I'm not sure about best, but the Arena 3.0 GUI will work.
You'll have to download a Chess960 compliant engine that also has reduced strength settings...
Either Hamsters 0.7.1 or Ufim 8.02 will work.
Also, Stockfish 2.2.2 or Tornado 4.88 will work, but even on the weakest setting, those last two might be a bit strong for complete beginners.
WinBoard supports Chess960 (called FRC there) in the way you say, as well as 29 other Chess variants. (Remember to enter castling as dragging the King on top of the Rook!) There are dozens of engines available for it that can play FRC. If you want one that is not so strong, Roce would be a good choice. Strength of the engine can always be controlled in WinBoard (even for engines that do not explicitly support that) by specifying time odds: just give the engine 100 times less time, and it loses some 450 Elo points.
Btw, Pulsar, one of the engines included in the WinBoard standard download ( http://hgm.nubati.net/WinBoard-4.5.3.exe ) can also play FRC at a human level. Don't forget to install the 'Chess variants' components, though; this is optional.
I'm having trouble getting 960 engines and pgns to work in arena. So I downloaded the shredder demo since its gui was recommended in a random forum post I found on the Internet.
http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?pid=32752;hl=chess960
It still has trouble opening the pgns I have. Does anyone have a combination of GUI and engine that they've used to easily analyze 960 games they've played? Or because of the unstandard nature of it is it always a lot of work?
The engines I've tried are Stockfish and Critter from this list
http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404FRC/rating_list_pure.html
I've only used arena and the shredder gui so far. Arena didn't seem to run 960 with stockfish or critter once it got to castling. Shredder seems to run ok with critter if I put in the moves manually. When I opened my pgn it bugged out similarly to arena once it got to castling.
You are probably doing something wrong, because although the GUIs you mention are in general not supportive of variants, I am pretty sure Chess960 is one of the few exceptions.
I only know how to use WinBoard, though, and WinBoard + Stockfish or Critter should work like a charm. WinBoard can be downloaded from http://hgm.nubati.net/WinBoard-4.5TM.exe . Stockfish or Critter are not included in that download (it comes with Fruit, Fairy-Max and Pulsar, and although the latter supports Chess960, it is very weak. But that makes it all the more fun to play against, of course.) If you already have Stockfish and Critter on your system, you would have to configure WinBoard for using them through the Engine -> Load Engine menu, where you wuld have to point out the .exe and tick UCI. With the File -> New Variant dialog you can then choose between variant normal and FRC.
With the File -> New Shuffle Game dialog you can configure whether every new Chess960 game will start from a newly picked random position (default), or pick a random position once (or select one by choice, through typing the official number) and use that over and over.
I was trying those 960 engines for analysis because they were high rated. Both Arena and Shredder gui say they support 960. As far as I could tell from the internet it has to do with how castling in internally and in pgns. The rybka forum post talks about it.
Shredder at least in the forum posts i found was recommended for 960 engine support. It still doesn't work correctly when I open pgns though. I don't quite understand how I need to edit them either.
I can play with critter in shredder and run through my games by hand.
I'll try winboard too though. Thanks. :)
Here is another post about this problem. aquarium has the same problem.
http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?tid=24265
WinBoard should not have any of the prblems described in those forum posts. It understands both Shredder FEN and X-FEN standards. If the PGN of the games contain a variant tage (i.e. [variant "Chess960"]) it should automatically switch to FRC when you load the game. If not, you would have to switch it to FRC by hand (using the New Variant menu dialog) before loading the game.
For Shredder I think you need to change the starting position FEN string. IIRC, Chess.com uses the standard 'KQkq' to mark castling in the FEN, and Shredder expects the files of the rooks, so the standard starting position would be 'HAha'.
Thanks for the help. I got WinBoard-4.5TM.exe working with critter. My pgns open and analysis works.
Looking up getting uci chess engines working with xboard got me scared for bit. But it doesn't seem hard with that newer winboard.
Indeed, this is one area in which this new version (to be officially released any day now as 4.6.0) is much improved: there now is a Load Engine dialog that can be used for loading and installing engines during a session. You just have to tick the UCI checkbox, and point at the engine .exe, and that's it. Next time you can load it from the combobox, or even directly from the menu if it was a recently used engine.
XBoard 4.6.0 will have this too, btw.
Hi all. I'm wondering what your opinions are about which software is best for playing chess960 against a PC. Yes, I realize that most programs will let you set up arbitrary positions and play from them. But that seems like a pretty cumbersome way to play chess960 on a PC. I was hoping to find at least one program that would generate a valid starting position, and then simply let you play from there -- preferably with adjustable settings for playing strength. Any opinions or experience here?