Returning to computer chess, I am not sure which GUI to use.

[pepechuy]

Hi to all.

Several years ago, I used XBoard as my chess GUI.
Now that is not an option for me. For this hobby, I will use an old laptop (decommissioned, for my work I use a newer one... it seems better for me to keep job and hobby in separate computers), with Windows 10.

I am considering three main options: Winboard, Arena and Baskia. I have no experience with any of them, but I assume Winboard is almost identical to XBoard.
What I want to do:
(1) play odds games against strong engines (me with material advantage).
(2) play chess960 against weak (or weakened) engines.
(3) analyse my over-the-board game with engines.
In particular, I am not interested in letting engines play against each other... I will leave that to people with powerful hardware.

I already installed ChessPad2, but that only serves as database, it has no engine support.

¿Any recommendations or suggestions? Winboard, Arena, Baskia, or something else I have not considered.

Greetings.

[Dayffd]

From what I have seen a number of people here use Arena.

[matejst]

My advice is to try LucasChess, as the main option. Then, another one is Slowchess. From the commercial one, I still use an old version of the Shredder GUI. ScidvsPC could be a good option too, Scid most probably too.

[Magnum]

Hi to all.

Several years ago, I used XBoard as my chess GUI.
Now that is not an option for me. For this hobby, I will use an old laptop (decommissioned, for my work I use a newer one... it seems better for me to keep job and hobby in separate computers), with Windows 10.

I am considering three main options: Winboard, Arena and Baskia. I have no experience with any of them, but I assume Winboard is almost identical to XBoard.
What I want to do:
(1) play odds games against strong engines (me with material advantage).
(2) play chess960 against weak (or weakened) engines.
(3) analyse my over-the-board game with engines.
In particular, I am not interested in letting engines play against each other... I will leave that to people with powerful hardware.

I already installed ChessPad2, but that only serves as database, it has no engine support.

¿Any recommendations or suggestions? Winboard, Arena, Baskia, or something else I have not considered.

Greetings.

Of course BanksiaGUI.
https://banksiagui.com/download/
(4) ECA
(5) Test suites

[Madeleine Birchfield]

Would have to second BanksiaGUI, huge improvements have been made to the program in the past two years and it has become better than Arena and Winboard now.

[pepechuy]

Of course BanksiaGUI.
https://banksiagui.com/download/
(4) ECA
(5) Test suites

Hi.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Extreme Chess Analysis is new to me. It sounds interesting... I would need to try it to see if it is useful to me.

About test suites, I understand they are collections of (hard) positions for the engines to solve. I do not see myself doing this.
I would leave that to people with really powerful hardware (mine is quite modest).
As for generating new positions for test suites... I think that, every now and then, my games feature some positions that would have been quite difficult for computers in the 1990's or early 2000's, but not for today's computers (and even if one creeps out, I doubt I would be able to recognize it).

Greetings.

[mvanthoor]

Would have to second BanksiaGUI, huge improvements have been made to the program in the past two years and it has become better than Arena and Winboard now.

I hope so. I never liked XBoard and Winboard. It still looks very 90's, and the user interface isn't that great.

Arena is convoluted with regard to engine loading and handling. (I've never been able to find a way to set UCI-options per engine; or I'm completely missing it.) The reason I have Arena installed is for the debug window. The user interface I still like best is Fritz 11, which I now even run in Wine under Linux.

I'll have to take a look at Banksia GUI as well. Last time I tried it on Windows, it wasn't great. (No way to change font options; and it didn't adhere to the Windows font size I set. Fonts were tiny, and GUI was tiresome to use because of it.)

[MikeB]

Try Lucaschess, you might like it

https://lucaschess.pythonanywhere.com/