TalkChess.com

[Evert Glebbeek]

For my normal testing setup I tend to run matches from a Perl script using XBoard. I specify the starting position from a set of opening positions with the -lpf/-lpi commandline options. This works great, but of course I get new XBoard window on my current desktop whenever a new game starts, which is annoying.

It seems that the easiest alternative would be cutechess-cli, but it seems not to have the option of starting from a particular FEN (either specified directly as a string on the commandline or from a file). Looking at the source, my impression is that it wouldn't actually be hard to add this functionality, but before I invest the time to do that I'd like to ask whether someone else has perhaps already done that or knows of some caveats that I might have overlooked?

Suggestions for alternative tools are also welcome, but I don't have the impression there is much choice here.

Note that I'm aware of the option to specify a PGN/EPD opening book. This works, of course, but I would prefer to use the starting positions that I had been using because that way I know that I can compare the new test results with the old (in an ideal world it shouldn't matter, of course, but I'd like to test that first).