please help with winboard and server connections

[sshendric]

Hi,

From what I understand, winboard is the software to go with in order to connect chess engines to internet chess servers.

Friend of mine and I are testing various engines against eachother but due to hardware differences of our PC's and location (different continents), easiest way is to do match ups on a ICS such as pogo.com or any other.

However, it's a pain to lets say run 100 games as right now we are playing manually so we began to search the web for a way to automate the process.

and it looks like winboard software is just what we need, however, when we tried to set it up, we realised that it is far from being "user friendly".

Could anyone pleas help to set up engines and such in winboard and how to make it connect to a server?

engine:

for example houdini 2. In the engine folder I can see houdini.exe and i can load it to winboard, BUT winboard doesn't load any of the engine paramaters.. and there are a lot of them. Other GUI for chess (for example hiarcs) loads those just fine, so how to set up parameters for chess engine such as:
hash table size, threads, split depth and so on.

where to specify a link o tablebases? (quite a few of them, so should be a folder)
hash size for tablebases?
openning books ... we have it in .ctg format and not .bin


Maybe there's a way to use winboard to connect existing chess software to online chess servers? (that would be amazing)

many thanks in advance

[H.G.Muller]

Start WinBoard from the command prompt, with the command

Winboard -ics -icshost freechess.org -icshelper timeseal -fcp houdini.exe -fd HOUDINIFOLDER -autoKibitz -fUCI

You can set Houdini's parameters through the Engine #1 Settings or Common Engine Options.

Ctg is a proprietary ChessBase format. WinBoard only supports Polyglot book format. Of course engines can still use their own books in any format they use.

[sshendric]

Start WinBoard from the command prompt, with the command

Winboard -ics -icshost freechess.org -icshelper timeseal -fcp houdini.exe -fd HOUDINIFOLDER -autoKibitz -fUCI

You can set Houdini's parameters through the Engine #1 Settings or Common Engine Options.

Ctg is a proprietary ChessBase format. WinBoard only supports Polyglot book format. Of course engines can still use their own books in any format they use.

Hi,

Tried running with the parameters as in your post. Winboard started and connected to freechess.org which is already a progress in my case!!

However, engines are not loading. Engine tab in winboard is mostly grayed out ... i cant "load first engine" or second, can't edit engine's settings.

When i just run winboard without any parameters and try to load the engine, it gives me:
polyglot -noini -ec "houdini.exe" -ed "houdini folder" exited unexpectedly

i don't understand why -noini while i've read that polyglot requires an .ini file and if not specified it takes polyglot.ini as default.
so i created polyglot.ini and copied it in winboard folder, polyglot folder and engine folder (just to be sure)

contents of polyglot ini:
[PolyGlot]

EngineName = Houdini 2.0c x64 pro
EngineDir = D:\Houdini 2 Chess
EngineCommand = Houdini_20_Pro_x64.exe

Log = false
#LogFile = houdini.log
KibitzMove = true
KibitzCommand = whisper
Book=true
BookLearn=false
BookFile=D:\chessdb\Testsets\Hiarcs13dBook.ctg
ScoreWhite = true
Resign=true
ResignMoves=6
BookRandom=false
UCIVersion=1
CanPonder=true

[Engine]

Hash = 8192
Ponder = true
OwnBook = false
UCI_Chess980 = false
Threads = 6
Strength = 100
Contempt = 0
GaviotaTbPath = D:\chessdb\Testsets
GaviotaTbCache = 256
GaviotaTbCompression = cp4
Tablebase Usage = Everywhere


However I dont understand why this .ini is not being picked up.

What am I doing wrong?

[mike schoonover]

you have to add the line "/zippyPlay=true" to the winboard.ini.
note that its case sensitive,that P is capitol.
save the file to a seperate folder as the command deletes itself after every use of winboard.
this should be automatic i thought in the new versions.i guess not.
regards
mike

[sshendric]

you have to add the line "/zippyPlay=true" to the winboard.ini.
note that its case sensitive,that P is capitol.
save the file to a seperate folder as the command deletes itself after every use of winboard.
this should be automatic i thought in the new versions.i guess not.
regards
mike

adding "/zippyPlay=true" resolved the issue of adding engines!

Many thanks for that!

However, tablebases and openning books are not being picked up

do i need to add anything else to .ini?

additionally, engine settings pops a blank window

In options->common engine, i've specified polyglot folder location (with polyglot.ini in it), EGTB path and opennings book, however these settings are not being picked up by any engine.

I guess i need to specify something else in winboard.ini ... could anyone please advice on what should be added?

[H.G.Muller]

Sorry, my bad. I left out the option -zp .

Ini files are obsolete. Polyglot will only make them if you configure the engine with non-standard settings through WinBoard, and press the 'Save' button. It is not recommended to meddle yourself with them.

Polyglot is installed in the WinBoard folder, and you should not specify a Polyglot folder in the Common Engine dialog; unless you know very well what you are doing, this is just asking for trouble.

Just make sure you give the correct path name of the engine folder with the -fd option. The error message you get suggests you are either using a wrong name for the Houdini .exe file, or a wrong folder, so that Polyglot could not find it.

In Common Engine options you can also set the Nalimov path for tablebases.

[matematiko]

Hi,

..... easiest way is to do match ups on a ICS such as pogo.com or any other.

Just an observation:

pogo.com is not an ICS server.. neither is Yahoo nor many many others.

Regards,

P.S. You used the exact same user name to post a similar question in another Forum, If your intentions are to connect to pogo.com, I suggest you read the files included in the "Documentation" folder. Few minutes of reading will save you hours of headaches. Additionally, I answered some of your questions in that other Forum.