What are your Favorite Chess GUI's And Why..

[supersharp77]

Well I've used and played around with quite a few of the various GUI's over the years so here is my list of the ones used the most with the features found most useful (especially for Engine Tourneys)

1. Fritz 11(Chessbase) Like this one the best...All the old CB engs work along with UCI engines and winboard engs..plays Swiss (faster) gauntlets, RR tourneys and excellent for KO tourneys...only has one move arrow..some engines don't play quite up to par(time losses) in the GUI (like LC0)...Fritz 17 has no tourney features it seems...at first glance..
2. Shredder/Deep Shredder GUI's.. Great look to the GUI..good variety..arrows move around while engine is "thinking"
fast loading for UCI and WB engines...great look to tourneys with a nice printout..can adjust tourney issues on the fly
cons: seems to have a engine limit..after a while engines fall off the screen..Only RR and Gauntlets..(No Swiss)
3.Chess GUI..Lots of Nice features..different ways to try and load exotic engines (java etc) limited but nice GUI look
good game play with no crashes...(problem:log file grows quite large and may use large amounts of disk space)(Gigs)
4.Crafty Chess GUI..Played around with this GUI quite a bit when it first came out...no major crash problems evident..loaded hundred of engine with it without issues..not much variety in the GUI look...Crafty 23.6 plays great in this GUI...(a sleeper)..cons..Strange game order in RR and Swiss tourneys but does play KO tourneys though..not bad..
5.Lokasoft Chesspartner..One of The First GUI's used along with ChessMaster..solid loading of UCI and WB1 WB2 engines
without much difficulty..engines that would not play anywhere else played in Chesspartner..cons: Engine research tool
is a bit small for viewing the tourneys...No Swiss or KO tourney options..mostly RR...(a bit time consuming)
6.Chessmaster..An Original GUI...fully functional..loads with Winboard and UCI engines (with polyglot adapter) without issues..creative options when you add the Chessmaster Personalities...Autoplays only with the in house engines in the tourneys otherwise manual start is needed...No crashes for the most part..but a bit tricky to work with..even got LC0 to load and play games..has adjudication button..
7.Chess OK (Rybka Aquarium) GUI's..Been working with this one for the past 6-9 months..Lots of headaches..some UCI and winboard engines that load easily elsewhere don't work at all...seems to have a engine limit and a games limit for tourneys..Game play is good..lots of move arrows and opening adjustments good clock setup..time controls..etc..nice for simple match play..but when tourney or computer crashes or stops..sometimes wipes all tourney info clean without explaination..only my XP portable version 2011 had no issues whatsoever so far...probably best no to use for anything too complicated....has adjudication botton..
8.Chess Genius GUI's:Ok for match play...complex setup for UCI engines....loads WB engines pretty well but the internal adapter for the engines is not easy to get the hang of....simple look to the GUI with a few options...Not bad considering how long its been around...
9. Hiarcs Chess Explorer 14...Nice look to the GUI...loaded tons of engines without issues...No setup for engine tourneys
only good for match play or manual tourneys...If Swiss and RR options were added..would be "Top Of The Heap"
10. Fritz 8 GUI..A bit dated but loads and plays nearly as well as Fritz 11 GUI with the exception that the later Fritz Engines Deep Fritz 12..13..14..etc won't play..all of the early CB engines work fine!..plays RR KO and Swiss Tourneys and Gauntlets...
11. Banksia GUI...Not sure what We've got here yet...Jury is still out...lots of stops and starts so far...Unknown..

Thats my list...Looked a bit at Tarrasch and Houdini Aquarium..but no real data on them.... AR

[Graham Banks]

ChessGUI suits all my needs for engine v engine testing, plus I can broadcast my games through TLCV with it.

[Deberger]

One GUI to rule them all !!

SCID does everything I want, and more.

It's free and open source.

Also it's built with a scripting language, so many tasks can be automated without using the GUI.

[Roland Chastain]

The more I use WinBoard, the more I love it. It can do everything and is very stable. In my opinion, it's a programming masterpiece.

When I started my own project, my ambition was to remake Tarrasch Chess GUI. I liked its simplicity.

For engines tournaments, I prefer a command line program.

[Roland Chastain]

One GUI to rule them all !!

SCID does everything I want, and more.

It's free and open source.

Also it's built with a scripting language, so many tasks can be automated without using the GUI.

Is it possible to play against an engine in SCID?

[Deberger]

One GUI to rule them all !!

SCID does everything I want, and more.

It's free and open source.

Also it's built with a scripting language, so many tasks can be automated without using the GUI.

Is it possible to play against an engine in SCID?

Of course!

From the main window: Play->Serious Game pops up a "Game configuration" dialog to select an engine, set the time control, specify an opening book, or a select a specific opening, annotate the game score, etc.

[Ovyron]

The GUIs I use and why:

1. Shredder GUI: The fastest way to get engines to analyze chess positions, set them to play against themselves as shootouts, set them to play against others in match mode, and it's light weight so I can open two instances or more for when I want to match an engine's line against another at different depths. It's so fast that back when I used Aquarium it was faster to switch between IDEA and Shredder GUI than between IDEA and Infinite Analysis!

2. Chess Openings Wizard: I still haven't found a faster way to store my analysis. Whenever I want I set some eval at the end of the variations and let it backsolve the scores of chess moves and go back to the root and it'll automatically sort the moves from best to worse. Though I actually manage to store the scores of several engines by typing text in the comments box and using different colors as a palette for engines:



3. Fritz 11 / Fritz 13 - For playing on Playchess and editing CTG Books. For some reason I can't edit engine's parameters in the latest version of Playchess but I can on Fritz 11, so I just do that and use the engine in Fritz 13 and it works.

4. Scid - To keep my chess DB and editing Bin books.

5. InfinityChess - To edit Bix books.

6. LucasChess - To play engine tournaments with engines of different personalities or settings.

I haven't tried Banksia GUI yet, I wonder if with enough features I could drop most of the other GUIs and switch to it. However, requesting such features would imply my opponents would have free access to Shredder GUI+Chess Openings Wizard's features, and the whole point is to make it easier for me to beat them, but that would make it harder, so from the competitive perspective it's nice to have access to rare features that others don't, and using many GUIs is the price.

[Roland Chastain]

One GUI to rule them all !!

SCID does everything I want, and more.

It's free and open source.

Also it's built with a scripting language, so many tasks can be automated without using the GUI.

Is it possible to play against an engine in SCID?

Of course!

From the main window: Play->Serious Game pops up a "Game configuration" dialog to select an engine, set the time control, specify an opening book, or a select a specific opening, annotate the game score, etc.

Thank you. I was deceived by the description, which I read too quickly.

Manage databases with millions of games, analyze using UCI or Winboard engines, prepare for your next opponent, and much more.

[Roland Chastain]

6. LucasChess - To play engine tournaments with engines of different personalities or settings.

+1

Yes, LucasChess is great. For Shredder, it's a pity that the free version is limited in time.

From an aesthetic point of view, my favourite GUI is Mayura Chessboard.

[kiroje]

I really like ChessX and find it easy to work with and nice looking