Xboard? What are the various modifications of Winboard available? Does using a different version of Winboard cause engine incompatibilities?

[A.4] What are Winboard engines? How many Winboard engines are there?

[A.5] Where can I download the latest versions of Winboard engines?

[A.6] How strong are Winboard engines compared to commercial ones? Which is the strongest program?

[A.7] The programs are too strong for me, where can I find a weaker one?

[A.8] What are Jim Ablett complied versions of Chess Engines?

[A.9] Can I run Winboard engines in Chessmaster® Fritz etc? Can Chessmaster® or Fritz etc run in Winboard?

[A.10] What about Ferret, Insomniac , Hossa etc? Are they Winboard compatible? Where can I get them?

[A.11] What are “clones”? Where can I get them?

[A.12] What is this “Winboard Edition I/II” ? Where can i get Gandalf, Capture, Patzer and Lambchop?

[A.13] Where can I get Winboard engines that play Suicide Chess, Fischer Random, or other variants?

[A.14] I'm a programmer, how do I get my chess program to be Winboard, Chessbase, or UCI compatible? Where can I find examples of free source chess programs?

[B.1] How do I Install Winboard? Should I uninstall the older version when upgrading?

[B.2] How do I install more Winboard Engines?

[B.3] How do I setup Crafty, Fritz, etc. to run on FICS, ICC, USCL, etc.? What about Yahoochess?

[B.4] How do I connect 2 copies of Winboard over a LAN or the internet without connecting over a internet server? Can I use it to play chess with a friend over the net?

[B.5] Help! Winboard program still refuses to run.

[B.6] Where can I get more help?

[B.7] I give up. Is there a easier way to do this?

[C.1] What is an opening book?

[C.2] What is book learning?

[C.3] How do I turn the opening book on?

[C.4] Is there a way to set uniform opening books for all chess engines through a GUI book?

[C.5] Where can I download more opening books?

[C.6] What are endgame tablebases [egtbs]? What is the difference between Nalimov, and Edwards tablebases?

[C.7] How many tablebases do I need? Can I download only some of them?

[C.8] How do I turn the endgame tablebases on?

[C.9] Where can I get (buy, generate, download) more endgame tablebases?

[C.10] Okay. I followed the instructions but why is the endgame tablebases still not working?

[C.11] There's a bug in the program, Why do engines refuse to promote pawns?

[C.12] What are transposition/hash tables?

[C.13] How much memory should I allocate in transposition table?

[D.1] Bringer

[D.3] Chessmaster 8000/9000/10,000 [The King]

[D.4] Crafty

[D.5] Francesa

[D.7] Knightcap

[D.8] Little Goliath

[D.9] SOS

[E.1] How do I get a Winboard engine to work in Chessbase environment [Fritz, Junior, Nimzo etc]?

[E.2] What is the difference between using a native version and using the Winboard adapter?

[E.3] Which engines work with Chessbase?

[E.4] How do I get a Winboard engine to work in Chessmaster8000®?

[E.5] Which engines work with Chessmaster?

[E.6] How do I get a Winboard engine to work in Chess Genius, Chess Academy, Chess Partner, Chess Vision, etc.?

[E.7] How do I get a UCI engine to work in Winboard? How do I get a Winboard engine to work in a UCI graphical interface?

[E.8] How do I get Chessmaster [The King] to work in Winboard or Arena? How do I get Chessmaster to run on Chess servers?

[E.9] How do I get Chessmaster [The King] to work in Chessbase GUI, Chess Partner 5, or Chess Assistant 6?

[E.10] What is Universal Chess interface [UCI]? How is it different from Winboard?

[E.11] What are the graphical user interfaces that support UCI?

[E.12] What are the Chess engines that support UCI?

[F.1] How can I run a match automatically between 2 programs in Winboard?

[F.2] How can I run a Nunn match [match from a fixed position] automatically in Winboard?

[F.3] How can I run a tournament automatically in Winboard?

[F.4] How do I calculate Elos or generate cross tables? How do I tell if the results are significant?

[F.5] How do I present/display Chess games on the web?

[F.6] How do I set up Winboard engines to handle tournaments with 2 time controls in Winboard? Eg 40 moves in 120 minutes followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the moves?

[F.7] How do I display the number of nodes per second calculated by the Chess engine? How about displaying other information?

[F.8] Winboard 4.2.X automatically saves all my Crafty games with the name Crafty-18.6, how do I change that?

[F.9] How do I run test suites automatically in Winboard?

[F.10] When “show thinking” is turned on during the game, the lines get cut off. How can I display the whole line?

[F.11] What is PGN, FEN, EPD, CBH, CBF, etc. and how do I handle them in Winboard?