computerchess under Linux

[thorstenczub]

hi, i wonder if there are chess GUIs for Linux that allow engine testing ?!

i would like to run eng-eng matches and also tournaments under Linux with different UCI engines.
is there a GUI that allows this ?

[Ted Summers]

I think Arena does with no known problems, you will need Wine.

[kingliveson]

I think Arena does with no known problems, you will need Wine.

x64?

[jjh13]

I'm using Arena with 64bit Ubuntu and Wine. There is one serious problem - I think it is not a Arena problem but a general problem with many engines. The engines don't restart. So the only successful tournament was between 2 engines when the restarting of engines was disabled. I haven't tested enough to know if there is other problems - like more losses on time.

[pmueller]

hi, i wonder if there are chess GUIs for Linux that allow engine testing ?!

i would like to run eng-eng matches and also tournaments under Linux with different UCI engines.
is there a GUI that allows this ?

xboard and polyglot run eng-eng matches perfectly. If you like some script to run the tournament automatically you have to write them.
However, it pays of to learn how to write some scripts for your shell. I use my own set of scripts for that for years. Unfortunately
they haven't been designed for publishing so other people hardly understand what they are doing.

If you limit yourself to UCI engines Shredder may be an option. Forget wine and similar: to many problems, instabilities and limitations.

[alfons]

thorsten,

i did/do run eng-eng matches and tournaments under linux (results were frequently posted in schachcomputerwelt) and i'm very pleased with my setup. please do install (preferably 64 bit) a distribution (Debian or Ubuntu) in one of your mighty rechenknechtarmee and simply ask how to proceed.

as pmueller said, it has do be done per scripts (i do have some ugly ones too for you) to achieve some comfort which will trigger xboard, engines and sometimes polyglot.


cheers

[royb]

hi, i wonder if there are chess GUIs for Linux that allow engine testing ?!

i would like to run eng-eng matches and also tournaments under Linux with different UCI engines.
is there a GUI that allows this ?

Here is an xboard command that I used to run a 200 game match between Stockfish-1.7.1 with a customized personality vs Rybka-3:

xboard -size medium -tc 2 -inc 5 -xponder -mg 200 -fUCI -fcp /home/roy/chess/rybka-3/rybka3-Linux-x64 -fd /home/roy/chess/rybka-3 -usePolyglotBook true -polyglotBook /home/roy/chess/rybka-3/Book.bin -scp /usr/games/polyglot -sd /home/roy/chess/stockfish-1.7.1 -sgf /home/roy/chess/stockfish-1.7.1-vs-rybka3-games3.pgn

The games are saved via the "-sgf" parameter (in this case in file: /home/roy/chess/stockfish-1.7.1-vs-rybka3-games3.pgn )
The time control was 2 mins + 5 sec increment. The book used was Book.bin for rybka-3 (a polyglot book) and the default book was used
for Stockfish-1.7.1.

No one said xboard was pretty from a syntax perspective, but it works really well (no xboard crashes EVER in my experience).

Roy

[Peter C]

xboard -size medium -tc 2 -inc 5 -xponder -mg 200 -fUCI -fcp /home/roy/chess/rybka-3/rybka3-Linux-x64 -fd /home/roy/chess/rybka-3 -usePolyglotBook true -polyglotBook /home/roy/chess/rybka-3/Book.bin -scp /usr/games/polyglot -sd /home/roy/chess/stockfish-1.7.1 -sgf /home/roy/chess/stockfish-1.7.1-vs-rybka3-games3.pgn

Are you invoking XBoard or GCC?

Shredder Linux seems like an obvious candidate, though I've never used it.

[vladstamate]

Hi,

I know you mentioned "GUI" in your opening post, but if you by any chance are OK with not seeing the games being played I highly recommend cutechess-cli. I run a lot of games and tournaments with it and it supports both UCI and XBoard engines, as well as Polyglot books. I have had 0 issues with it running in Linux (0 issues with it in Windows as well).

Regards,
Vlad.