Listing of Winboard engines that Work in
Chess Academy, Chessbase, Chessmaster,Chessvision, Shredder

Introduction

With the rise in popularity of Winboard engines , many commercial Chess database packages and Computer Chess playing graphical interfaces [GUI] have began to allow users to import third party Winboard engines into their programs.A short list of such programs include Chessvision , Chessbase , Chess Partner , ChessAcademy , Chessmaster8000® and Shredder 5.0.

The advanatages of using Winboard engines in commercial GUI are as follows

Users can practice and obtain analysis from a wider range of Winboard engines with different styles.Think of it has seeking a "second opinion"
Many commercial engines are far too strong, and dumbing them down while possible actually leads to unrealistic play.Winboard engines range from as week as 1500 elo and below to Crafty , Yace ,etc which are close to the best commercial products.
There are over 100 of them , and 90 or so are free! See full list by Thomas Mayer.[Frames list]
Users who are uncomfortable with the use of Winboard, can still use Winboard engines in a more familiar environment.
Another advanatage is that many of such GUIs implement features that are not available in Winboard, for example, Chessvision and Chessbase etc allow you to run automated tournaments among Chess engines.

Curious about Winboard Chess engines? See What Winboard can do and my home page Winboard and Chess engines FAQ

Unfortunately, in many cases, Winboard engines may have problem running in these "foreign GUI". This would result in either a reduction in strength of the Chess engine or perhaps a failure to support additional features introduced by the new GUI or even worse, the Winboard engine fails to run at all.

In response to feedback from users, some authors of Winboard engines have began to release Winboard packages with special tweaks to enable their engine to run better in some of the more popular GUIs [Chessbase GUI ,Chessmaster,Chess Assistant,Chess partner and the Shredder GUI ]. In particular, authors have began to include the necessary .init file needed for working in Chessbase to get their program running as well as to get around some of the quirks of the Chessbase GUI.

Unfortunately, users of other Winboard engines are not as lucky and must try to configure, them as best as they can based on the scanty instructions given the webpages.

Some known problems of various GUI

CHESSMASTER 8000/9000

You can now use The King engine from Chessmaster8000 in Winboard. You can also run Chessmaster in Chessbase,Chess Partner and Chess assistant. See Section [E.9]

Chessmaster 8000 is the first version of the famous Chessmaster series to support Winboard engines. I'm personally very surprised that the Chessmaster Team has decided to implement this feature given the nature of Chessmaster which is usually geared towards the mass market audience who are usually not Computer Chess savy enough to desire or demand the use of Winboard engines.

I'm glad that they did so though. Since they managed to come up with a simple and user-friendly interface for importing Winboard engines into Chessmaster that anyone can handle. There is none of that silly init setup files needed for Chessbase gui.

However like most new features , this new feature was not initally without problems.Also unlike the real Winboard, or commercial packages like Chesspartner or Chess assistant, you can't use the Winboard engines to hook up to online servers.

The orginal version of Chessmaster 8000 only supported pure co-ordinate notation [eg e2-e4] and not standard algebraic notation (SAN) eg e4 ,and as such some engines such as Crafty18.x which used only SAN failed to work in Chessmaster 8000. This was fixed in the 1.01 patch.

The second problem, is that Pre patch 1.0.3, you are unable to turn pondering on or off for imported Winboard engines unlike for custom personalities. If the winboard engine allows you to turn Pondering on or off manually [for example by altering the configurations files], then this wouldn't be a problem. But some engines like Anmon have a default non-pondering mode, while others default to a pondering mode and for both the modes cannot be altered by altering the programs configuration, unless they are "instructed" to change by Winboard when you check the ponder on box .But you can't do this in Chessmaster 8000 for imported engines. This is fixed in patch 1.0.2, which allows you to right click on Xboard engine output window, which allows you to send either a "hard" command , which will instruct the engine to ponder , or a "easy" command, which does the reverse.The 1.0.3 patch allows you to turn pondering on or off as if the Xboard engine is a normal personality.

In General though, Xboard/Winboard engines work pretty well in the Chessmaster8000 GUI as compared to other GUIs [eg Chessbase GUI ] .However, I'm not an expert of the Winboard protocol , for that Thomas Mayer has began an analysis of the differences between how Chessmaster implements the Xboard/Winboard protcol compared to the normal one .

You can download the latest and probably last patch 1.0.4 from www.Chessmaster.com

Chessmaster 9000's support of the Winboard protocol is virtually unchanged from 8000.

CHESSBASE GUI [eg Fritz]

Native engines

The simplest way to use Winboard engines such as Crafty to run in Chess base GUI [Fritz for example] is to download "Native versions" of Winboard engines from Chessbase.com's Download page and to copy the resulting eng file to the Engine folders. You can get Native versions of Crafty,Comet,Inmichess,Exchess,Faile etc

For a full guide on how to use Chess engines in Chessbase 8, you should definitely refer to Steve Lopez's electronic notes on installing engines with Chessbase 8.

Old Winboard adaptor

Unfortunately, only a small selection of Winboard engines are available as Native versions. If you wish to use other Winboard engines you need to use the Winboard adapter.See my FAQ for more information.

What follows is mostly only of historical interest. The currently favoured method of using Winboard engines in Fritz, Junior, Hiarcs, etc is via the winboard to uci adaptor. See later.

A nice guide with detailed instructions [using Yace as an example] is available at Mogens Larsen Website (under related topics)

While this is probably one of the most popular GUIs [It supports most of the top Chess engines including Fritz,Junior,Nimzo,Hirac recently added Rebel Tiger and Shredder to it's stable of native engines] ,I personally find that it's very troublesome to set up Winboard engines to run in Winboard.

Worse, unless the author of the engine has made specific adjustments, Winboard engines will play much weaker in Chessbase GUI against other native engines than in Winboard . Ulrich Türke ,author of the Winboard engine Comet explains why.

"The ChessBase Interface for wb-engines (as well as the Shredder-5 one) exhibits a very serious violation of the standard winboard protocol. Instead of sending the opponent's move, these GUIs send the winboard "new" command (normally used by winboard to indicate that a new game has started) and subsequently the whole list of moves again until the current board position is reached.
Consequently, a winboard engine will after each opponent's move perform all its kind of initialization actions for a new game. These are things like clearing the hash table, deleting killer moves, ... . These actions have the effect of 1. consuming some time, and 2. loosing valuable informations. "

As such, unless you use Winboard engines merely to analyse positions, they will be at a big disadvanatage when playing a full game.

Ulrich Türke continues,

"However, some winboard engine programmers have been so smart enough to adapt their engines to these modified protocols too. You can for instance implement some simple logic: ignore the "New Game" command generally and try to find out yourself when a new game has started (compare move history, ...). The other engines however loose some performance under these GUIs."

It's difficult to estimate the loss in strength, but probably Winboard engines that do not ponder and/or do not use hashtables are less affected.For a more technical explaination of this and other flaws of the Winboard to Chessbase adaptor, see Thomas Mayer's compatability review

WB to UCI adaptor

[24-02-2002] Fritz 7 (and newer interfaces like Hiarcs 8, Junior 7) now supports the use of UCI engines as well, and while it's still early days , it seems that UCI engines seem to run at full strength in Fritz 7 (but see below).Unfortunately, as of Feb 2002, there are still very few Winboard engines that support UCI as well. What is commonly done is to use Winboard to UCI adaptor (by Odd Gunnar Malin) that can be used to convert Winboard engines to work in UCI mode and then import it into Fritz 7 in UCI mode.This is somewhat complicated but seems to work better than using the old winboard adaptor.

[22-01-2004] Unfortunately,It seems that UCI support for Fritz, Shredder, Hiracs, Junior etc is not as good as we hoped. Gian-Carlo Pascutto author of Deep Sjeng as well as a few others (Matthias Gemuh, Claude Dubois etc) have vertified that in these GUI, UCI engines will sometimes allocates only 1 MB Hash for UCI engines regardless of the setting. It doesn't happen in every game, but occurs only randomly, there is no known fix, or even known reason why this happens.

This is a flaw that affects all UCI engines, and occurs even for native uci engines (or if the wbtouci adaptor is not used).

SHREDDER 5.0/6.0

Shredder 5 supports both the UCI [Universal Chess protcol] interface as well as Winboard engines.

[16-12-01] Chessbase has released Shredder 6.

In terms of Winboard support it also requires the use of a wb2uci adaptor. Unfortunately it seems to have the same problems as the chessbase adaptor.See above

While this GUI supports Winboard engines, it's main purpose is to support engines which support the Universal Chess Interface [UCI].For more about UCI, see Section [E.10]

CHESS ASSISTANT

Chess assistant is in my view one of the most popular Chess databases, second only to Chessbase.Chess Assistant supports many popular engine protcols including UCI,MCS and of course Winboard. As the full version also includes Rebel tiger and Chess Tiger Chess engines and support for older Dos engines like older HIARCS,Mchess and Genius, it means that you can use most of the top Chess programs (except Chessbase ones) in Chess Assistant.

You can now download the new Chess Assistant light , which has Winboard but not UCI support.Chess Assistant seems to support Winboard engines with no problems in most cases.

CHESSVISION

I don't own this one, but it seems to be discontinued. For more details on setting up Chessvision see Chessvision setup page by Oscar.

REBEL

The lastest Rebel 12 Windows , a commerical engine (not the freeware DOS version ) is a full fledged Winboard engine. As such it can be used like any normal winboard engine in Arena, Winboard etc. It can also be used in Fritz via the wbtouci adaptor, for your ease of use, there is one already setup for you.

Our goal

This webpage is a combined effort by the internet community of Winboard engine users to help indentify, list and exchange information on getting Winboard engines to work outside Winboard. The current information is a result of hours of hard work put in by the following contributors.

Download compatability table of Winboard engine in Chessmaster,Chess Academy, Chess Assistant, Chessbase, Chessvision, Chess partner , Shredder 5 and MCS in excel format here

As you can see below there is still much work to be done, and if you want to help cover some of the other GUIs such as Chess Partner or Chess Assistant please do give us a email. Any other help is welcome.

For a more frequently updated table refer to Thomas's Mayer's compatability overview. and http://sdchess.narod.ru/.

Other resources on Winboard engines in other GUIs

You can find most of the necessary information, on the respective official homepages.
Peter Berger has also written a article (Bringer101.doc] that covers the use of Bringer in Chessmaster 8000, Chesspartner/Rebel TigerII, Shredder 5, Millenium2000/Genius, and ChessBase/Fritz.
[Phaze_x.zip] by Frank Quisinsky allows you to download configurations needed to run Winboard engines for Chessbase,Chess Academy and Chess Genius 6.
UCI to Winboard adaptor by Roland Pfister [author of Patzer]. This allows you to "adapt" UCI engines to Winboard engines. This means that UCI engines like Shredder and SOS can now play under not only Winboard but perhaps in other Winboard compatible GUI like Chessbase or Chessmaster8000. This was not possible in the past because while most GUIs allows you to import Winboard engines, they do not allow their core playing engine to be exported to be used outside their GUI. Users had to resort to use of complicated auto232 players to match say Shredder and Fritz. The new converter solves this problem.
Inbetween - Useful utility by Odd Gunnar Malin that can be used to adjust or modify the commands sent between chess programs and the GUI. Can be very useful to helping make Winboard engines work properly in other GUI. For example, Odd Gunnar Malin has managed to use Inbetween to enable SOS to function in Chessbase, which wasn't possible before.See post in Winboard forum and this post for getting problematic engines to run in Chessmaster 8000.

*Winboard Chess Engine Compatiability Table [16.12.01]*
Engine	Chess Academy	Chess Assistant	Chessbase	Chessmaster	Chess Partner/ERT	ChessVision	MCS	Shredder
31337	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	?	?
Aldebarn	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Amy	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Amyan	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
AnMon	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	No	Yes	Yes
Ant	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Arasan	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Averno	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Awesome	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	?	?	?	No
BabyChess	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
BACEx	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	?	?	?	Yes
Beowulf	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Bestia	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Betsy	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	No	?	Yes
Bionic	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Blikskottel	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Capture	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Chad's Chess	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	?	?	?	Yes
Chess-Rikus	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	?	No	?	No
Chesterfield	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	Yes	?	Yes
Chezzz	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Cilian	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	Yes	Yes	Yes
ColChess	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	No	?	Yes
Comet	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Crafty	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Crux	Yes	Yes	No	No	?	No	No	No
Dchess	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Deep Trouble	No	Yes	No	Yes	?	No	?	No
Der Bringer	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Defli	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	?	Yes
Dragon	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	No
Dr Chess	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
EnginMax	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Esc	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Exchess	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	Yes	Yes
Faile	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Fortress	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Francesca/MAD	Yes	No	No	Yes	?	Yes	?	No
Freyr	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	?	No	?	No
Gandalf	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Gaviota	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Gerbil	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	?	Yes
Ghost	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	?	Yes
GnuChess 4	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
GnuChess 5	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Golem	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	?	?	?	No
Green Light Chess	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Grizzly	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Gromit 2.20	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes
Gromit 3.0	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Gullydeckel	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	Yes	?	Yes
Holmes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	No	?	Yes
Inmichess	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Kace	Yes	Yes	No	No	?	?	?	No
Kings of Kings	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	?	Yes
KnightCap	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	No	?	No
Knightx	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
La Dame Blanche	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	Yes	Yes
LambChop 7.1	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	?	Yes	?	No
LambChop 10x	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Larsen VB	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	No	Yes	Yes
Lightning	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	?	?	Yes
Little Goliath	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Lord King 2000	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	?	Yes
MFChess	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	No	Yes	Yes
Mint	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Monik	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	Yes	Yes
Morphy	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	?	No	?	Yes
MSCP	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	Yes	?	Yes
Mustang	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	?	Yes	?	No
Nejmet	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	?	Yes
Nero	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
New Rival	Yes	Yes	No	?	?	No	?	No
Nimzo 2000b	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Noonian Chess	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	?	No	Yes	No
Olithink	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ozwald	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Patzer	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pentagon	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	?	No	?	Yes
Pepito	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Phalanx	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes
Pierre	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	Yes	?	Yes
Quark	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Queen	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Raffaela	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	No	?	Yes
Replicant	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Sjeng	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Skaki	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	Yes	Yes
Snailscp	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	No	?	Yes
SOS	Yes	Yes	Yes*	No	No	No	?	Yes
SSEChess	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
StAndersen	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Storm	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	?	No	?	No
Tamerlane	No	Yes	No	No	?	?	?	No
Tao	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
The Crazy Bishop	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
The King	Yes	Yes	Yes*	Yes	Yes*	Yes*	?	Yes
Tikov-Chess	Yes	Yes	No	?	?	Yes	?	?
Tristam	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	?	Yes	Yes	Yes
Trynyty	No	Yes	No	Yes	?	No	?	?
TSCP	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ufim	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Wild cat	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
Yace	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zchess	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zephyr	Yes	Yes	Yes	?	Yes	Yes	?	Yes

Notes to the table

While certain engines might be listed as working, it is possible that not all functions are available, or the engine might not be running at full efficency/strenght outside Winboard. All we can be certain is that the engine is capable of running to complete a full game. This doesn't mean that the engine runs flawlessly of course.
Inbetween - Useful utility by Odd Gunnar Malin that can be used to adjust or modify the commands sent between chess programs and the GUI. Can be very useful to helping make Winboard engines work properly in other GUI. For example, Odd Gunnar Malin has managed to use Inbetween to enable SOS,MAD etc to function in Chessbase, which wasn't possible before.See post in Winboard forum and this post for getting problematic engines to run in Chessmaster 8000.
For those that currently do not work,It is possible that future versions of the same engine might be modified by their respective authors to work better. For those that currently work, it is likely that future versions will continue to function [hopefully].
If you are unable to get a specific engine working that is listed as working above please email directly the questions to the members who contributed the above results. If you manage to get a engine working that is listed as unworkable above, or want to add new entries please please email me .

Listing of Winboard engines that Work in Chess Academy, Chessbase, Chessmaster,Chessvision, Shredder