I don't have the slightest clue but I thought I would bump this for you. There are so many silly threads that get attention, I feel like this one deserves at least some...
How to use a chess engine?
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Barely able to find the power switch, so no expert here, just an old patzer trying to help. What you need in addition to the engine is a GUI, graphic user interface. Arena is a good free one, so is SCID v. PC or so I've read. You can download them from this site (last item under "more").
I say why bother. Fritz comes out with a new version every year or so and the old ones are available cheap. I did a quick Amazon search and found Fritz 12 available for $10. Yes Fritz is a pain to use but there's a steep learning curve for virtually any sophisticated program. And yes Fritz 12 will run Houdini 1.5a; it's one of the many programs I've tried. Good luck!
I used Arena a few years ago and switched to SCID, because it seemed like a leaner, more intuitive program. I upgraded SCID a few weeks ago and my computer locks up when running houdini now (and I don't have a shitty PC exactly, core i7 processor, 8 gb ram, not top of the line, but it can handle a chess engine). Im switching back to Arena.
winboard is another good one....it is also free.
stockfish 7 is the best after comodo 9
Feb 2, 2016
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#7
In this moment Stockfish is First in CCRL Rating List. What is the best is a matter of taste.
For use a chess engine you normally (you can run the engine in a terminal but this is unpractical) need:
a program to use the interface with the board (Scid and Arena are free I prefer Scid) http://scid.sourceforge.net/ (In a car this is the bodywork)
and a chess engine (I recomend stockfish 7) https://stockfishchess.org/ (In a car this is the engine)
You can Use a database to load as a tree or as a database to search games ( I recomend Icofy database but the server is dead. In chess.com I find a copy in the following link. In a car this is the GPS XD)
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/icofy-chess-database---where
I want to use houdini 1.5 engine for analyzing some things, but i don't know how to use it. I heard that i need to have some kind of a proggram to run it, like arena, but the site is not available for some reason.
Is there any other proggram that i can use? How to install the engine on the proggram?