What GUI you use and why?

[BrendanJNorman]

I feel like I use them all, as I just have a love for chess in general. I use Chessbase and Hiarcs Chess Explorer Pro for game replays ( Live and Post Games). Shredder, Banksia, and Cutechess for Engine vs. Engine (I used to use Arena). For online play (Human vs. Human) I use LiChess (There was a time when I used Winboard and Jin on FICS.) At the end of the day I use whatever tool I need to get the job done. Hell I still use Chess Planet from time to time. I don't restrict my self to just one platform so I guess I have no choice or maybe just to many. I will use Windows, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, MacOS or whatever else is around the corner. Chess is my drug of choice, everything else is just a tool for me to get to it.

Did you just mention ChessPlanet? Maaaaaan that brings back memories.

Their team tournaments are THE best and THE strongest in online chess.

Back in 2007-2009 my team (which has a few titled players, me and a 2100 as BOTTOM board) couldn't even finish in the top ten in events on there. So damn strong, but we loved it.

Used to throw the music on, hook up 6 laptops and buy a case of beer....then "crush the russkies" (who were usually far too strong for us )

Was really a bunch of fun...we'd be shouting across the room "check my board broooo....just sacced a bishop!!!"

Occasionally crushed 2600s though, in fact my blitz rating was over 2500 there back then.

Great memories before the liChess/chess.com days.

[supersharp77]

There are different GUI's for tournaments and analysis, what do you prefer to use and why?

• Banskia

• Cutechess

• Arena

• Fritz/Chessbase

• Hiarcs

• Shredder

• Others

Fritz I find the best for tournament chess....best for KO & Swiss System Tourneys...excellent for analysis....great database lookup for opening or player games....
Cutechess is fine for quick.....one day tourneys...does not save tournament for future play...
Hiarcs Explorer Is Ok for short engine vs engine matches or analysis.....
Banksia Is multi faceted and original has tons of features I have some issues with teh pairing system & the use of various opening books for tournaments
Shredder is excellent for long Round Robin Tornaments.....Crosstable is excellent...can use various opening books...
Chess OK is a excellent GUI (it has a few weird quirks and bugs) overall a quality GUI..various opening books..great for analysis....Ok for large large numbers of engines......
Lokasoft is one of my original favorite GUI's my main problem is the small board for the chess engine research used for the games (way too small) Great for loading various engines......LChess Engines are excellent Sparring Partners (The best)
Chess GUI is adequate for most of the tests out there...I find the board "Look" a bit dated...and opening book options are quite limited compared to Fritz Shredder or Chess OK
Winboard is a Original and Pretty good GUI..has some tricky bugs runs almost perfectly with High Level UCI engines (newer ones) Crashes quite often with many the older ones (winboard)...sometimes loses track of the swiss system games...
Arena is excellent for basisc Round Robin tourneys....some engines refused to work in Arena.....Program is a bit dated...GUI shows all the logos above the clocks...a bit time consuming to load & adjust the engines...Mostly a Round Robin tourney GUI
Back up of data a must w this GUI...
Lucas Chess is a interesting & fun GUI..Lots of Training options.....does play engine tournaments...Best analysis Arrows of all the Current GUI's (you can set various colors & options for the analysis arrows) Ok for short engine tournaments...Issued with engines not closing properly in the GUI after game is ended...GUI sometimes locked up in the middle of the engine tournament & data was lost...
Scid vs PC capable of engine tournaments with a limited # of engines (Round Robin Only) limited set up options....

[Graham Banks]

ChessGUI meets all of my needs to run engine v engine testing.

No issues with Winboard or Java engines. UCI engines are always easy to run anyway.

[crem]

While we are at it, does anyone knows a UI that allows:

✱ Adjusting clock while a game is running,
✱ Not stopping the game if clock ran out of time,
✱ Way to stop engine thinkg and force to make the current bestmove.
✱ (optional and unrealistic) Think on opponents time using go infinite rather than go ponder.

[smatovic]

Hehe, discovered recently AmyBoard for AmigaOS, she's an elderly lady, still speaks an outdated dialect



works fine in recent AmigaOS 3.1.4 from 2018 on classic 68k.

--
Srdja

[hgm]

While we are at it, does anyone knows a UI that allows:

✱ Adjusting clock while a game is running,
✱ Not stopping the game if clock ran out of time,
✱ Way to stop engine thinkg and force to make the current bestmove.
✱ (optional and unrealistic) Think on opponents time using go infinite rather than go ponder.

WinBoard / XBoard has the first three. The third of course only works when the engine supports it. (Which might not be the case for some WB engines.)

I am not sure what implementation exactly you had in mind for the fourth, what you mean by 'unrealistic', or why you would want something like that in the first place. When should the analysis be aborted after the opponent moves, and what should be done afterwards (in the hit and in the miss case)? This seems to be a UCI-specific feature, so it would not be a property of WinBoard but of the UCI adapter. That makes it rather easy to implement, as adapters (and especially UCI2WB) are simple programs.

[hgm]

Hehe, discovered recently AmyBoard for AmigaOS, she's an elderly lady, still speaks an outdated dialect



works fine in recent AmigaOS 3.1.4 from 2018 on classic 68k.

--
Srdja

Wow! She runs micro-Max!

[smatovic]

Wow! She runs micro-Max!

Hehehe, still working on a port of the "TheThreeAmigos", uMax runs fine with 68020, but 68000 has low/high, 16/32 bit memory access issues, when I find the time I gotta dig deeper into this, it is the hash-table I guess.

--
Srdja

[hgm]

Despite this being a bit off topic, let me devote one more posting on this:

Micro-Max does some unaligned memory access for getting the Zobrist keys (macro K), where it accesses an array of (randomized) bytes as if it were a 32-bit int. This could give problems in architectures that do not allow this.

[Gabor Szots]

OK, I remember that disaster. And took measures in the uninstaller script so that this could never happen again, always leaving the root directory of the install when there was unexpected other stuff in it.

I might give it another try. Please give me the download link to that safe WinBoard installer version. Or shall I use WinBoard AA in zip form?