Which free GUI do you prefer and why?
Arena is maybe the most famous but it exists a lot of other that I don't know very well.
best free GUI?
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AdminX
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Re: best free GUI?
By free GUI, are we talking for Online Play, Engine Matches, or Both?mercury wrote:Which free GUI do you prefer and why?
Arena is maybe the most famous but it exists a lot of other that I don't know very well.
"Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions."
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Ted Summers
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Ted Summers
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hgm
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Re: best free GUI?
Well, the WinBoard package (WinBoard, PSWBTM, Polyglot), of course! That can do it all. 
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WinPooh
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Re: best free GUI?
cmd.exe
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AdminX
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Re: best free GUI?
For Online Play I vote for Jen
For Engine Matches its a coin toss, Winboard, or Arena ?? Hmmm ...
For Both its still a coin toss, Winboard or Arena?
However Arena might hold a slight lead due to ease of use.
For Engine Matches its a coin toss, Winboard, or Arena ?? Hmmm ...
For Both its still a coin toss, Winboard or Arena?
However Arena might hold a slight lead due to ease of use.
"Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions."
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Ted Summers
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Ted Summers
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Volker Pittlik
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Re: best free GUI?
Xboard.mercury wrote:Which free GUI do you prefer and why?
Arena is maybe the most famous but it exists a lot of other that I don't know very well.
Small, rock stabil, source code available, runs > 99% of all engines and plays all variants I play myself and can do everything I need (including playing on servers). Not to forget: unrivalled price.
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Roman Hartmann
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Re: best free GUI?
It depends on what you need the GUI for.
If you're developing your own engine then Arena is best imo. It offers a debug window where you can see all the talk between your engine and the GUI. Really a very nice feature.
If you want to play chess on an online server with an engine then there is no way around Winboard. I would even recommend using Winboard for UCI-engines in combination with Polyglot. It's rock stable.
best regards
Roman
If you're developing your own engine then Arena is best imo. It offers a debug window where you can see all the talk between your engine and the GUI. Really a very nice feature.
If you want to play chess on an online server with an engine then there is no way around Winboard. I would even recommend using Winboard for UCI-engines in combination with Polyglot. It's rock stable.
best regards
Roman
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Graham Banks
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Re: best free GUI?
I currently prefer ChessGUI over Arena.mercury wrote:Which free GUI do you prefer and why?
gbanksnz at gmail.com
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GenoM
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Richard Allbert
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Re: best free GUI?
I use Winboard.
I've had problems with all of the others - exception ChessGUI which I have used once.
I wrote my own "Tourney Manager" - a small program to make batch files according to setting in a config file, and run my tournaments this way, according to my own specifications.
I became sick of leaving four or five variants of Lime to test, only to look a day later and see a problem with Arena / Chessbase / etc had stopped the tournament.
Winboard itself is amazing - fast, and reliable, with masses of options.
That said, I used to use Arena for a long time. 1.1 is pretty good, the later versions not so good.
Richard
I've had problems with all of the others - exception ChessGUI which I have used once.
I wrote my own "Tourney Manager" - a small program to make batch files according to setting in a config file, and run my tournaments this way, according to my own specifications.
I became sick of leaving four or five variants of Lime to test, only to look a day later and see a problem with Arena / Chessbase / etc had stopped the tournament.
Winboard itself is amazing - fast, and reliable, with masses of options.
That said, I used to use Arena for a long time. 1.1 is pretty good, the later versions not so good.
Richard