Winboard and Chess Engines -------------------------- The latest version of this FAQ will always be available from http://www.chesskit.com/aarontay/Winboard/Winboard.html. If you wish to put this FAQ up elsewhere please email me for permission first. Thank you. Frequently Asked Question [FAQ]v1.0 [05/05/2001] ------------------------------------------------ The Official Winboard FAQ can be found at http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html.However Winboard is a complex piece of software with various functions. It is a PGN reader, a client to allow users to connect with online servers, serves as a interface for Winboard compatible programs and allows engine versus engine matches on the same Computer. As such, no single FAQ of reasonable length can hope to address every area in detail. This FAQ will focus mainly on guiding and assisting a new user to install Winboard engines such as Crafty ,Comet etc successfully as well as address common questions regarding such programs. I have also assumed that the reader is new to Computer Chess in general as well, so this FAQ will also answer some simple questions on Computer Chess related matters. However a full discussion of such issues is beyond the scope of this document . I recommend R.G.C.C's FAQ.[http://www.faqs.org/faqs/games/chess/computer/part1/preamble.html] and Joachim's FAQ for beginners [http://home.t-online.de/home/joachim.denzler/faq.html] for a broader discussion of other Computer Chess topics. I have enjoyed using Winboard and Winboard Engines for the last 1.5 years. This FAQ is my little contribution to the thriving Winboard community. I'm still learning, about the subject and as such I welcome any comments on how to improve the FAQ by emailing me at aarontay@mailandnews.com. I have spent several long hours working on this website since this site started and if the website has being useful to you, please drop me a line in my guestbook at http://members.atozasia.com/aarontay/guestbook.html. The latest versions of this FAQ and more articles on Computer Chess can always be found at http://www.chesskit.com/aarontay/Winboard/Winboard.html. Thank you. Yours Sincerely, Aaron Tay 22 Jan 2001 ============================================================================================ What's New ---------- 05-03-2001 First Text version of this FAQ. Acknowledgements ---------------- I would like to thank the following people, Volker Pittlik and Frank Quisinsky for providing the Winboard Community with their wonderful Webpages and their efforts in promoting the "Winboard movement". Thanks also goes out to Dann Corbit ,Dieter Buerssner, Peter Berger, Harold Roig,Thomas Mayer, Edward Collins and many more for their comments and contributions to the FAQ. Lastly, this acknowledgement would not be complete without giving thanks to Tim Mann, for starting it all with his Xboard/Winboard program. Disclaimer ---------- While I have made the greatest efforts to ensure that the information on this FAQ is correct and up to date, given the rapid changes in versions of various engines and Winboard itself, it is possible that the information here is not fully correct . Also, I'm not a programmer, so it may be possible that I have made some errors in this FAQ. So use this FAQ at your own risk, neither the people mentioned here, nor myself will be responsible for any damage or loss you incur as a result of following the advice on this FAQ. ============================================================================================ Table of Contents ----------------- * [A] Introduction * [B] Setting up * [C] Opening books, Endgame Tablebases and Hash Tables * [D] Engine Specific Problems * [E] Winboard Engines in Other graphical interfaces * [F] Misc Software and running Computer Chess Tournaments Detailed contents ----------------- *[A] Introduction + [A.1] What is this Faq about? + [A.2] What is Winboard and where can I get it? + [A.3] What is the difference between Winboard, Winboard plus and Xboard? + [A.4] How many Winboard engines are there? How much do they cost? + [A.5] Where can I download the latest versions of the Winboard engines ? + [A.6] How strong are the Winboard engines compared to the commercial ones?Which is the strongest program ? + [A.7] The programs are too strong for me , where can I find a weak one? + [A.8] What are Dann Corbit 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 Chezzz, Ferret, Insomanic etc? Are they Winboard compatible?Where can I get them? + [A.11]What about Squash, La Petite, "Wincraft"? What are "clones"? Where can I get them? + [A.12]Where can I get Winboard engines that play Suicide Chess, or other variants? + [A.13]I'm a programmer, how do I get my Chess program to be Winboard, Chessbase or UCI etc compatiable? * [B] Setting up + [B.1] How do I Install Winboard? + [B.2] How do I install more Winboard Engines? + [B.3] Help! Winboard program still refuses to run. + [B.4] Where can I get more help? + [B.5] I give up. Is there a easier way to do this? * [C] Opening books, Endgame Tablebases and Hashtables + [C.1] What is a opening book? + [C.2] What is the book learning? + [C.3] How do I turn the opening book on? + [C.4] Okay, I followed the instructions, but why is not book still on? + [C.5] Where can I download more opening books? + [C.6] What are endgame Tablebases [egtbs]? What is the difference between Nalimov,and Edward 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 does Amy, TCB etc refuses to promote the pawn? + [C.12]What are Transposition/Hash tables? + [C.13]How much memory should I allocate? * [D] Some Engine Specific problems * [D.1] Bringer + [D.1.1] General overview + [D.1.2] When I run Bringer in Winboard the Bringer Graphical Interface starts as well. How can I remove it? + [D.1.3] How can I change the language in Bringer from German to English? + [D.1.4] How do I change the Transposition Table memory allocation for Bringer? + [D.1.5] What is the best memory allocation for Bringer? * [D.4] Crafty + [D.4.1] General overview + [D.4.2] Do I need a crafty.rc file? Where can I get one? + [D.4.3] Where do I get the Nalimov compiled Crafty? + [D.4.4] How do I compile a opening book? + [D.4.5] How do I weaken Crafty? + [D.4.6] When I run the annotach command no diagrams are displayed. + [D.4.7] What is bookc.bin? How do I use it? + [D.4.8] Why does Crafty play the same opening over and over again against other Chess engines? * [D.5] Francesa + [D.5.1] General overview + [D.5.2] What is Mad? + [D.5.3] How can I adjust the size of the Hash Table? + [D.5.4] Francesa stops moving after the first game? * [D.7] Knightcap + [D.7.1] General overview + [D.7.2] Setting up Knightcap * [D.8] Little Goliath + [D.8.1] General overview + [D 8.2] What is the difference between the Winboard version of Little Goliath 3.0 and the one available at Chessbase in the "Young Talents" CD? + [D.8.3] Little Goliath resigns immediately,when it has lost the prior game when using the /mg command.What should I do? + [D.8.4] Goliath is not using it's opening book? * [D.9] SOS + [D.9.1] General overview + [D.9.2] Help! SOS 10/99 or SOS 11/99 refuse to work! + [D 9.3] Help! SOS refuses to run when i upgraded to Winboard 4.2.1 and above! * [E] Winboard Engines in Other graphical interface + [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 the Millennium Chess system [MCS], Chess Academy, Chess partner ,Chess Vision etc ? * [F] Misc Questions, running Computer Chess tournaments,Chess formats + [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? + [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 display the number of nodes per second calculated by the Chess engine? + [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]What is PGN,FEN,EPD, CBH,CBF etc and how do I handle them in Winboard? ============================================================================================ [A] Introduction [A.1] What is this Faq about? This Faq guides first time users in setting up Winboard Chess Engines like Crafty, Amy, Goliath etc. to run on one computer in Winboard. This document does Not provide information on the following * Customising Winboard and Winboard commands for playing on Chess servers * Xboard, Amyboard etc that do not run on Windows * Running of Chess programs on servers with zippy * Use of third party extensions like auto232 drivers, Smartboard, DGT etc. For the first question, I recommend Edward Collins Tribute to Winboard at http://www.inficad.com/~ecollins/winboard.htm. I unfortunately, lack the expertise to comment on using of Xboard, but from what I know, the procedures are very similar to Winboard. As for the question of running Chess programs on servers , a good guide on the use of "zippy" can be found on Mogens Larsen's homepage [http://home1.stofanet.dk/moq/WinBoard.htm] , as well as John Rivorie/ Sasha Goldstein's Crafty page.[http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/5280/crafty.html] For a discussion of the various third party extensions to Winboard like auto232, you can't do better than going to the "Extension and Drivers Section" of Tim Mann's Winboard Page and following the links there.A very popular question is how to set up Fritz or Chessmaster to play against another engine either on one or two computers and how to setup Fritz to play in ICC, I have no experience with either except that I know most people use auto232 to handle that.If someone would like to contribute a section on this, or have a webpage on this, I would be very interested to hear from you [aarontay@mailandnews.com]. Lastly, the answers to all Chessbase related questions can probably be found at Steve Lopez's electronic T-notes .[http://www.chessbase.com/tnotes/index_tn.htm] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A.2] What is Winboard/Xboard and where can I get it ? " Xboard is a graphical user interface for chess. It displays a chessboard on the screen, accepts moves made with the mouse, and loads and saves games in Portable Game Notation (PGN). XBoard is free software. It serves as a front-end for many different chess services, including: Chess engines that will run on your machine and play a game against you or help you analyse, such as GNU Chess and Crafty .... "[http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard/FAQ.html#[B.2]] [From the Xboard/Winboard FAQ (B2)] Winboard/Xboard can be downloaded directly from Tim Mann's page [http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A.3] What is the difference between Winboard, Winboard Plus and Xboard ? The difference between Winboard and Xboard is simple. Winboard runs on Windows, and Xboard runs on Unix systems. Tim Mann considers the current stable version of Winboard to be version 4.2.3 . Winboard 4.2.0 and up supports Winboard/Xboard protocol 2. The current version should work with all Winboard engines [even those that have not implemented the new protocol ] . Tim Mann writes "With WinBoard 4.2.1 and later, you can run SOS by using the new flag /firstProtocolVersion=1 or /secondProtocolVersion=1 (depending on whether it's the first or second engine); this forces use of the old protocol by keeping WinBoard from sending the "protover 2" command to the engine. SOS chokes on that command for some strange reason, instead of just ignoring it or printing a message." Winboard Plus , was a third person enhanced version [Marc S. William] of Winboard. It added a number of improvements. Including the ability to cut and paste positions and games as well as a nicer and easier to use menu. However these improvements were later included in Winboard version 4.1.0. While Winboard 4.1.0 and Winboard plus are very similar, you should note, that the formats of winboard.ini in them are slightly different. The Winboard ini file looks like this /premove=true /premoveWhite=true /premoveWhiteText="g4" /premoveBlack=true /premoveBlackText="d5" The Winboardplus ini file looks like this /icsPremove=true /icsPremoveWhite=true /icsPremoveWhiteText="g4" /icsPremoveBlack=true /icsPremoveBlackText="d5" If you attempt to run Winboard using the ini file from Windowboardplus and vice versa without making the change, the program will refuse to run. [Taken fromEdward Collin's Tribute to Winboard ] Be careful, this is case-sensitive. For example, if you want to convert from Winboardplus to Winboard, you should use "premove=true " not "Premove=true" . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A.4] How many Winboard engines are there? How much do they cost? It's unknown how many Winboard compatible Chess Engines exist because quite a few are privateware and are available only to it's author and a few beta testers. But if we only include those that are available to the public for free or through sale, we have close to a hundred . As of 15 April 2001, Thomas Mayer's Engine overview lists , lists an incredible 90 such programs. This number might vary a little depending on whether you accept clones as legitamate Winboard engines. There are also 5 commercial Winboard engines, Nimzo2000b,Gandalf, Capture, LampchopX*, Patzer. The last four can be purchased from Gambitsoft. Even if you don't own these 5, there are more than enough programs that you can obtain for free! [Note: Not all are freeware though. E.g. Goliath, I would advice reading the documentation carefully to see what you can do and what you can't do] And this number can be expected to rise in the future. Note, Frank Quisinsky's website list of Winboard engines is no longer being updated. * A much older version of Lampchop is available for download at the usual places. The one for sale is a much more recent version. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A.5] Where can I download the latest versions of the Winboard engines ? Frank Quisinsky's News Ticker used to be the place to go . Over the years, Frank's Web-site has become the accepted place, for authors of Winboard compatible engine to release news of new versions. Unfortunately as of 15 March 2001, due to work commitments, Frank Quisinsky will no longer update the news ticker or engine overview with news of Winboard engines. The work is now carried on by Thomas Mayer. The new URL for news about Winboard engines can be found at The Chess programs without homepages of their own (for example Anmon,Comet) are stilled hosted by Frank himself as usual at Frank's top download page . If you have no time to scroll down the long list of news ,refer to the Engine update list [again provided now by Thomas Mayer] which lists the latest Winboard engine by versions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A.6] How strong are the Winboard engines compared to the commercial ones? Which is the strongest program ? It's extremely difficult to gauge the strength of Chess Engines relative to each other or to humans. It was tough enough in the past, when there were only a handful of them, but today with close to 90 such programs and with more coming in, the task is nearly impossible. A rough gauge of strength is the "Crowns" category for Winboard programs proposed by Volker Pittlik . Top ranked "4 Crowns" engines include Crafty, Little Goliath etc. Such programs are estimated to be almost as strong as International Masters.While the weakest "One Crown" engines like Golem are probably weaker than ELO 1600. Of course, no one knows how accurate the rankings are. Between June of 2000 and January of 2001, Dann Corbit carried out a huge tournament involving all the available free Winboard engines at that time. This tournament was known as the"Battle of the Crowns" and was played at G/60 , on PII/400. Games played on faster or slower machines were adjusted according. Unfortunately, given the time it took to complete the tournament, by the time it was finished the results were outdated since new versions of the programs were released and new strong ones like Tao and Nejmet entered the scene.Also, no external calibration was made, so we have no idea if the top winboard chess program is as strong as a IM. There are also other problems that cloud the issue on our strong the Chess programs really are.Here's a sample. For example, a program that does best against other programs might be weaker against humans. It's also claimed that some programs do better in Blitz than in longer time controls. Lastly, it has being claimed that some slow programs gain more than others from being run on a faster machine.Also, let's not forget the "pondering issue". In short, we cannot be certain of how strong the programs are either relative to each other or compared to humans. I would estimate that the Commercial programs like Fritz are generally around 50-150 ELO stronger than the best free Winboard Engines like Crafty and Goliath. A rating list by SSDF is available for commercial programs and a selection of Winboard Engines. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A.7] The programs are too strong for me , where can i find a weaker one? Golem , or Tscp might be suitable. Both are stable and the former in particular is not very strong [ELO 1600 or less] Alternatively, you can weaken some of the stronger programs by switching off the opening book, lowering hash and or setting the program to move in 0.1 seconds each move.[Eg Adding st=0.1 to the crafty.rc will force Crafty to move quickly] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A.8] What are Dann Corbit complied versions of Chess Engines? Most Chess programmers work in C++. However, some of them do not work in the Windows environment, as such it is up to kind souls like Dann Corbit to compile the source code to workable Windows executable for people who can't or won't compile them. While anyone can run a complier, Dann Corbit's versions are generally among the fastest. However for Crafty, the builds by Eugene Nalimov [of the egtb fame] are usually the fastest for Intel machines. But given that Eugene Nalimov does not compile many winboard engines beyond Crafty, Dann Corbit's versions are best for programs such as Amy,Sjeng etc. Note: many people use (c) to indicate that they are using A Corbit compiled version.If you have trouble finding the files you need on Dann Corbit's ftp site, try The Corbit Overview page by Thomas Mayer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A.9] Can i run Winboard engines in Chessmaster®,Fritz? Can Chessmaster® or Fritz etc run in Winboard? To clarify matters, while Winboard compatible engines can run in Fritz [and in other Chessbase environments] through the use of winboard adaptor , Fritz itself is not a Winboard Engine and cannot run in Winboard. This holds true for the Chess Genius/Millennium Chess System. [Note a Winboard version of Shredder 3.0 might exist by entering a secret code but it's not a official product.] Other Chess database or playing interfaces that are Winboard compatible include Chess Assistant and Chess partner , ChessVision , ChessAcademy ,Bookup 2000 and Shredder 5.0/Chess Genius 6.5 . The lastest version of Chessmaster8000 http://www.chessmaster.com> now supports Winboard engines as well. Unlike Fritz, Chessmaster's engine works outside of the Chessmaster® program.However because of security measures built into the program it will run in Winboard but will move instantly regardless of time remaining,making it effectively useless. Implementation of Winboard protocol in the commercials GUIs varies, and as such many Winboard engines work poorly or fail to work at all when used in them. However, some authors of Winboard programs[Yace,Gandalf etc] have modified their program to allow them to work smoothly in some or all of these interfaces. For the Chessbase line of products , "Native" or specially compiled versions of certain Winboard programs [Crafty,Exchess, ImniChess,Faile etc] are available. Such native versions generally run without any problem. They are available for download at Chessbase . For other Winboard engines, you will have to use the winboard adaptor [23 Nov,2000]. For more refer to Section [E.1] As mentioned before this doesn't always work. It is however beyond the scope of this faq to discuss such problems. A list of verified programs that work and do not work under various interfaces might be included in the future. See section E of the faq. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A.10] What about Ferret,Insomanic and Chezzz etc ?Are they Winboard compatible? Where can i get them? Generally it's safe to say that if Thomas Mayer's Engine overview does not list the program , it's not Winboard compatible compatible [I.e it doesn't run in Winboard] , or it is privateware,available only to the author and a few testers.Another possibility is that such engines are considered "clones" . See Section A11. Listing of Commonly asked about programs * Ferret, Insomanic/JCRC [James Robertson' Chess Program] are privateware and are not available. * Chezzz,a private Danish engine is currently privateware as well. Winboard versions of the commercial Zarkov may also exist * Hossa - The author of Hossa, Stefen A.Jakob has started a poll, to guage the public interest in a public release of Hossa. As of writing [22 Jan 2001], no public version exists yet. * Galahad is not Winboard compatible as it runs on it's own interface. However Tristram by the same author is Winboard compatible. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A.11] What about Squash, La Petite, "Wincraft"? What are "clones"? Where can i get them? Clones are exact copies of existing programs [perhaps with some minor modifications]. This list includes Squash , La Petite,Voyager,Bionic and "Wincraft". Whether a program has changed enough to merit the distinction of being called a new program is highly debatable and some may not agree with the classifications above. While they are excluded from the lists maintained by both Tim Mann and Thomas Mayer , if you are eager to get a copy, you can ask around at the Winboard Forum . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A.12] Where can I get Winboard engines that play Suicide Chess and other variants? Of the Winboard engines that can play normal Chess, I'm only aware of New Rival < http://amateurschach.in-trier.de/schach/engines/english/newrival.htm> and Sjeng < http://amateurschach.in-trier.de/schach/engines/english/sjeng.htm> .Both can play variants such as Losers,crazyhouse and bughouse. Other specialised Winboard engines that can play either bughouse or Crazyhouse only. A small list includes * Giveaway Wizard which plays suicide/losing/giveaway Chess. * Deepbug - Plays Crazyhouse or bughouse. * Sunsetter - A modified Deep bug. Luca Damiani also mentions that Olithink 2.3.0 and Olipow from the same author can play "Atomic Chess" or Wild 27 in ICC. There are probably many more. If you know of more freely available WINBOARD engine that can play any Chess variant, please email me at aarontay@mailandnews.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A.13] I'm a programmer how do I get my Chess program to be Winboard ,Chessbase or UCI etc compatiable? You can find the full updated Winboard Protocol at Tim Mann's page or you can join the mailing list for Winboard engine authors . * For compatability to Chessbase refer to Chessbase Technical Specifications page . * The UCI technical Specification can be found at the Millienum Company download page . * The Chess Academy Protocol [CAP] which is needed for Chess Academy 6.0 can be found . * For questions regarding Lokasoft's Chess Partner refer to their Website. . * Instructions to programmers for configuring their engines to work with ChessVision can be found at their website ============================================================================================ [B] Setting up -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [B.1] How do I Install Winboard? Just run the execute file, and the Winboard setup should do the rest. Winboard comes preinstalled with GNUChess4.0 and GNUChess 5.0. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [B.2] How do I install more Winboard Engines ? There are two ways to set up Winboard engines(eg Crafty) to work with Winboard. One method is run them using a command line.This is the method mentioned in the Crafty FAQ , and on Timm Mann's FAQ . A slightly better method is to add a shortcut as recommended by some older sites. However a easier and more flexible method, I believe is to alter the file Winboard.ini(which will be generated the first time you run Winboard itself). By altering the Winboard.ini file, you can select which Chess engine will run in the startup-dialog whenever you start Winboard. This will remove the need for multiple shortcuts for different programs. You can find the instructions in the Winboard help file (included with Winboard) on how to modify the ini file. More help can be found below. Given the large number of excellent guides available on the net on getting Chess engines to work with Winboard, it is difficult for me to improve on them.As such I will direct you to three guides that i think are among the clearest. Hopefully, at least one of them will enable you to set up Winboard programs successfully. A word of warning, while most Chess engines can be setup in the same way ,some engines require special command lines to be added. Please go to Thomas Mayer's Winboard page and select the relevant details page. * Mogen's Setup Guide - A general setup guide for any generic Winboard program.Step by step instructions on how to modify the Winboard.ini file. * Mark Yatras's setup guide - A nice website that concentrates on setting up Crafty by making a shortcut. It has nice screenshots of the installation process and explanation of possible errors that can lead to errors.Unfortunately, the guide does not show you how to modify the Winboard.ini file. * Volker's setup - Instructions in German. Lastly, you could download Frank's Configuration files [config2.zip] from http://amateurschach.in-trier.de/schach/download/sonstige/config2.zip . However, they will only work if you do the following 1. Installed Winboard in the directory c:\winboard 2. Copied the directories in the unzipped file into c:\winboard\ . I.e you will need the directory Amy to be in c:\winboard\Amy. 3. Replace the Winboard.ini file in c:\winboard with the unzipped one 4. The excutable files are correctly named. 5. You also need the relevant ini files from http://amateurschach.in- trier.de/schach/download/sonstige/config.zip. Unzip those and copy them to the correct program directories.[eg Copy Dragon.ini to the dragon directory]. That should do it. This will configure each chess engine to use 32 mega Hash each.[So for two Engine matches on the same computer you need about 128 megs of RAM] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [B.3] Help! Winboard still refuses to run. Here are some possible reasons 1. You have specified the wrong path, or wrong file name 2. Remember to use // instead of / 3. "sd" instead of "fd" must be used for the second program 4. Default hash is set extremely large 5. Neglecting to add a special command line,switch which is needed. Eg you need " - xboard" for Anmon5.09 and/or Nejmet. Refer to Thomas Mayer's Winboard engines detail pages or the older < http://amateurschach.in-trier.de/schach/uebersicht.htm> Frank's Engine Overview I page for more details. 6. Lacking the file cygwin.dll when running engines like SOS,Gormit2.0,Cilian,Colchess,Fortress Gaviota, and of course Knightcap. Frank Quisinsky's Website as usual has a nice section on it.Awesome needs CW3215.dll 7. Doing everything correctly but forgetting to save -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [B.4] Where can i get more help? If you are really stuck, there are some places that you can go for help. Winboard Forum - This is a friendly forum, with many helpful gurus standing by to answer any question you might have regarding Winboard. The board is moderated by Volker Pittlik and Mogens Larsen, although their intervention is seldom necessary. The language of choice is generally English although sometimes German is used due to the large numbers of German speakers. As of April 2001, you can search the archives of the Winboard forum for posts going back 1-2 years.You might also being interested to know that,I have also being appointed by Volker Pittlik as a moderator for the forum. Computer Chess Club [CCC] - This is a more general forum devoted to Computer Chess. While Winboard related questions are allowed, this forum is a better venue for asking questions related to Commercial programs such as Chessmaster, Fritz, Rebel etc, as many of their authors or Service Reps hang out there.This is a moderated forum [with Moderators being selected in a yearly election] . Rec.games.Chess.Computer - The unmoderated Usenet group. Due to the presence of a large number of trolling and flaming, a group of Chess program Authors and fans felt that productive discussion was no longer possible. This led to the formation of the moderated Computer Chess Club [CCC] . As a last resort, you can email me at aarontay@mailandnews.com for help , and i will try to answer any questions to the best of my ability. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [B.5] I give up. Is there a easier way to do this? If you still cannot get any of the programs to work with Winboard despite reading the various online guides and getting help from the forums, but still want more chess program beside GNUchess to play against, I suggest the following alternatives. 1. Some Winboard programs like Bringer and Comet , come with their own stand alone graphical interface. In other words, they do not require any manual configuration or the use of Winboard to run. All you have to do is to unzip the file and run the executable . It's much easier and Bringer has a nice and more user friendly interface than the plain Winboard. Unfortunately, you don't get the range of opponents you can get with Winboard of course.Also, when you first run Bringer.exe you can change* the default language from German to English, but there is no English online help. You can download the English translation from http://chess.20m.com/. 2. Another option is to go to the Rebel Homepage at http://www.rebel.nl/edindex.htm to download Rebel Decade 3.0, a free but weakened version of the Commercial Rebel 10. Note this is not a Winboard program! 3. The popular Gambitsoft Shareware and Freeware page lists tons of Freeware and Shareware programs. 4. Lastly, if none of these work for you, perhaps a full Commerical package might suits your needs better. * To change go to "Ansicht" scroll down to "sprache" and choose "Englische". ============================================================================================ [C] Opening books, Endgame Tablebases and Hashtables -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.1] What is a opening book? Just as human players memorise opening moves, Chess programs have opening books which is a database of stored moves and positions. This allows the Chess program to move instantly when a move is available in the book. Needless to say, this is a very great advantage that allows the program to save time on thinking. On the other hand, poor Opening books can blindly lead the program to poor positions that results in a quick loss. Most Winboard Engines possess opening books. Nearly all are external files [typically with bk.extensions] separate from their programs, while a few like Crux have internal opening books. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.2] What is book learning? Simply put, while there are various forms of book learning they are generally used to let Chess programs learn from their losses and discourages them from repeating openings lines that constantly lose. Currently not many Winboard programs have book learning. Some advanced programs like Crafty not only write into the book file but also produce a "learn file" that reflects the amount and type of lines "learnt", allowing you to exchange and import such learning. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.3] How do i turn the opening book on? For most programs , this merely involves, downloading the opening book into the same directory has the execute file followed by a modification of the Chess programs's ini file (see above]. Ensure that Opening book is set "On" and you are done. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.4] Okay, I followed the instructions, but why is not book still not on? There are some possible reasons 1. You forgot to modify the opening book to set on. Or if you did, you forgot to save 2. You are using a older opening book format. 3. The opening book is corrupt -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.5] Where can i download more opening books? If the opening book that comes with the program is not enough for you , you can attempt to create your own opening books using the opening book editor/utility that come with some programs. Here's a short list of programs that come with the option of making your own books. Amy,Bringer,Crafty,Green Light Chess,Goliath,Quark,Yace etc. The few programs that do not allow you to build your own opening books are Anmon , Francesa and SOS,for those you are generally limited to the default/author provided ones. Building your own opening book generally involves supplying a file of GM games, to draw lines from . Dann Corbit's p2600.zip is a nice file with high quality games between players rated 2600 and above.You might also want to refer to A beginner's guide to building Opening books . Self made opening books for some popular programs can also be found on Mogens Larsen's homepage . You can also find opening books by Arturo Ochoa . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.6] What are endgame tablebases[egtbs]? What is the difference between Nalimov and Edward tablebases? Please note, I have moved everything regarding Endgame tablebases to a new Webpage on endgame tablebases . Endgame Tablebases are a database of stored endgame positions, that allow the computer to play the endgame perfectly as long as you have the required tablebases. For example if you have all the 3,4 and 5 pieces tablebases installed, Chess programs that can use it will play a "perfect" game when the number of pieces on the board is 5 or less There are various kinds of Tablebase formats, including Ken Thompson,Steven J. Edwards And Eugene Nalimov Tablebases. Dr Robert Hyatt [Author of Crafty] explains the differences between them as follows [in a posting to rec.games.chess.comp 26/10/2000] "Edwards (Tablebase): Distance to mate values stored. The main problem with these is that they are larger than the others. Nalimov (Tablebase): Distance to mate values just like Edwards, but Eugene's files are compressed, and they may be used in the compressed form, with no penalty of any kind. Rather than way over 30 gigabytes for all of the 3-4-5 piece files, you end up with about 7.5 gigs. Thompson (Tablebase): Distance to conversion (capture which takes you to a smaller ending class). These are difficult to use in their compressed form, from inside a chess engine. They also provide different info than Eugene's database... ie it tells you something, but it doesn't differentiate between losing and drawing as the Nalimov files do. Best choice: Nalimov. Nearly every chess engine supports those... " Millennium ChessGenius/Shredder package uses the Thompson Tablebases.Shredder4 and 5 support both Nalimov tablebases and Thompson Tablebases. While Gormit2.2, Dragon,Bionic (a Crafty clone],extremely old versions of Crafty uses Edwards Tablebases.For a full list of Winboard engines that support endgame tablebases, refer to Thomas Mayer's Overview of Winboard engines . In general, though almost all modern Chess programs [including Winboard programs] use Nalimov Tablebases partly because they are non-propertiary and partly because they are more efficient. Also some of the 6 pieces Tablebases are now available in the Nalimov format. The Nalimov tablebases comes in 2 forms, uncompressed and compressed. The compressed ones end with the extension "emd". Most of the modern Chess programs(Crafty switched to the new compressed format from versions 15.21 onwards) use the compressed form since, the performance difference isn't too great. One exception I'm aware of is the Esc Winboard program released on 4 Feb 2001. Steve Lopez has also written a good article in the Electronic T-notes for Chessbase that explains the use of endgame tablebases from the perspective of Chessbase users. Lots of excellent advice. Attention! For Chess programmers trying to learn more about the format to figure out how to make their Chess programs use Nalimov tablebases, : Dr Ernst A. Heinz who is the author of the Chess program, Dark Thought and author of the book " Scalable Search in Computer Chess " writes: "My WWW pages at http://supertech.lcs.mit.edu/~heinz/ contain preprints of two interesting texts about the index schemes of endgame databases for chess (incl. Eugene Nalimov's).Specifically, you might want to take a look at: * E.V. Nalimov, G.McC.Haworth, and E.A. Heinz. "Space-efficient indexing of chess endgame tables." In ICGA Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3, pages 148-162, September 2000. (published by the ICCA; preprint available from http://supertech.lcs.mit.edu/~heinz/ps/NHH_ICGA.ps.gz ) * E.A. Heinz. "Endgame databases and efficient index schemes."In ICCA Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1, pages 22-32, March 1999. (published by the ICCA; preprint available from http://supertech.lcs.mit.edu/~heinz/ps/edb_index.ps.gz) " [In a posting to rec.games.chess.comp, 03/13/2001] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.7] How many tablebases do I need? Can i download only some of them? Please note, I have moved everything regarding Endgame tablebases to a new Webpage on endgame tablebases . The more tablebase files you install, the stronger the program will be. However, a full set of 3,4 and 5 Tablebase files takes about 8 GB of Hard disk space! Most people download a full set of 4 Piece databases and select only a few of the 5 pieces. Generally the 5 piece endgames with rooks are reached most frequently and should be downloaded . However, there are some pitfalls that you should be aware of. If you want to use the KRPKR tablebase [and assuming you have all the 3 and 4 tablebases], make sure that you have the following endgame tablebases as well, KQRKR, KRBKR, KRRKR, KRNKR, . This is to ensure that the promotion cases are included. If you lack say the KQRKR tablebase, some programs refuse to queen the pawn in the KRPKR even if that would lead to a win, because such a move, would cause the program to drop from a position flagged as "win", to a position that is uncertain since they lack the relevant endgame table. A similar problem can result if you download only the KQPKQ tablebase without KQQKQ , KQRKQ etc.. Some programs like Crafty and Yace are "smart" enough to avoid this problem, but most like Amy, or The Crazy Bishop cannot handle this. Also take note that not all programs support all the Tablebases.Yace for example, currently does not use the 4+1 tablebases [ King and 3 pieces/pawns on a side versus a alone King] , because such positions are easily won most of the time barring rare cases [Like double rook pawns,wrong coloured bishop and King vers King]. Also I think only Crafty currently, supports 6 piece tablebases. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.8] How do i turn the endgame tablebase on? For most Chess engines, you only need to add a path to the tablebase directory in the configuration files of the relevant Chess engine. For example, you add only add the line tbpath=c:\chesseng\tb into the Crafty.rc file if you want Crafty to use tablebases. Just change the path to where-ever your tablebases are. Mine is at c:\chesseng\tb. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.9] Where can i get (buy,generate,download) more endgame tablebases? Please note, I have moved everything regarding Endgame tablebases to a new Webpage on endgame tablebases. You have basically 3 choices. Firstly you can buy The Chessbase Endgame Turbo CD which is a 4 CD set that has all of the Nalimov 3 and 4 piece tablebases and the most important 5 piece Nalimov tablebase.Chess Assistant also sells Nalimov tablebases in either a 4 CD set which is similar to the Chessbase one and a 9 CD set which almost all 3-4-5 men tablebases. Secondly, you could download them file by file for the 3,4,5 and some 6 men Nalimov Tablebase from UAB ftp. You will need a fast internet connection if you want to download the 5 men tablebases which are very large. Alternatively, Dann Corbit offers all the 3 and 4 men tablebase for download in one 30 meg file.Download nalimovc.zip and Nalimov3.zip for the compressed and non-compressed versions respectively. Lastly, you can generate them using tablebase generators tbgen.exe , but that is not really feasible unless you have a very fast computer with lots of RAM especially for the 5 pieces tablebases. You can find a guide by Mogens Larsen at . Antonio Senatore also made a nice post at the Winboard forum < http://www.f11.parsimony.net/forum16635/> that offers some guidence if you really want to try to generate 5 pieces tablebases. If for some unusual reason you need uncompressed Nalimov piece sets, you should uncompress them using DATACOMP.EXE that comes with tbgen.exe. You can get Thompson Tablebase with certain software packages like the "World Champion package" from Millenium System . Chessbase used to sell a 4 CD set of 5 men Thompson Tablebases both seperately and for use with Chessbase 7.3 and 4 pieces. Edwards Tablebases (35 meg) are available for download at Dann Corbit's ftp site . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.10] Okay. I followed the instructions but why is the endgame tablebase still not working? There are some possible reasons 1. You specified the wrong pathway for the endgame tablebases. 2. File is corrupted or in the wrong form , they should be in the form KXXKXX.nbw.emd or KXXKXX.nbb.emd [for compressed Nalimov] 3. One of the files either KXXKXX.nbw.emd or KXXKXX.nbb.emd is missing. You need both of them. 4. You are using the wrong type of endgame table bases. Eg using Nalimov for Bionic . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.11] There's a bug in the program,Why does Amy,TCB etc refuses to promote the pawn? Most probably this is due to the lack of a complete set of tablebases covering the promotion cases. See Section C7 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.12] What are Transposition/Hash tables? When a Chess engine begins analysing a position, it will often "try" out moves in different orders but which reach the same position. As the name "transposition table" implies, the program stores such positions in memory with their evaluations, so it can save time whenever it comes upon the same position that has being reached before abeit with a different sequence of moves. There are various types of Transposition Tables used depending on the program. Firstly, there are endgame hashtables [actually caches would be more accurate], that "works similarly to a disk cache ,and just avoids many disk accesses, and therfore can speed up the program in late endgames." [ Dieter Buerssner, Author of Yace] Some programs [eg Goliath] have only one main hashtable besides the egtb Hash while others [eg Crafty] use a Pawn Hash table besides the main hash table . Bringer has a total of three [four including one for endgame tables] by using Pawn, evaluation and Position hashtables. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [C.13] How much memory should I allocate? In general, if you are not conducting engine verus engine matches, you should allocate up to half of your system's total memory available to the Chess engine.[The rest is used up by the Windows operating system]. If you are doing engine versus engine matches on one machine, the total memory allocated to both programs should be half that of your system's total memory. I must add that this advice is limited only to people with low [say below 256 MB] amounts of RAM. Given that the amount of memory resources needed by Windows is somewhat fixed ,if you have large amounts of RAM, you do not need to follow the "50% rule" above. For example, Andreas Schwartmann's 512 Mb Ram machine can support a total of 420Mb for the tournament without any problems. [Thanks to Andreas Schwartmann and Mogens Larsen for pointing this out.] A more difficult question would be to decide how much memory to allocate among each transposition table (if there are more than 2 types excluding endgame Tablebase cache size]. It is seldom necessary to allocate more than 2 meg of memory to endgame tablebase hashes. There are i believe though no hard and fast rules to allocate memory among other types of hash tables. Therefore these must be handled by trial and error, and on a engine by engine basis. Refer to section E for comments on hash allocation for specific engines. Note that depending on the program, you might not have full control for the allocation process. Some programs [eg Francesa] use only one fixed hash upon compiling and cannot be adjusted at all.While others might allow almost any finite allocation of memory. Lastly, some programs like Crafty lie in between, by allowing you to adjust the size of Hash Tables but in discrete increments. Therefore it may not be possible to be totally "fair" in the allocation of hash for engine verus engine matches on the same machine. Also please note that while in general more memory allocated to Transposition tables tends to improve quality of play, there can be a performance loss when time controls are very fast [eg lightning] =========================================================================================== [D] Engine Specific problems -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [D.1] Bringer * [D.1.1] General overview Bringer is a German Program written by Gerrit Reubold. Bringer is a strong program and is probably within the top 20 free Winboard programs. Bringer is unusual compared to most Winboard engines because it comes with it's own stand alone Graphical User Interface but also works in Winboard. Bringer requires the extra command /winboard in the Winboard.ini for it to run properly. Another unusual feature is that Bringer unlike most programs allow you to allocate memory among 3 transposition tables instead of the more usual two.Bringer supports Nalimov Tablebases.Bringer 1.8 is now available! [21 April 2001]. Peter Berger has also written a doccument on the use of Bringer in Chessbase,Shredder,Chess Partner/Rebel and Chess Genius. You can download it together with Bringer at http://www.reubold.onlinehome.de/ * [D.1.2] When I run Bringer in Winboard the Bringer Graphical Interface starts as well. How can I remove it? You can't. Closing the GUI will cause the Engine to stop running as well. * [D.1.3] How can I change the language in Bringer from German to English? To change the language from German to English, go to "Ansicht" scroll down to "sprache" and choose "Englische". Unfortunately, there is still no English online help, but you can download the English translation from http://chess.20m.com/. * [D.1.4] How do I change the Transposition Table memory allocation for Bringer? Unlike most Engines, there is no ini file to edit to change the size of the transposition tables. You need to do it in the Bringer GUI and then save. * [D.1.5] What is the best memory allocation for Bringer? For 16Mb RAM , the author suggests using 10/2/2 [Position/Evaluation/Pawn] allocation and another 2 Mb for Tablebases caches. For allocating 32 Mb RAM a 20/4/4 Split might be best. You could also try optimising the memory allocation yourself, but this requires some understanding and monitoring of the line "Hash% Pos: 1%/5%, Eval 53%/16%, pawn 99%/80%" etc in the program. " 'Hash% Pos 1% / 5%' means : the positional hashtables are 1% filled, and 5% of the 'probes' were successful (a transposition was detected). Note that the remaining 95% of the probes were not useless, they improve the move ordering. The other values mean the same thing: 'filled percentage' / 'percentage of successful probes'. Note: when you try to optimise Hashtables size, pay attention to the second value: if you double (for example) the size of the Hashtables, and the 'percentage of successful probes' increase from 80% to 82%, the gain is only 2%. Typical values for the 'percentage of successful probes' in the middlegame are 5-10%; 30-40%; 70-80%. " [ Gerrit Reubold in a posting to the Winboard forum 05-07-2000 ] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[D.4] Crafty * [D.4.1] General overview Crafty is probably the most famous Winboard engine [after GNUChess perhaps] and is generally considered the strongest free Winboard program around and is often used as a benchmark for authors who wish to go commercial. While currently [2-2-2001], some may feel that Goliath Light 3.0 is stronger* , there is without doubt that Crafty has the most features available of any Winboard engine both free and commercial . Crafty can among other things process EPD , annotate games into a html output file .The documentation that can be found at ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/v18/crafty.doc.ascii. is also exceptionally detailed and gives a full review of all the features. Download Crafty at ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/v18. You might also want to join the Crafty mailing list administered by the author Dr Robert Hyatt. To subscribe, send a email to majordomo@cis.uab.edu with "subscribe crafty-list" in the body Note. In the past, positions that were favourable for Crafty were shown as a plus score and vice versa. Crafty after version 18, now displays a plus score, when the position is favourable for White and vice versa and this is regardless of the side Crafty is playing! Also Crafty versions after V18 support only SAN [Standard Algebric Notation eg d4 ] instead of co-ordinate notation [eg 1 d2-d4]. * Perhaps because as of 2-2-2001. Goliath Light 3.0 [which is the same as Goliath Native tested by SSDF less Tablebase support] is ranked higher than Crafty in the SSDF List [http://home3.swipnet.se/~w-36794/ssdf/]. Also Goliath 2.9a came ahead of Crafty in Dann Corbit's Battle of the Crowns. * [D.4.2] Do I need a crafty.rc file? Where can I get one? In general, Crafty works perfectly even without a crafty.rc file. However if you wish to have more control over Crafty a Crafty.rc file is necessary. You can either build your own using a text editor. Here's an example hash 12M hashp 2M cache 2M log off learn 7 book on book random 1 book width 2 resign 6 tbpath=c\Winboard\tb egtb display extstat You should change the tbpath to the directory where your Tablebases are and change the memory allocations. * [D.4.3] Where do I get the fastest/Nalimov compiled Crafty? In general, Crafty when complied by Eugene Nalimov are the fastest. Dann Corbit compiled versions probably come close but the best way to find out is by using the Bench command. Nalimov compiled versions will eventually be available at the usual UAB ftp at ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt a few days after Dr Hyatt releases the source code. Take note, the very early compiled versions of Crafty on the UAB ftp are probably not by Eugene Nalimov. Announcements are usually made in the Winboard forum or on the Crafty list. * [D.4.4] How do I compile a opening book and other book learning related matters? The best way to learn is to read the Readme and FAQ at ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/v18/crafty.doc.ascii. A common misconception is that book learning occurs in the book.lrn file. In fact, any changes due to the book learning are written into the Book.bin files as well, but the book.lrn files serves as a record of the changes done. This allows Crafty users to swap book.lrn files to be imported. * [D.4.5] How do I weaken Crafty? Crafty is a really strong program and you may want to "dumb" it down. The easiest way is probably to set in the crafty.rc file a line where st=0.1.This will force Crafty to move instantly. This isn't ideal and Crafty will still be quite strong. You can also experiment with Kscale/extensions parimeters to furthur weaken crafty, or you might want to try a weaker Winboard engine. See Section A.7 . *[D.4.6] When I run the annotateh command no diagrams are displayed. You will need to download the bitmaps, bitmaps_tar.gz from ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/common/ , unzip the files and copy the whole bitmaps directory into the same directory as the Crafty executables. * [D.4.7] What is bookc.bin? How do I use it? Booksc.bin is a special opening book used by Crafty only against computers. This opening book will be automatically used when a "computer" command is sent in Winboard. *[D.4.8] Why does Crafty play the same opening over and over again against other Chess engines? From Winboard version 4.0.6 onwards, whenever a engine match is played locally, Winboard will send the "computer" command. This is supposed to "alert" the engine that it is playing another computer. In Crafty's case, it will automatically overwrite your settings to play in a more cautious style. One of the changes is that book width is set to minimum value and book random is set to zero, and this will cause Crafty to always play the same "best" opening move. Against another engine that has little randomness in opening play [or in mirror matches against Crafty itself] ,this will lead to the same games being repeated over and over again. Fortunately, from 4.2.3 onwards, you can over-ride this by preventing Winboard from sending the Computer Command. Refer to online help for details. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [D.5] Francesa * [D.5.1] General overview Francesa is another strong free Winboard program by Tom King. I have found that Francesa is not a good Blitzer but it plays well in Time controls of X moves in Y minutes.Versions 0.80 [including all MAD versions] and above can use incremental time controls, but the author mentions that the time management is still "crude" and can be improved upon. * [D.5.2] What is MAD? MAD is probably Francesa's answer to the aggressive Rebel Tiger. MAD contains more knowledge than the normal Francesa but is slower as well. Tom King has indicated that the normal Francesa is probably stronger in short time controls, but MAD might be better in longer time controls and/or faster machines. Download both Mad and Francesa at http://www.btinternet.com/~tom_king. * [D.5.3] How do I adjust the size of the transposition Table You can't. They are fixed, I believe at the time when they are compiled. * [D.5.4] Francesa stops moving after the first game? Francesa needs to be "refreshed" after each game. Merely resetting doesn't work. This can be accomplished by adding the /xreuse command if Francesa is the first engine and /xreuse2 if Francesa is the second engine. This holds true as well if you are adding the /mg command. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [D.7] Knightcap * [D.7.1] General overview The author of Knightcap is Andrew Tridgell. Knightcap is unusual among Winboard programs in that it has no opening book. Knightcap learns rapidly as well, the more Knightcap plays the stronger it gets. Dann Corbit has managed to get a version ported for Window users, however the port is not working perfectly, and there may be problems with the learning. * [D.7.2] How do I set up Knightcap? Setting up Knightcap is not easy. Here are the steps 1. Download Knightcap.zip from Dann Corbit's website. 2. Extract coeffs.dat, and knightcap.exe. 3. Get a copy of the latest CygWin1.dll file dated 25.10.2000 from ftp://cap.connx.com/pub/chess-engines/new-approach/CYGWIN1.DLL and copy that to your Windows/system directory. Make sure that you have the latest copy of cygwin1.dll 4. For Win95/98 users create a c:/tmp directory [assuming Windows is in c:] 5. Run ipc-daemon -i [included in knightcap.zip] . One easy way is to set up a shortcut. 6. Alter the Winboard ini file as usual but add the command line options -N -X . 7. Run Winboard. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [D.8] Little Goliath * [D.8.1] General overview Little Goliath is written by Michael Borgstädt. Goliath has a reputation for being a extremely fast and tactical engine. It even solves some test suites faster than Fritz! Recent versions, are no longer as fast , but might be even stronger than Crafty itself. Goliath like Crafty is also rated by SSDF . A opening book generator is available as well. Download both the program and the opening book generator from the http://www.borgstaedt.de/. * [D.8.2] What is the difference between the Winboard version of Little Goliath 3.0 and the one available at Chessbase in the "Young Talents" CD? There is essentially no difference between Goliath 3.0 and the Chessbase Native version of Goliath available for sale on "Young Talents" CD, except for the fact that the latter supports endgame tablebases. Also note, that the version 2.9a was actually released after version 3.0. In fact, 2.9 and 3.0 versions are actually slightly difference "lines" , the former is optimised for speed and is strongest at Blitz, while the later is supposed to do better with longer time limits. * [D.8.3] Little Goliath resigns immediately,when it has lost the prior game when using the /mg command.What should I do? Running Winboard with: C:\Winboard\Winboard /mg X/-reuse /-reuse2 where X= no of games should solve the problem. * [D.8.4] Goliath is not using it's opening book? First check thatyou have turned the opening book on in Goliath.ini. Secondly, if you are using the new Goliath 3.0, you should be aware that the opening book names have changed since 2.9a. They need to be named Lgbook.dat , Lgbook.ind for version 3.0 instead of book.dat and book.ind respectively in the older versions. The format doesn't appear to be changed though, so all you need to do is the rename the file names. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [D.9] SOS * [D.9.1] General overview The author of SOS is Rudolf Huber. SOS is a another Strong engine and it won the title of the best Amateur program in 2000. The latest Winboard SOS version is 11/99 [Nov 1999]. A beta version of March 2000, might exist but it was never released to the public. Instead the latest available version is a Chessbase Native version sold under the "Young Talents" CD. Also the package Shredder 5.0 by Millennium 2000 also offers a UCI version of SOS, which presumably is a newer version than the Winboard version. The free Winboard version of SOS uses a fixed Hash of 20 Mb and can be downloaded at Frank's download page . * [D.9.2] Help! SOS 10/99 or SOS 11/99 refuse to work! First check that you have a copy of cgywin1.dll. Refer to Frank's page on Cygwin.dll at http://amateurschach.in-trier.de/faq.htm for more details. If it still doesn't work, try using SOS 11/99 or 10/99 respectively. Either one or both should work. Note, SOS 10/99 does not appear to support endgame tablebases unlike SOS 11/99. [Unconfirmed] * [D.9.3] Help! SOS refuses to run when i upgraded to Winboard 4.2.1 and above! From Winboard 4.2.0 (a beta version) onwards, a new Winboard protocol is used. In theory, older Chess engines that did not support the newer protocol should run just as well, but for some reason SOS totally failed to work. From 4.2.1 onwards a new command /firstProtocolVersion=1 was introduced. For SOS to work , i have this line in my Winboard.ini file: "SOS10 c:\chesseng\Tb" /firstProtocolVersion=1 /fd=c:\chesseng\SOS10 ============================================================================================ [E] Winboard Engines in other Graphical Interfaces -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [E.1] How do I get a Winboard Engine to work in Chessbase environment? e.g. Fritz6,Junior,Nimzo Please note that when I write "Chessbase environment" I'm referring to Fritz6, Junior etc.. The simplest way to use Winboard engines in Chess base is to download "Native versions" of Winboard engines from Chessbase.com's Download page at http://www.chessbase.com/download/index.htm and to copy the resulting eng file to the Engine folders. For a full guide on how to use Chess engines in Chessbase7 or 8, you should definitely refer to Steve Lopez's electronic notes on installing engines with Chessbase 8 at http://www.chessbase.com/tnotes/111200.htm. Unfortunately, only a small selection of Winboard engines are available as Native versions. If you wish to use other Winboard engines you need to use the Winboard adapter. The instructions and can be found at http://www.chessbase.com/Products/engines/winboard/adapter.htm. Another nice guide with slightly more detailed instructions [using Yace as an example] by Mogens Larsen is available at http://home1.stofanet.dk/moq/WinBoard.htm. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [E.2] What is the difference between using a Native version and using the Winboard adapter? Native versions of Winboard Engines are Winboard engines that have being specially tweaked and complied to work in Chessbase environments. However, not all programmers have chosen to submit their programs to become Native versions. Winboard engines that use the Winboard adapter to run, may not work as well as native versions since the Chessbase Protocol is little different from the Winboard one. The differences can be found at Chessbase Technical Specifications page at http://www.chessbase.com/Products/engines/winboard/tech.htm.This is probably of interest only to programmers trying to get their Chess Engine to work in Chessbase. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [E.3] Which Chess Engines work in the Chessbase environment? There are over 70 Winboard Engines and it will take a lot of work to find out which programs work using the Winboard adapter. Winboard Engines can fail to work totally, or might work poorly. I started a new webpage with a table listing Winboard engines that work in Chessbase, Chess Academy 6.0 ,Shredder 5.0,Chessmaster8000 at http://www.chesskit.com/aarontay/Winboard.gui.html. Contributed by various people. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [E.4] How do I get a Winboard program to work in Chessmaster8000? Refer to the FAQ about Xboard/Winboard engines on Chessmaster.com at http://www.chessmaster.com/xboard.html. BTW, a patch has just being released at Chessmaster.com. This allows Crafty to work in Chessmaster8000 as the pre-patched CM8000 supports only co-ordinate Notation [eg e2-e4] while Crafty18.x and up supports only SAN [Eg e4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [E.5] Which Chess Engines work in Chessmaster8000? I started a new webpage with a table listing Winboard engines that work in Chessbase, Chess Academy 6.0 ,Shredder 5.0,Chessmaster8000 at http://www.chesskit.com/aarontay/Winboard.gui.html. Contributed by various people. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [E.6] How do I get a Winboard engine to work in the Universal Chess Interface [UCI],Chess Academy, Chess Partner, Chess Vision etc ? I do not own any of the products above, but you can refer to Frank Quisinsky's Phase X page at http://amateurschach.in-trier.de/gambit/gambit.htm where you can download some of the configurations files needed. Some help files have not being translated into English though. You can find instructions on setting up Winboard engines with Chess Partner at their http://www.lokasoft.nl/uk/winboard.htm. Also refer to Section A.13 for more details. There is now a UCI to Winboard adaptor by Roland Pfister [author of Patzer]. This allows you to "adapt" UCI engines to Winboard engines. This means that UCI engines like Shredder and SOS can now play under not only Winboard but perhaps in other Winboard compatiable GUI like Chessbase or Chessmaster8000. This was not possible in the past because while most GUIs allows you to import Winboard engines, they do not allow their core playing engine to be exported to be used outside their GUI. Users had to resort to use of complicated auto232 players to match say Shredder and Fritz. The new converter solves this problem. You can download the adaptor version 1.1 at http://amateurschach.in-trier.de/schach/download/download_top.htm. One drawback is that the UCI engines will not be able to use any opening books unless provided by the GUI.So adapted engines will be without opening books in Winboard, but can use those provided in Chessbase GUI.Note: the instructions that come with version1.1 are in German, but you can download instructions for the use of the UCI adaptor in English from the readme file for the Winboard Edition II at schach/download/sonstige/wb_edition_II.zip . As the later also includes a copy of the free adaptor. =========================================================================================== [F] Misc Software, resources for running a Computer Chess Tournament -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [F.1] How do I run a Computer Chess tournament Match? I have written a simple article on running Computer Chess tournaments at http://www.chesskit.com/aarontay/Winboard.computer.html. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [F.2] How can I run a Nunn match [match from a fixed position] automatically in Winboard? Refer to the post at http://www.chesskit.com/aarontay/Winboard/Nunn.html by Dieter Buerssner. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [F.3] How can I run a tournament automatically in Winboard? Using a batch file is probably the best way since Winboard does not directly support automated Round Robin tournaments. Peter Berger has contributed a excellent article explaining how. Another possibility is to actually import the Engines into a commercial product like ChessVision or Chessbase which supports automated running of tournaments. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [F.4] How do I calculate Elos or generate cross tables? To generate ELOs, you can either use a commercial [for example Chessbase] product or use ELOstat by Frank Schubert which you can obtain from http://amateurschach.in-trier.de/schach/download/download_top.htm. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [F.5] How do I present/display Chess games on the web? You can either use Palview at http://www.enpassant.dk/chess/palview/index.htm or Mychess.com at http://mychess.com . For more on Chess Publishing on the Web or on paper go to En Passant Nørresundby Chess Club. at http://www.enpassant.dk/chess/homeeng.htm -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [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? Unfortunately, there is currently no way to handle this automatically. You can do it by , first taking down the remaining clock times, save the position, reset ,choose a new time control, reload the saved position and continue from there. However this may not be a ideal solution, since it might not take into account repetiton of position, or the 50 moves rule, even if Winboard protocol 2 is used. This is espically a problem for authors who prefer to operate their engines in Winboard rather than Console mode in Computer Chess tournaments like IPCC or WMCCC.Quark has a special timing mode that allows the engine to understand and allocate times based on two time controls, but you must still manually adjust the clock. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [F.7] How do display the number of nodes per second calculated by the Chess engine? This is not possible in Winboard, except when in analysis mode [for engines that support it]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [F.8] Winboard 4.2.X automatically saves all my Crafty games with the name Crafty-18.6, how do I change that? Prior to the implementation of the second Winboard protocol in Winboard 4.2.1 and above, all games played locally [I.e on the same computer] were saved with the same name as the executable file. However, from Winboard 4.2.1 onwards, all Winboard engines that use the second Winboard protocol will/can make use of a new "feature" that sends the command "myname" which will cause the engine to be indentified as a fixed name [eg Crafty18.6]. This means that this name will be used regardless of the file name you use! Such a change has several advanatages, firstly authors receiving games from several sources, will now have a consistent naming system. This is because regardless of the source all games would reflect the same name in the PGN headers. Secondly, it allows a cleaner naming system, since the whole system didn't allow the use of names such as Crafty14.6, instead the uglier underscore had to be used. Unfortunately, this also means that users, who want to run auto-play tests between slightly different versions of the same engine [perhaps differing by a couple of experimental parimeters] will risk getting confused since both engines will be shown with the same name. Currently, there is no work around, except to switch off the second protocol using the command, /firstProtocolVersion=1 but that would totally defeat the purpose of using the second protocol.A more complicated method, suggested by Dieter Buerssner [author of Yace], would be to edit the executable file using a hex editor [text editors like Wordpad do not work!] replacing the default name with the name you want as long as the number of characters is the same as before. I have managed to do this for Yace and this should work for any other Winboard engine supporting the 2nd protocol. Engines that support Winboard protocol 2 and have this problem currently include Crafty, Comet, Yace ,Sjeng etc. Other engines in the future that support Winboard protocol 2, should behave the same way. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [F.9] How do I run test suites automatically in Winboard? You can't, while you can load up the test suite position in EPD format in Winboard and run the engine in analysis mode , there is no way to automate the process for a series of test positions. Some engines [Quark for example] have build in automated testing functions when run in command line. Refer to the respective documents. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [F.10] What is PGN,FEN,EPD,CBH,CBF etc and how do I handle them [either display or print] in Winboard? * PGN - Portable Game Notation , "a standard designed for the representation of chess game data using ASCII text files." [http://www.schachprobleme.de/chessml/faq/pgn/] [Portable Game Notation Specification and Implementation Guide, 1994.03.12 ] . In simple terms, PGN is a means to store and display your games. You can use Winboard to read,display games in PGN format. One nice feature of Winboard is that you can copy the whole PGN game to the clipboard and then by selecting Copy game from clipboard, display the game in Winboard. PGN files are just ordinary text files so you can open or edit them using simple text editors. Combining two PGN files also only requires a simple copy command. * FEN - Forsyth-Edwards Notation - A standard used to store and represent Chess positions. For most part very similar to EPD which extended FEN for use with Computer Chess software. * EPD- Extended Position Description - Similar to FEN and is used to store and respresent Chess positions. However it extends FEN with a extended set of "structured attribute values" generally used by Computer Chess programs. EPD is a popular format for Chess problems test suites because of the use of opcodes like "am"(avoid move) and "bm"(best move) and programs that can process EPD can run such test suites automatically.Winboard,some other Winboard Chess engines and some commercials programs [Rebel] can process/write positions in FEN/EPD as well. Another good free program that can import,export EPD into various formats is EPD2DIAG from http://www.rebel.nl/epd2diag.htm. * CBF,CBH - CBF is the older Chessbase format, while CBH is the newer format. Winboard can handle files in this format, unless you first convert them into PGN. You can find some converters from http://www.enpassant.dk/chess/softeng.htm#KONVERT . If you are confused about the differences between CBV,CBF,CBH ,Thomasstock at http://www.thomasstock.com/gambit/cb.html ,explains more with comparisons between PGN and Chessbase formats. Also you might want to refer to Joachim Denzler's FAQ for beginners at http://home.t-online.de/home/joachim.denzler/faq.html#chess game data formats or the exact Technical Specification for PGN,EPD and FEN at http://www.schachprobleme.de/chessml/faq/pgn/ ============================================================================================ © Copyright by Aaron Tay 2001 [aarontay@mailandnews.com] Last Modified 6 May 2001.