My friend and I want to match our computers to play against each other over internet. We have rybka4 engine and some others and we want to see which one is tougher, his desktop pc or my laptop
Somebody suggested that we could log on FICS as quests and let the engines play there against each other. So we installed a software called Arena but when we logged on FICS we didnt know how to start the game so that the engines would play for us.
I also heard it is possible with winboard but I'm a noob configuring that program and can't manage it without help.
Is there a simple way to do this? I wonder if anybody could help me. I would be very thankfull.
For WinBoard, when you downloaded and installed the WinBoard-4.5.0 package, do the following:
Go to the WinBoard folder (e.g. using the "WinBoard files" item in the Windows start menu), right-click the winboard application icon (the black Knight), and select "Create Shortcut" from the popup menu. A new Knight icon will appear in the folder called "Shortcut to WinBoard". Rename it to "Rybka FICS bot" (or whatever you want to call it).
Then right-click this shortcut icon, and select "Properties". In the dialog you will see a "target" field with the path name of the winboard.exe file in it. At the end of this, add (separated from it by a space!):
where RYBKA and RYBKAFOLDER are the names of the Rybka executable and the pathname of the folder where you have installed Rybka on your system. (So something like C:\Program Files\Chessbase\Engines\Rybka.)
After that you can simply double-click the shortcut, and it will directly connect you to FICS. This will give you, next to the Chess board, a console window where you can type commands to FICS. You first type the name you want to use (hoping it is not in use by someone else), to log on as a guest. Assuming your prospective opponent has done the same, you then start a game by typing the command:
match OPPONENT BASETIME INC
where OPPONENT is the name under which the other is logged in, BASETIME is the number of minutes originally on the clocks, and INC the number of seconds added to the clocks after each move.Play should then start automatically.
Thank you very much! We've done some much searching over the internet with my friend that we gave up but you made our day
I will test this when my friend arrives at home. Just one more additional question. If I want to do the same with any other engine, is everything else the same expect the parts with "RYBKA.exe" and "RYBKAFOLDER"?
Indeed, just put in the name and location of the engine executble. But if the engine is not a UCI engine, you would have to leave out the -fUCI (E.g. for Crafty or Thinker.)
