Thanks for the kind words fburton and Ian1984! Perhaps fburton you could send me a screenshot of the display problem ? My email address is on my website. Cheers, Bill.
Best Chess GUI
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No problem, Bill - have just sent you a screendump.
When I play "live" on chess.com on my Android phone I get to use a very beautiful marble chessboard with very crisp movements and sound. Would love to have that gui for playing against engines on Android or my windows machine. Is it available for dowbload? Thanks in advance.
My favorite free GUI is ChessX ( www.box.com/chessx for recent builds ) otherwise http://chessx.sourceforge.net . My favorite commercial GUI is HIARCS Chess Explorer (HCE) . I have helped with ChessX development.
Both of these have Windows as well as OS X versions.
I don't c the point of paying good money for a chess gui when the best gui's in life are free! Most of those already mentioned are excellent. The one's I like are Lucas Chess, Jose, Babbas and Winboard. Each one does something a little different, sometimes you feel like a nut and sometimes you don't.
I got deep fritz 9 for 9 dollars in amazon a little older but I put houdini so hay have a nice program for 9 dollars
Interesting. I last posted in this topic more than two years ago.
Since then my answer has changed. Scid vs PC is now my favorite GUI.
A tribute page to it can be found here.
ChessGUI de Matthias Gemuh lorsqu'on sait l'utiliser !.
Just today I have tried Arena, and I am quite happy with it. I'll never touch Fritz again. Fritz m.E. has a terribly confusing UI with lots of options one does not need. Simple things are hard to do.
That's how Arena looks after tweaking the UI a bit and getting rid of the ugly colors and graphics: http://screencast.com/t/vQ18bEbf
I found it quite easy to add other engines (Houdini 1.4 and Stockfish 4 in my case). Also if you wanna train against the engine this works quite intuitively. You start the engine and you can play from any position. Go back some moves and play from that position. I did not try switching colors in the middle of the game, but should be similarly easy.
As a database program I use Scid vs. PC and am happy with it. Only playing agains the engine I never really figured out. It appears to lack options there. So for Database and analysis Scid vs PC, for training against the engine Arena.
--- Edit: after trying again playing against the engine works quite easily in SCID vs PC, too. Play -> UCI Engine. You can set how long the computer is allowed to think before moving. Sticking with only one GUI for everything might be preferrable.
On android Droidfish for playing and Scid on the go for database.
I must say the Tarrasch engine is nice. But at leas it should be possible to change the color of the board. The dark fields are to bright.
Lucas chess gets my vote. It has a lot of features and of course it is entirely free. I've been using it for a while now and it certainly is worth its weight in gold.
ChessGUI 0.245g of Matthias Gemuh because the software recognizes all chess engines (biglion page) !.
Well... most chess software recognizes all chess engines. You'll have to come up with something better than that if you wish to recommend ChessGUI 0.245g. 
MrEdCollins wrote:
Well... most chess software recognizes all chess engines. You'll have to come up with something better than that if you wish to recommend ChessGUI 0.245g.
Except that I wish Chessmaster imported UCI engines...I wish the Shredder GUI imported Winboard engines...And although I've given up on Fritz, I wish it imported native Winboard engines. 
I need to use ChessGUI more. Supposedly it's good for engine testing. I know one engine tester who uses it exclusively, so it must be decent. Also, ChessGUI and Winboard are two of the few free GUIs that properly handle Chess960 castling notation.
http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/ChessGUI
ChessX 1.1.0 "Bookmaster" is a very good GUI with ECO coding.
chessx/1.1.0 at SourceForge.net
The best free UCI is Ivanhoe 46ei (64 bit) it beats Houdini 3 very easily.
I guess that what they don't want you to know at UCI engine tounaments.
They say Ivahoe 46e is even better than Ivanhoe 46ei
www.chess2u.com/t4670p120-ivanhoe
July 17, 2014 (New)
Ivanhoe 46f rtg-3300
www.chesslogik.com
anthii wrote:
ChessX 1.1.0 "Bookmaster" is a very good GUI with ECO coding. The best UCI is Ivanhoe 46ie (64 bit) it beats Houdini 3 very easily. I guess that what they don't want you to know at UCI engine tounaments. chessx/1.1.0 at SourceForge.net
Do you have an Ivanhoe link? I can't find a compile by that name.
Thanks.
Try this site for Ivanhoe downloads:
http://chess.cygnitec.com/engine/ivanhoe/
Ivanhoe 46ei (64 bit) www.chess2u.com/t4670p120-ivanhoe
They say Ivahoe 46e is even better than Ivanhoe 46ei
July 17, 2014 (New) !!!
Ivanhoe 46f rtg-3300 www.chesslogik.com ??? Fake it is really Ivanhoe 46B
New Blake Momba 2.0 64Bit Ivanhoe Clone 2950
at Chess Engines Diary Download.com The A-Z of Chess Engines
BillForster wrote:
Gizehks-Practitioner wrote:
It's already very hard to find out how you are able to play with Black instead of White.
It's often surprisingly difficult to get a chess program to let you play black. Solving that problem was one of my motivations behind writing my Tarrasch Chess GUI (www.triplehappy.com) actually. In my program you can always start a game, at any time, from any position, as either black or white. In particular, it doesn't matter whose turn it is in the current position. Most chess programs assume you want to play the first move of the new game, and since by default you are starting in the initial position where white has the move .... well you end up playing white.
Tarrasch is indeed very simple and good, to the spot what ordinary rank chess players need! Thanks! Let me in very easy way load a game an check what Komodo thinks.
Just wanted to give another thumbs up for Tarrasch (www.triplehappy.com). Nice and straightforward. And the new version is a big improvement on the last one (which was also pretty good). My favourite chess GUI - and free. Cheers BillForster!