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Introduction

I'm always looking out for quality webpages on Winboard and Computer Chess to link to, so if you own or know of any resources that I have missed or you have linked to my site, and would like a return link, please email me . Obviously, if you object to me linking to you, please email me as well.

It is not my intention to list every possible website on Winboard, a comprehensive listing can be found at Chessopolis .

The Major sites

Tim Mann's Offical Winboard page. - Download the latest Winboard/Xboard versions. Want to learn more about Winboard? Read the offical Winboard FAQ! Also includes a listing of existing Winboard Engines and Winboard addons. A copy of Deep Thought's evaluation tuning function is available here!

Frank Quisinsky's website - The Number 1 Website devoted to Winboard. The site is partially in German, but the amount of content is too good to miss.

[17 March 2001] Unfortunately, due to work commitments Frank Quisinsky will no longer be updating the engines overview, engines details page. All the old pages will still be available though. Frank Quisinsky has also began the Website on Arena , a free Winboard and UCI interface.

I would like to take the opportunity here to thank Frank Quisinsky for all the good work he has done by popularising the use of Winboard among both users and programmers. Without his efforts, it is uncertain if Winboard will be as popular as it is today, with 87 Winboard engines and several major commercial products [including Chessbase/Chessmaster/Chess Assistant to name just three] supporting the Winboard protocol.

Winboard Engines Newsticker - A new webpage [even newer than mine!] by Thomas Mayer [also author of the Winboard engine , Quark] that will continue the work done by Frank Quisinsky's Newsticker, by announcing new Winboard engines whenever they are available.

Leo Dijksman's Engine info - Leo Dijksman appears to have continued where Thomas Mayer left off and as at time of writing [17 July 2002], his is the most updated website on Winboard engine news.

Volker Pittlik's Website - A nice listing of Winboard programs and rough classification of their strenghts into "Crowns".There are also pictures of Computer Chess program authors, articles in German about setting up Winboard and explainations of terms in "dictionary" such as "Null move", "Transposition table" by authors of Winboard programs and more!. Volker Pittlik is also the owner of the Winboard Forum

SuperAjelibre - A very popular Spanish Website. It has a excellent section covering Winboard. Currently, they are reviewing one Winboard engine per week. Definitely worth visiting unless you are language impaired like me.

Patrick Buchmann's Website - The top French Website on the use of Winboard. Like Frank Quisinky's website ,there is a news ticker with the latest news.Also many articles from the Frank Quisnsky's site has being translated into French. There is a greater focus on the use of Winboard in Chessbase compared to Frank's site though. Patrick Buchman is also the owner of French forums Le Forum du Fou , a popular French forum for Computer Chess matters. A French translation of my webpage a Guide to Endgame tablebases can now be found at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/lefouduroi/tablebases.htm.

http://sdchess.narod.ru - Another good site on Winboard and Computer Chess. Similar to Patrick Buchmann's. But mostly in russian.

Alex Schmidt's UCI page Some information on UCI engines. It looks like an attempt to become the leading website for UCI (notice some of the design similarities to Thomas Mayer's Winboard site) - the new rising engine protocol. Not much yet there currently, except for setups some chess engines for people who want to use Odd Malin's wbtouci adaptors.

http://www.beepworld.de/members39/computerschach2/ A German website with news about computer chess. Focuses mostly on commericial software and top freeware.I think it's related to chessbase.

Arena - Martin Blume's free new GUI that supports both Winboard and UCI interfaces. Currently {July 2002) in public beta testing.

Forums

Winboard Forum - This is a friendly forum, with many helpful gurus waiting to answer any question you might have regarding Winboard. The board is moderated by Volker Pittlik and Mogens Larsen, although their intervention is seldom necessary. The language of choice is generally English although sometimes German is used due to the large numbers of German speakers.

Computer Chess Club [CCC] - This is a more general forum devoted to Computer Chess. While Winboard related questions are allowed, this forum is a better venue for asking questions related to Commercial programs such as Chessmaster, Fritz, Rebel etc, as many of their authors or Service Reps hang out there.This is a moderated forum [with Moderators being selected in a yearly election] .

Rec.games.Chess.Computer - The unmoderated Usenet group. Due to the presence of a large number of trolling and flaming, a group of Chess program Authors and fans felt that productive discussion was no longer possible. This led to the formation of the moderated Computer Chess Club [CCC]

Frank Quisinsky's Chess Forum - Used as the Arena betatesting Forum, altough the posts generally can cover about anything regarding Computer Chess, in particular UCI engines.Altough posting in English is common, postings in German is as common if not more common.

CSS Forum - 100% German only. The forum is associated with chessbase, and the official chessbase team posts there too.

For Beginners

Chess at freewebs - A very good survey that covers everything from basic chess playing software, databases, chess publishing software, tutorials, chess format convertors etc. Highly recommended for beginners to chess software.

Setup Guides

Edward Collins Tribute to Winboard - Learn why Winboard is the best Client for playing on Chess Servers. Lots of interesting tips on how to configure Winboard to your tastes.

Mogen's Setup Guide - One of the best sites for learning how to setup Winboard Programs on Winboard, run zippy and or use Endgame Tablebases. The site also hosts versions of the Winboard Engine Yace and various opening books created by the webmaster.

Mark Yatras's setup guide - Learn how to setup Crafty with Winboard. With screenshots.

John Rivorie/ Sasha Goldstein's Crafty page. - Another Guide on how to setup Crafty. This website focuses on running Crafty on ICS/FICS as well.

Add ons

WB tourney manager - Useful free tool used by many to run and manage tournments in Winboard.

Bruce Moreland's EPD2wb - Bruce Moreland's EPD2wb helps you to run automated test suites in EPD format for Winboard engines.

Odd Gunnar Malin's My view page - Home of the very useful "Inbetween" tool. Allows you to get problematic Winboard engines to work in Chessbase GUI. Check out the excellent links classification page.In particular he classifies engines into those with source available and those without, as well as programs with their own GUI.

Adaptors and autoplayers (look under downloads) - Download various adaptors for Winboard engines to use in Chessbase, autoplayers etc.

Tom's programs -Lots of interesting Winboard related applications like Tom's Live chess viewer (for broadcasting engine matches played in Winboard), Winboard network adaptor (for playing chess engines on different machines), Tom's Simple engine manager (to manage adding engines in Winboard) and more.

Computer Newsletter

Digichess Newsletter - Monthly digest. The English isn't the best, but it's a pretty good summary about the events occuring in the world of Computer Chess. This including basic coverage about Man versus Machine matches, SSDF lists, tournaments (both official, and those one man tournaments) as well as summary of new/upgraded Chess engines.

Tony's ComputerChess Newsletter. Similar in nature to the one above. It's slightly more "prestigious". Tony Hedlund is also known for his work on SSDF rating lists.

Other FAQs

R.G.C.C's FAQ - The FAQ of Rec.games.Chess.Computer - Information is a little outdated.

Joachim's FAQ for beginners - A nice FAQ for people new to Computer Chess. Learn about SSDF,running computer chess Tournaments, Pondering , autoplayer232 and more computer Chess issues.

Computer Chess site (German) An excellent German site that not only reviews all commerical software but it also has a great basics section on computer chess that covers endgame tablebases,hashtables,Winboard,auto232,opening books and more.

FTP/Download Sites

Dann Corbit's FTP - Download Dann Corbit compiled Programs, computer game collections, extract,Chest and other utilities. Also home of the CAP [Computer Chess Analysis Project]. Recently in 2005 converted to HTTP.

Dr Hyatt's FTP - Download 3-4-5 and some 6 Men Tablebases as well as the latest Crafty.

Knightcap - FTP site to get the source codes of Knightcap

Other related Chess Program/programming Pages

http://www.chessbrain.net/ -"The ChessBrain project is dedicated to creating the worlds largest chess computer by utilizing the combined processing power of interconnected machines throughout the Internet." As of June 2003, it is still weaker then Ruffian, though it has won a few games.

Bruce Moreland's Computer Chess page- Bruce Moreland is the famed Chess programmer of Ferret, a World Class Chess program for PCs. Ferret has being considered one of the top programs on par with commercials for the last few years, but unfortunately Bruce has chosen to keep Ferret private. Nevertheless, because of Bruce's natural knack of explaining computer chess techniques, I consider his webpage [which is still new], has one of best webpages that explains basic computer chess programming , even to layman without much experience.

Colin Frayn's Computer Chess page Colin Frayn is the author of ColChess and Beowulf both freely available Winboard engines. I like his webpage on Computer Chess theory, that explains concepts like alpha-beta, PVS,null moves etc.

Ed Schröder reveals the secerts of Rebel [26-12-2002] Ed Schroder, the author of Rebel (and winner of WCCC 1992 and numerous titles) who is now semi-retired, reveals the secerts (prose but no pesudo-code) used in Rebel, one of the most succuessful commercial programs for the last decade.

Hossa Homepage - Homepage of Hossa [currently not available to the Public] . Here you can download games played by Hossa. Also there is a good explaination of how Chess programs works, explaining terms like "Alpha beta" and "Null moves"

G6 Homepage - A computer Chess group for authors of Italian Chess Engines including Leila,Esc,Cyberpagno and more.Recently translated into English, the group organises Computer Chess tournaments for Italian engines. There is also mention of a interface Proteus Chess, which A new graphical interface for Winboard compatible engines, currently in beta testing stage. Authors are creating a multi-engine system that is able to use a "supervisor" to select the best variation among the ones proposed by different engines. Sounds like the triple brain concept. Very interesting.

SSDF Home page - SSDF Listings are one of the most respected rankings of Chess Programs. Covers mostly commercial programs and some Chess base native versons of Crafty,Comet ,SOS and Goliath.

Yellow Bishop Computer Chess Centre - The site has quite a few interesting articles on Computer Chess programming in Postscript format for download. Also available for download, a large collection of test suites.

Commercial Programs for PocketPC,Palm

Pocket Grandmaster -PocketPC Chess program, Powered by Gromit - Amateur World Computer Chess Champion 2001 , SOS (yet another Amateur World champion) and Ruffian

Chess Tiger for Palm - Palm Program, Powered by Chess Tiger

Chess Genius for Palm and Pocketpc - Palm and Pocketpc Program , Powered by Chess Genius

Chess Partner for PocketPc - PocketPC version of Lokasoft's program - Lchess , probably weakest in the list.

Crafty for PocketPC - A pocketpc port of Crafty. Free.

Pocket PC and Palm Chess programs (screenshots) - See screenshots for many Pocket PC and Palm Chess programs.

Chris Kantack's Handheld computer reviews - Reviews of handheld computers including Palm,PocketPC,gameboy etc.

Commercial PC Programs

Chessreviews.com - Very detailed reviews on the lastest chess programs (PC and handhelds). Also covers Chess databases and CD training products.

Selective Search Ratings - Published by a British magazine Selective Search . The rating list is supposed to combine Computer versus Human game results as well as just Computer versus Computer results.

Chess Assistant - Supports Winboard engines

Chessbase.com - Chessbase supports Fritz,Junior etc. Download Chess Base Native Chess programs or the Winboard adaptor to get Winboard engines to work in Fritz etc.

Steve Lopez's Electronic T-notes - Comprehensive series of "notes", that addresses almost every aspect of the Chessbase line of products.

Shredder Classic - Shredder Classic, a slightly restricted version is available for 30 days.