GUI and chess engine

What's the best GUI and the best chess engine.

Discuss.

Commercial or free?

I am more concern with what the OP plans to do with this information. You definitely do not need the strongest chess playing program to play better.

Free.

He wasn't necessarily asking for the strongest engine.  By "best," I'm sure he wants factors such as user friendliness to be considered.

I hope that you are right and I am wrong. I am not going to post any engine names. It's very unusual for someone to ask for the best general user interface and best chess engine all of a sudden.

I( just want to analyse my games after I play them.
The GUI is what I am really asking about. I am using Lucas Chess and I think it sucks.

Actually, the question gets asked pretty often on the forums.  I'm pretty sure I answered a similar question a day or two ago.  Besides, if he simply wanted a strong engine, then consulting wikipedia would have given him all that he needed.  It conveniently has a list of the top 50 free engines along with their elo score. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_engine

To answer OP's question, I like using Stockfish, mostly because there is an iPhone app for it.  It's pretty convenient when I want computer assistance to analyze OTB games and there isn't a computer nearby.  You can see from the wiki link above that Stockfish is also fairly strong.

I can't say much about other free engines, so I'll wait for other forum goers to contribute.  As for GUIs I use Winboard, but I've never really tried anything else.

Well if the OP just wants to practice with computer engines, chess.com downloads section has several that should be more than a challenge for the average player.

@ Topic starter: Just a note that having a computer play for you is against chess.com policy.

http://www.chess.com/downloads/playing+programs+engines?page=1--- there are 158 programs to choose from here

You don't really need the strongest engine to analyze games. I used Nagaskaki Chess to analyzed a 104 move chess game and the results were quick and accurate but i could be wrong. (http://www.chess.com/download/view/nagaskaki-chess2) 

Stockfish is a better engine.

Lucas Chess, in my opinion was not meant to analyze games but instead for training purposes as the author intended.

Hi Guys, i thought i would intervene with my own question i have struggled to find an answer to. I currently use winboard and houdini to analyse my games, but it only gives the best move in a position.

I would find very helpful the ability to give a list of best candidate moves and their stength to help me look at alternative lines. I'm not sure if this is an issue with the engine or the GUI.

Any thoughts?

Using WinBoard and Houdini, simply go to ENGINE and then ENGINE SETTINGS and then change MultiPV to 2 or 3 or 4. 

Click on MODE and then ANALYSIS MODE and in the Engine Output Window you will then see the top 2 or 3 or 4 strongest moves in that position. 

(I'm not sure what WinBoard version you're using.  If it's a real old one, be sure to download the latest version, which is 4.6)

Oh that was easy! Thanks so much, i must have skipped over the setting!

No problem.  WinBoard can do a lot, so it's very easy to miss or simply not be aware of many of its features.

A long, long time ago, I created a "WinBoard tribute" page, the first of its kind.

http://www.edcollins.com/chess/winboard.htm

However, so much has changed with the program (for the better) that I should really either take that entire site down or take the time to update it.

Hoo or Wot is "OP"?

Commercially I like aquarium a lot because I find it to combine database and analysis features really well.  I like the GUI a lot and find it very intuitive.  Can use any engines with it. But others strongly prefer Fritz so I think it is a matter of taste and what you are looking for from an interface.  I find the way Aquarium's "sandbox", playing, database, engine competition, and IDEA (deep analysis) modes interact makes sense to me.

For free, I would get Arena (chess GUI) and SCID (chess database) and then the free engines such as Stockfish, Komodo, and the previous (free) release of Houdini.

For analyzing games played here on chess.com I find the chess analysis provided on the site helps me review the games I played here.

Engines I tend to use are Houdini, Komodo, and Stockfish.

I think it is different than chessbase and it will be a matter of preference which you like better.  I am not trying to duck the question - just I have seen a lot of people express preferences for one or the other.  

I have not used Fritz 13 yet but do have 12.  I find Aquarium to be easier to use and serve my purposes better.  Primarily, I really like that most everything I want from a database and a chess GUI is available to me in one program.  I can manage databases of my games, annotate them, bookmark key positions, analyze using multiple engines and log/compare those results, and the IDEA analysis mode lets you really deeply analyze a position and assess a tree of candidate moves with evaluations.  You can interact with the analysis as it is happening and steer the program to spend more time on different positions, etc.

OP= short for Original poster, person who started the topic

I use Houdini 1.5 for my engine and BabasChess as my GUI. Both are free.

Last I checked (a few months ago), Houdini 1.5 was the second strongest engine in the world, even ahead of commercial engines like Rybka and Fritz. The strongest, of course, was the commercial Houdini 2.0.

BabasChess is a well-polished interface that's primarily intended for playing chess on the Free Internet Chess Server. But it's also great for analyzing games! After you install an engine, just open a board, paste your game, and select "Analyze Game..." from one of the menus to have the game annotated by your engine.

 Thanks!