Windows releases

[rulet]

Where to get latest Windows release of Winboard?

[H.G.Muller]

The latest stable release was WinBoard 4.8.0, as obtainable from this website. WinBoard 4.9 was never released, because the changes from 4.8 to 4.9 almost exclusively affected only XBoard.

There is a beta package of the development version now that does include a lot of improvements for WinBoard, though. (In particular the use of anti-aliased piece images, supporting external bitmaps with transparency, and a more obvious way to edit positions.) It doesn't come with an installer, but as a zip file, and can be downloaded from http://hgm.nubati.net/WinBoard-AA.zip .

[rulet]

Hello again. Where is the link to the windows stable version(or beta)? And how to add latest stockfish engine to it?

[H.G.Muller]

The link is given above. And WinBoard 4.8.0 you can find in the first topic of the 'WinBoard development and bugfixing" section of this forum.

To use the latest Stockfish, start WinBoard, open the Engine -> Load 1st Engine dialog, browse to the Stockfish executable, tick the 'UCI' checkbox, and hit the 'OK' button. That should do it. This assumes you have put the Stockfish executable somewhere on your computer. (I would not know how to fdo that.)

[rulet]

And another question is how to turn off the time, to play without time?

[H.G.Muller]

You cannot turn of the clocks. For the engine this could not possibly work; they have to know how long they are allowed to think, or they would never move.

You can allow yourelf to exceed the time specified by the clock, though. Just untick "auto-flag" in the General Options dialog. Then the game doesn't automatically end when your clock goes negative, and you can play on as long as you like.

You can also give the engine much less time than you have, by specifying time odds in the Options->Time Control dialog. E.g. if you sepcify 1 hour, and time odds for the engine 60, it means you get 1 hour and the engine only 1 min on the clock.

[rulet]

You can also give the engine much less time than you have, by specifying time odds in the Options->Time Control dialog. E.g. if you sepcify 1 hour, and time odds for the engine 60, it means you get 1 hour and the engine only 1 min on the clock.

Can you, please, specify what exactly to change here according what you said?

[H.G.Muller]

Specify a time-odds factor for Engine #1. (As in human engine games you only use one engine.) The time on the engine's clock will then be divided by that factor.

[rulet]

Is that correct(according to time which you said)?
And another question is how to save settings, because every time I run winboard this window shows first and I have to choose every time with which engine to play. And the same question how to save time control setting permanently?

[H.G.Muller]

1) Yes, that is correct. If yo press OK there you will see 1 hour on the white clock, and 1 min on the black clock. (Because initially the engine is set to playing black, and is awaiting your white move.) If you would then press Mode->Machine White to have the engine start, the clock times would swap.

2) Most time control parameters are saved in the settings, but not the time odds. Usually time odds is tied to a particular engine (you might want to handicap engines of different strength in a different way). In that case you would specify a 'Special WinBoard option' -firstTimeOdds 60 (say) when you first register the engine through the Load First Engine dialog (or add that to the 'engine line' later with Engine->Edit Engine List). Then it would be automatically set whenever you load the engine.

You would still have to select the engine from the startup menu, though. WinBoard can perform many functions (game viewer, human-engine games, engine tournaments, playing on a remote ICS), and there is no default mode. If you want to start WinBoard in a pre-determined mode, you can make a Windows shortcut for that. For the command in the shortcut (behind the path name that is put there after browsing to the winboard.exe file) you would have to put (separated by spaces)

-cp -fcp ENGINE.exe -fd ENGINEFOLDER -scp ENGINE.exe -sd ENGINEFOLDER

with the ENGINE.exe and ENGINEFOLDER the same as what you would see in the comboboxes of the Startup Dialog where you select the engine. Putting this in the command would tell WinBoard beforehand what engines you want, (and the -cp would tell it you wanted to run it in engine mode), so that it will have no deed to invoke the Startup Dialog. You could also add a -firstTimeOdds 60 option in that shortcut, to automatically get the time odds.

[rulet]

Thanks for answers. I created shortcut with this
C:\WinBoard\WinBoard\winboard.exe -cp -firstTimeOdds 60 -fcp stockfish.exe -fd C:\WinBoard\Stockfish -scp stockfish.exe -sd C:\WinBoard\Stockfish

winboard starts with stockfish, I make my move, but stockfish engine doesn't make move -- it just waits and nothing happens. What is incorrect?

[H.G.Muller]

Oh, my bad. Stockfish is UCI, and you would have to tell that to WinBoard too. By adding the options -fUCI -sUCI to the command line.

[rulet]

So, is that will be correct?
C:\WinBoard\WinBoard\winboard.exe -cp -firstTimeOdds 60 -fcp stockfish.exe -fd C:\WinBoard\Stockfish -scp stockfish.exe -sd C:\WinBoard\Stockfish -fUCI -sUCI

What means -fSAN option?
And also is it possible that f.e. if I exit the program in the middle of the game, when I open winboard next time that the game opened on last state?

[H.G.Muller]

The -fSAN / -sSAN options make WinBoard convert the engine's PV to Standard Algebraic Notation, in the Engine Output window.

To restart an interrupted game you have to make sure that it is saved on file; WinBoard has a mode where it automatically saves games (you can specify that in the Options -> Load dialog), and I think that also applies to games interrupted by closing WinBoard. (Not when you hit File -> New Game, however.) If you want to resume the game you would have to first load it through File -> Load Game. You might have to adjust the clocks, however; I don't recall whether that is automatic.

[rulet]

Ok, I see. Is it possible to remporary remove time-block?

[H.G.Muller]

No, the clocks are always visible.

[rulet]

I noticed one thing in the program, if to make illegal move by accident, it's not possible to revert and the only option is to start a new game. How to fix it?

[H.G.Muller]

Just tick "test legality" in the Options -> General menu dialog. Then you cannot make illegal moves.

[rulet]

Thanks for answers.
Does this winboard beta 4.9.201102 has any known bugs?

[supersharp77]

The latest stable release was WinBoard 4.8.0, as obtainable from this website. WinBoard 4.9 was never released, because the changes from 4.8 to 4.9 almost exclusively affected only XBoard.

There is a beta package of the development version now that does include a lot of improvements for WinBoard, though. (In particular the use of anti-aliased piece images, supporting external bitmaps with transparency, and a more obvious way to edit positions.) It doesn't come with an installer, but as a zip file, and can be downloaded from http://hgm.nubati.net/WinBoard-AA.zip .

Tried using this release but it has some sort of bug and there is no polyglot adapter in the winboard folder....it loads very slowly and crashed after trying to load some standard chess engines....so it doesn't look to be operational at this time...