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Subject: Newbie Questions: Winboard/Crafty on Windows PC

Author: James Flanagan

Date: 06:26:28 09/14/99


I'm just getting started setting up Winboard with the Crafty engine on a PC
(Win98, AMD K6-2/350, 64Mb RAM, 8.4+18.2Gb disks), and I have a lot of questions
about getting started:

I'm having trouble (I think I am, anyway) getting Crafty to recognize the table
bases that I downloaded.  In Crafty's Log file created during each game I never
see a 'tablebase probed' value other than zero.  The documentation says to put
'tbpath=<whatever directory the tablebases are in>' into the command line. My
tablebase files are in "e:crafty\tb\".   I have tried all permutations and
combinations of putting 'tbpath=e:crafty\tb\' into the winboard command line,
but continue to get a variety of error messages and 'tablebase probed=0' in the
logfile.  My current command string in the Winboard shortcut Properties is as
follows:

"C:\Program Files\WinBoard\winboard.exe" -cp -fcp "GNUchess" -scp "crafty
winboard" -sd  "e:\crafty"  -fd "c:\program files\winboard"

If anyone with a Windows machine has a similar setup and is successfully using
tablebases, I would appreciate seeing your winboard.ini and crafty.rc files and
your command string for starting winboard.

Other questions:

How should I set my cache and other adjustable parameters in winboard and
Crafty?

How big should the cache be with 64Mb of RAM?

Are there any other critical parameters that I need to set to get optimum
performance?

Should ponder mode be on or off when in computer v. computer mode?

Can two instances of Crafty play against each other (one black and one white)
and both use the tablebases?

Is it possible for Crafty and Fritz to play together?  Fritz seems confined to
ChessBase and Crafty to Winboard.  Is there any common ground for these two
engines?

Can anyone tell me which engines that run in analysis mode under Winboard are
the strongest?  I know that there are dozens of different engines, but which are
the best?

Thanx.
-JamesF99



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