Winboard books

[mjlef]

My program is playing in a tournament in less than two weeks, and I need advice on opening books. The programs have to be able to kibitz PVs during the game and play on ICC (tellics). My engine is UCI only right now, but I should be able to simulate Winboard via PolyGlot. Any suggestions on a good GUI that both connects to ICC well, supports kibiting the PV and has support for good opening books?

Thanks in advance, Mark

[Marc Lacrosse]

My program is playing in a tournament in less than two weeks, and I need advice on opening books. The programs have to be able to kibitz PVs during the game and play on ICC (tellics). My engine is UCI only right now, but I should be able to simulate Winboard via PolyGlot. Any suggestions on a good GUI that both connects to ICC well, supports kibiting the PV and has support for good opening books?

Thanks in advance, Mark

Under windows the combination winboardX+Polyglot(with book)+UCI engine has it all.
I have used it for years, but it is a bit tricky to tune and i am not quite sure you will be comfident with it in a two weeks delay.

As far as I know both Arena "stable" 1.1 version (not the more recent 1.9 betas in which ICS support is broken) and the commercial Chesspartner from lokasoft have all required features including powerful book-building features (I just do not know whether they are able to kibbitz the PV) but a regular user could help you.
Arena is at www.playwitharena.com

With any of these three solutions you can get good-quality "generic" opening books in case you would not have enough time to build by yourself a dedicated book for your engine in the two forecoming weeks.
Among the various available ones, Harry Schnapp's ones for Arena are very good.

Arena has direct support for both WB and UCI engines. In case you would go for the WB+PG+Engine solution (or Arena+PG+Engine) there are also good generic PG opening books available for free.
Among these are Dann Corbit's ones and also my fruit books. All these are available at WBEC Ridderkerk.

Marc