Best chess gui

[Trahald]

Best choice: Shredder, alternatively Winboard.

[Kurt]

Best choice: Shredder, alternatively Winboard.

Why did you start a new thread instead of posting to the old one
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=39895
Greetings
Kurt

[Roger Brown]

Best choice: Shredder, alternatively Winboard.

Why did you start a new thread instead of posting to the old one
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=39895
Greetings
Kurt

Hello Kurt,

Not his fault.

That thread was threatening to degenerate so I attempted to clean it up by splitting it. In the repair process I am afraid I orphaned this perfectly on-topic reply and it got lost on the board.

My apologies to the o.p.

Later.

[tomgdrums]

Best choice: Shredder, alternatively Winboard.

Shredderchess is also my favorite GUI.


I would also say Chesspad is underrated as database/GUI.

I find Winboard to be a little bit too much work for my taste.

[hgm]

Just shopping for ideas for improvements:

Could you elaborate a bit on what is "too much work" when using WinBoard?

[tomgdrums]

Just shopping for ideas for improvements:

Could you elaborate a bit on what is "too much work" when using WinBoard?

I think in this case it is more of a personality thing. I don't think there is anything wrong wrong with WinBoard, I just don't mesh with it.

For example: I can never quite get an engine to install and then load. I always seem to miss a step. (I have tried quite a few times.)

I am not sure if it is possible to limit strength for an engine if I want to play against it.

All in all I just can't seem to find my way around it. I spend more time trying to figure it out then playing or studying chess. (a case in point: it is the same reason I don't use Aquarium) Again, I think this is more of a personality thing then anything that needs to be corrected in WinBoard.

The funny thing is I kind of want to be able to use WinBoard but as I said before I don't mesh well with it.

I hope this is helpful.

[facil]

Just shopping for ideas for improvements:

Could you elaborate a bit on what is "too much work" when using WinBoard?

When I first stepped into winboard, it was very hard for me to install my first engine. Other GUIs will just have a section for engines where you can go and load an engine, and winboard asked you just in the beginning and it was just impossible for a novice install a UCI engine (an admittedly a novice will want an UCI engine).

Once I figured out how to use polyglot and had all set, it was just a matter of putting the right shortcut in my desktop, nothing to worry about. But before that, it was really difficult.

On Linux I had problems too. When I wanted to check xboard, it would try to load fairymax, but it was nowhere to be found and the program would crash. Now either is solved or I have fairymax installed, because just typing xboard in terminal works as one would expect. Anyway it has been long time since I just fired xboard like that, I have my beautiful shortcuts now which call exactly what I want each time.

But anyway now you can load engines directly from the program interface, so I guess people just remember the old ugly days and start sweating in panic if they just give it another try they make like it now.

[hgm]

Indeed, installing and loading engines should be trivial now, especially if they are UCI. (Just don't forget to tick UCI. ) WB engines sometimes require parameters, but that is more an engine problem than a GUI problem.



Just for people that do use WinBoard and wonder how to limit engine strength: the time-odds factors in the Time Control dialog are intended for that. Giving the engine a time odds of 100 should dumb it down some 450 Elo.

[George Bodkin]

How do you get to the load engine screen I don't see that screen in winboard
What version of winboard has
that screen I have version 4.5

[K I Hyams]

Just shopping for ideas for improvements:

Could you elaborate a bit on what is "too much work" when using WinBoard?

Please forgive me if my info is out of date, I haven't looked at Winboard for many years. One option that I would find attractive and that I don't think exists at the moment, is to be able to instruct each of the 2 engines involved in an engine match to play both sides of each opening chosen, before moving onto the next opening.