gersfan is wrong.
Get a GUI like Arena, and play the two engines against each other with "ponder off." That way, the engines can't think when the opponent's clock is ticking and no one gets in the other's way.
However, doing this with chessmaster and rybka is a little tricky because chessmaster isn't a UCI engine. You can match up even stronger UCI engines, however, like stockfish and fire, which are both free and available online.
Most newer computers have at least two processors anyway, so resource hogging shouldn't be a problem. Besides, depending on your operating system, you can set equal priorities to both processes (I don't know if there's a way to do this in Windows).
Thank you very much to all replys! I am not too bright when it comes to computers other then using them, GUI like Arena, is that a program I could buy?, or ponder off is something that deals with turning off the chess engine thinking on your time?
May just have to try and find another computer if all fails, thanks!
I'll sell you arena for $20.00
Or you can download it for free........
Thank you very much to all replys! I am not too bright when it comes to computers other then using them, GUI like Arena, is that a program I could buy?, or ponder off is something that deals with turning off the chess engine thinking on your time?
May just have to try and find another computer if all fails, thanks!
A GUI in computer Chess is a program that allows you to interact with a Chess 'engine' (a program thinking up moves). Most GUIs can also play two engines against each other, (fully automatic), or allow you to conduct complete tournaments between a large collection of engines. Many high-quality GUIs can be downloaded for free (e.g. Arena, WinBoard/XBoard, SCID). There are also many commercial ones (ChessBase/Fritz, Shredder, Aquarium).
Pondering is thinking in the opponent's time. Most GUIs offer a menu option to turn it on or off. When engines are pondering, a game between two of them needs twice as many resources as when you switch it off. E.g., when you have a quad-core computer, you can afford to run two engine (one thinking, one pondering), and each of them can then use two cores. (Most modern engines can use multiple cores to speed up the calculations.) With pondering switched off, you could even have each engine use all 4 cores. Most GUIs also allow you to set the number of cores an engine may maximally use, and the amount of memory.
There are also many free engines available for download, that can be very strong (e.g. Stockfish).
I have the Chessmaster/Grandmaster, after playing some rated games it started kicking my butt, so I wanted some revenge payback!
I played my Rybka 4 Extreme against it, (please do not tell anyone) and the games were really fascinating as they unfolded. I knew Rybka was going to win, but the opening and into the middle game they were really jockeying for positional advantage, and then came just the right time pawn push and things started going bad for Chessmaster. I found it constructive and educational, even though they were not real CMs.
What I would like to do now is buy the Deep Fritz 12, the $119.00 version, play against Rybka, but I am wondering, and I hope some of you Grandmasters when it comes to computers, could tell me if playing two such games on the same computer minimizing one screen then the other is an over load on the thinking processors? I think some one on another thread brought this out slightly?