Chess

[madjac]

I have never downloaded and installed anything before. Can anyone help me set up to play online chess at FREE INTERNET CHESS SEVER (FICS) I have been told to use eboard but I don't know even where to find it. Also don't know if I have java or not. [fc4 on linux certified laptop with dial up softmodem]

[Reisswolf]

Well, I would suggest two things.

1. # yum install gnuchess
2. Download XBoard (http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/xboard/xboard-4.2.7.tar.gz), then issue "./configure," "make" and finally "make install," the last one as root.

GnuChess is not the strongest engine out there. Crafty is considerably stronger. But GnuChess is "strong enough," whatever that means. I believe it is rated around 2300 on most chess servers, so if you are looking for a solid challenge but not an overwhelming one, it is certainly a very good option.

In order to use XBoard to play against GnuChess, type the following:

$ xboard -fcp /usr/bin/gnuchess &

In order to use XBoard to play at FICS, type the following:

$ xboard -ics -icshost www.freechess.org

You will then be asked to enter your user name and password (which means that you must already be a registered user).

To connect to ICC, type

$ xboard -ics -icshost chessclub.com

*****

On a completely different note, has anyone ever tried to run Fritz or Shredder or Junior in Wine?

[AlexThomson_NZ]

Well, I tried Chessmaster 10k in WIne, no luck though :(

I have some friends that play at GameKnot (I haven't had a chance to sign up yet) and it looks quite nice, free too and just uses the browser so extra client software needed. FICS sounds good, will have to do a bit of googling...

You guys any good?

[bob]

(moved to Gamer's Lounge)

[revengeska]

FYI, xboard is in the package manager already, no need to go downloading and compile:) Same goes for the GNU Chess package. When I typed 'xboard', it fired up with GNU Chess automatically. I played a fairly strong game against it a little while ago, I can post if anyone cares to see. My USCF(United States Chess Federation) rating is about 1629, so I have a little bit of experience.

[Reisswolf]

That's strange. Why don't they include it in the Games menu then?

I distinctly remember that "xbo<tab>" would not auto-complete in my system until I installed XBoard manually from the tar ball.

*****

Arasan is another chess engine that is fairly strong--about as strong as GnuChess. Crafty is considerably stronger. Most sites seem to list Crafty at the 2600 mark. You have to be very strong indeed to beat Crafty without cheating.

I have just found out that Rybka, the strongest engine today (besides Hydra, which uses special hardware), does run in Wine. It can be downloaded for free.

Note: One must literally be a super grandmaster to have any hope against Rybka. Vladimir Kramnik lost his six-game match against Fritz 10 last year, and Rybka is said to be even stronger than Fritz 10. Since I play chess only for enjoyment and not really to become a tournament player, I actually prefer engines against which I have at least a small hope. I have GnuChess and Crafty, and between these two I get all the challenge I need.

Playing against Rybka or Fritz or Junior, programmes that regularly beat super grandmasters, would be like going up against a brick wall for me. I find no enjoyment in that.

[revengeska]

In my system, it's listed in the games section as "Chess". Kind of odd I think. The command 'xboard' starts it for me too.

I'm actually an avid computer chess enthusiast myself, playing in a "freestyle" chess tournament a little over a week ago. In freestyle, chess, anything goes, use computers or whatnot. Rybka is the strongest engine there is, but I've really had alot of trouble trying to get it to run in Wine, so that's my top goal right now. As far as Linux chess engines go, Spike 1.2 Turin JUST came out for Linux yesterday, and it's comparable in strength to Fritz 10, definately stronger than GnuChess and Crafty. The latest full version of it is available for download. I have the commercial version of Rybka, which is much stronger than the Rybka 1.0 Beta that's free, but the beta version is pretty good in itself, probably comparable with Spike, though.

Oh, and just a few days ago, Rybka played GM Ehlvest, giving the GM pawn odds, and still stomped him 5 1/2-2 1/2.

[Reisswolf]

I downloaded and installed Spike Turin earlier today. (Luckily it is not a purely UCI engine, so I can still use XBoard.)

Man, this engine is strong! I just played a game against it, and in the middlegame itself I was lost. I played on, but mostly in a clearly lost situation.

I had it play against GnuChess, and it crushed GnuChess.

It'll be a great tool with which to analyse the upcoming games from Dortmund and Sofia. But it is so clearly stronger than me that I might stick to GnuChess for my actual matches.

Thanks, revengeska, for telling me about this engine.

[DamianS]

Bah, chess is obsolete. :rolleyes:
The fact that computers can beat 99% of humnans makes it even less interesting for me.
I've stopped playing chess and now only play arimaa.
It will be a LONG time before computers dominate this game!

[revengeska]

Reisswolf: No problem, Spike is definately up there among the best:) And it's probably the best free engine available now natively under Linux.

DamianS: Chess will be obsolete when it can be played perfectly, and not even computers are close to such a task. The newest and most interesting development really is freestyle chess: computers combined with humans will create the highest level chess ever seen. Computers are strong, yes, but they have their own weaknesses that humans don't have.

Besides that, many consider olympic foot races interesting, and that hasn't stopped since the invention of the automobile. Chess will only become disinteresting among the majority when it's solved, and even then, competitions will be moved to Fischerrandom chess and live on.

[DamianS]

Fair enough.
One variant of chess I still like, apart from arimaa, is chess960, since it means you don't need to memorize opening lines to avoid falling into traps.

[madjac]

I have downloaded the tarballs for xboard and gnuchess and they are on my screen. It shows folders home,trash,pictures etc. I don't know where to put them to be opened. The wvdial configuration that I dial out with is in home. Do I need to put xboard there to play online with ? Learning slow but sure. One suggestion I read was to put them in /opt and unpack them there? Thanks
See post # 16

[madjac]

OOpps ...I posted somehow without realizing there were so many replies so I'm pasting my post here anyway.
I have downloaded the tarballs for xboard and gnuchess and they are on my screen. It shows folders home,trash,pictures etc. I don't know where to put them to be opened. The wvdial configuration that I dial out with is in home. Do I need to put xboard there to play online with ? Learning slow but sure. One suggestion I read was to put them in /opt and unpack them there? Thanks

[sideways]

I have downloaded the tarballs for xboard and gnuchess and they are on my screen. It shows folders home,trash,pictures etc. I don't know where to put them to be opened. The wvdial configuration that I dial out with is in home. Do I need to put xboard there to play online with ? Learning slow but sure. One suggestion I read was to put them in /opt and unpack them there? Thanks

both xboard and gnuchess are in extras so just do

yum install xboard gnuchess

This is probably a bit dumb of me, but can someone tell me why xboard opens up too large on my screen and I can't resize it?

EDIT, ok after trawling through the (rather huge) man page I found
-size or -boardSize (sizeName | n1,n2,n3,n4,n5,n6,n7)
Determines how large the board will be, by selecting the pixel
size of the pieces and setting a few related parameters. The
sizeName can be one of: Titanic, giving 129x129 pixel pieces,
Colossal 116x116, Giant 108x108, Huge 95x95, Big 87x87, Large
80x80, Bulky 72x72, Medium 64x64, Moderate 58x58, Average 54x54,
Middling 49x49, Mediocre 45x45, Small 40x40, Slim 37x37, Petite
33x33, Dinky 29x29, Teeny 25x25, or Tiny 21x21. Pieces of all
these sizes are built into XBoard. Other sizes can be used if
you have them; see the pixmapDirectory and bitmapDirectory
options. The default depends on the size of your screen; it is
approximately the largest size that will fit without clipping.

So if I do 'xboard -size medium' it displays ok

[madjac]

fantastic-I use chessbase 9 and was wondering how to live without it if I decide to lose windows totally-Thanks for the Spike tip! I'm a class C player but I enjoy it much.

[madjac]

I'll have to check it out. I read that starting with fc4 gnu chess at least was put in a repository.
yep. Just typed xboard and got <command not found> This machine is custom from linux certified so may not be stricktly a normal distro.
OK-I just typed in yum install etc.-and got
Setting up install process
Setting up repos
http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/3/i386/core/repodata/repomd.xml: [errno 4]
IOError: urlopen error (-3, 'temporary failure in name resolution')>
Trying other mirror
cannot open/read repomd.xml for repository: core
failure: repodata/repomd.xml from core [errno 256] no more mirrors to try.
Realized I wasn't online and tried
[joe@localhost ~]$ sudo yum install gnuchess
Password:
Setting up Install Process
Setting up Repos
core 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00
dag 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/os/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/os/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/os/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
Trying other mirror.
base 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00
updates 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00
updates-released 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00
freshrpms 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00
Reading repository metadata in from local files
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 621 kB 02:13
MD Read : ################################################## 1652/1652
core : ################################################## 1652/1652
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 1.2 MB 03:53
MD Read : ################################################## 5455/5455
dag : ################################################## 5455/5455
primary.xml.gz 7.8 kB 00:03
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/os/repodata/primary.xml.gz: [Errno -1] Metadata file does not match checksum
Trying other mirror.
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 797 kB 03:42
MD Read : ################################################## 2623/2623
base : ################################################## 2622/2622
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 293 kB 00:49
MD Read : ################################################## 661/661
updates : ################################################## 661/661
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/3/i386/repodata/primary.xml.gz: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
Trying other mirror.
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/3/i386/repodata/primary.xml.gz: [Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
Trying other mirror.


Exiting on user cancel
[joe@localhost
What's up. ???

[kkshethin]

help
I installed gnuchess & xboard. It shows in game manu as chess. but when i click, screen went blank.
I am not able to play. please explain how to play against gnuchess and how to connect to fics (i think problem is with configuring)

[PatMcLJr]

not an answer for your question but
want to try pychess?

# yum install pychess

Pat Jr

[tashirosgt]

I find that xboard is a relatively primitive program and the person who advised madjac to download "eboard" (http://www.bergo.eng.br/eboard/) might be right. (I can't say for certain, since I haven't used eboard.)

If you look at the man page for xboard, you see that the board size and other aspects of its appearance and network connections to chess servers can be controlled by adding options to the command-line command that starts it. To adjust those things after you install xboard by gnu, you need to learn about the legal options and put them in the command that is associated with the "launcher" for xboard. (The last time I did this, I could not get the "properties" of the launcher until I put a copy of it on the desktop.) if you use xboard, you will be forced to learn a lot about Linux commands.

kkshethin, to diagnose your problem, I suggest you open a terminal and start xboard from the command line. You may see some useful error messages printed.

[tashirosgt]

To be specific about the board size, look at the properties of the launcher "Chess". The command is probably "xboard". Edit the command to say:

xboard -size Middling

and you should get a smaller board.

The legal sizes according to the man page:


-size or -boardSize (sizeName | n1,n2,n3,n4,n5,n6,n7)
Determines how large the board will be, by selecting the pixel size of the pieces and
setting a few related parameters. The sizeName can be one of: Titanic, giving 129x129
pixel pieces, Colossal 116x116, Giant 108x108, Huge 95x95, Big 87x87, Large 80x80,
Bulky 72x72, Medium 64x64, Moderate 58x58, Average 54x54, Middling 49x49, Mediocre
45x45, Small 40x40, Slim 37x37, Petite 33x33, Dinky 29x29, Teeny 25x25, or Tiny 21x21.
Pieces of all these sizes are built into XBoard. Other sizes can be used if you have
them; see the pixmapDirectory and bitmapDirectory options. The default depends on the
size of your screen; it is approximately the largest size that will fit without clip-
ping.

[kkshethin]

When i use command xboard, following error message appears
[root@localhost KKS]# xboard
xboard: no fonts match pattern -*-helvetica-bold-r-normal--*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
[root@localhost KKS]#

[tashirosgt]

Use the command
xlsfonts | less
to see if you have any fonts called "helvetica-bold-r-normal".
If not, you might be able to install the tonts or use the "-fonts" option on the xboard command to tell xboard to use a font that you do have.

[kkshethin]

There are no fonts like "helvetica-bold-r-normal" when i use command xlsfonts. The command do not work with less. I do not know how to use xlsfonts with less. (I do not know how to make a verical line). Further I do not know how to install missing fonts. I tried to use command fonts with xboard several way but not working. please help

[tashirosgt]

On a US keyboard, the vertical line is the capital of the key that has the backslash. This key to the right of the key with "+" . The vertical line is sometimes printed on the key as if it were a broken vertical line (two vertical dashes).

You'll have to explain what error messages you got or what happened when you tried the -font option.

[kkshethin]

i find the answer. it is font problem. I installed fonts 100dpi/75dpi from system>add or remove software>fonts> fonts for the x window system. Now xboard working. but configuring is still complicated. I used eboard. It is user friendly