Ubuntu Linux and Chess -- using xboard to compare engines
I thought I would just make a quick post to say how to use xboard to play a game between two chess engines. In another post later I will explore a better way of doing this, but I am going to just start with a simple game between stockfish (the strongest engine I have mentioned), and gnuchess (the weakest).
I had stockfish playing white and gnuchess playing black. I started the game by typing this into a terminal window:
xboard -fcp stockfish -fUCI -scp gnuchess
Now remember what I said about xboard -- it's ugly and you sometimes need terminal commands, but it gets the basics done.
Anyway, after starting xboard and selecting Mode -> Two Machines, I ended up with this little gem of a game:
I don't want to say very much about it at the moment, except that stockfish is a clear winner in 25 fairly unimaginitive moves. I also didn't use an opening book database and this is only one game. But it gives you a fairly general idea.
