I don't know how this fits into correspondence chess, but I'll take your word for it.
My favorite for engine matches is Arena. Sometimes other GUIs like ChessGUI or Winboard are also used. There are quirks and limitations to any GUI, and there's always a learning curve.
Arena:
ChessGUI:
Winboard:
http://www.open-aurec.com/wbforum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=51528
In ICCF Correspondence use of engines is permitted (they know they can't stop it so they allow it) and as such if I am going to play I need to learn to work with engines better than I can now.
It's possible I made a rash assumption; Are you interested in engine-engine matches, or human-engine matches? If it's the latter case, you might also consider Scid vs. PC, or even the original Scid.
engine-engine.
shraavanchess2000, not at all. If you relied solely on the engine in ICCF play you'd be maybe 1900. Engines ensure tactical blunders never happen, but humans still conceive of the plans that win games. Sole reliance on the engine will always lead to many positional losses.
The idea is that the human detects the positional subtleties on the board and the engine ensures that no gross oversights happen.
For the record, the reason engine-engine matches are needed is that if you want to see if an opening idea is viable or choose betweew two candidate moves it's sometimes useful to set up engine matches to see how the idea performs.
So what I did is I took an opening line that runs straight into an endgame and I had two engines, rated about 100 points apart, play a 10 game match from that point.
My thought was that White was slightly better in the line, and after the match, which went 7.5-2.5 with the slightly stronger engine winning each White game and drawing each Black game I decided that my assessment was correct and that White has a slight edge but that endgame skill will matter.
Why is that important? Because it lets me know a type of ending I should work on in order to justify playing this line.
This was all for an OTB line I want to play, but when I start playing correspondence as well I will need this skill even more.
I am thinking of starting to play ICCF correspondence chess seriously. One of the things I know I need to learn more about in order to do so is how to run an engine match.
Does anyone know of a free GUI that is easy to use and useful for this?
TIA...