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WinBoard Alien Edition

A Peer-to-peer connection adapter

WinBoard for mini-Shogi, with 6 engines

NEW! WinBoard Shogi-Variants package (incl. Tori Shogi) NEW!

The latest stable WinBoard versions can be downloaded from the WinBoard forum,

The Windows executable comes with an installer, which contains a completely configured WinBoard setup (including protocol adapters, example engines and a tournament manager), ready to run out of the box.

Older versions used to be hosted at:

WinBoard forum (WinBoard 4.3.16)

Alpha and beta versions, (with many new features!)

for testing by the adventurous:

WinBoard 4.8.beta

WinBoard Xiangqi install configured with Xiangqi as default variant

WinBoard Shogi package configured with Shogi as default variant.
Includes an adapter to run USI engines, and the Shokidoki WinBoard engine,
which won silver medal at the ICGA Olympiad 2010 for 5x5 mini-Shogi,
but also plays regular (9x9) Shogi.

WinBoard / XBoard 4.4

A Graphical User Interface for Chess and its Variants

I have upgraded the popular Winboard GUI to be able to handle more different piece types, and larger board sizes. I also improved the support for variants with piece drops, such as Crazyhouse and Bughouse.

In addition, I included various adjudication possibilities for engine-engine games. WinBoard can now adjudicate theoretical draws, award 50-move and repetition draws (after an adjustable number of moves or repetitions), adjudicate trivial draws such as KBKB. It can also test draw and win claims by the engines for validity. The move legality testing is improved to the point where it should be 100% reliable, as WinBoard now also keeps track of castling rights and en-passant status.

WinBoard is now also aware of pieces occurring in Capablanca Chess (ArchBishop and Chancellor), Shatranj (Alfil and Ferz), Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) and Shogi (Japanese Chess), so that these games can also be played with legality testing on. (Although the legality testing in the latter two might be not as strict as with Western Chess.)

Two board sizes ("middling" and "bulky") have predefined bitmaps for all the new piece types. One board size ("moderate") has bitmaps for traditional Shogi pieces. At all sizes, however, the piece representation can be arbitrarily defined by the user through font-based rendering.

Some screen shots:

XBoard

This shows XBoard playing a (normal Chess) engine-engine game, with the engine-output, move-history and eval-graph windows open.

WinBoard

Main window of WinBoard, using a marble theme for the board, configured to display engine logos.

WinBoard

WinBoard in size "petite", with the auxiliary windows open, and a marmoleum board theme.

Shatranj, the Arabic precurser of modern Chess:

This shows board size "middling", which has built-in bitmaps for the Elephants and General.

Xiangqi, in traditional oriental representation

This shows WinBoard in board size "middling" using font-based rendering with a true-type Xiangqi font and bitmap background with wood texture. WinBoard is fully aware of all Xiangqi rules, including the complex Asia rules for perpetual chasing.

Indicating target squares

WinBoard and XBoard can indicate target squares of any piece you pickup, as shown here in a Xiangqi game.

Courier Chess, a Medieval intermediate between Shatranj and Modern Chess :

Capablanca Chess, with Archbishop and Chancellor:

Crazyhouse or Bughouse, a game with piece drops:

To effect drops the pieces can simply be dragged with the mouse from the holdings to the board.
Promoted pieces have a slightly different appearence, borrowed from pieces occurring in other games.
At other sizes these promoted pieces are somewhat demagnified versions of the normal Chess piece.

Shogi, with a Westernized representation of board and pieces:

Shogi in traditional Japanese representation:

(available only in board size "moderate")

Xiangqi (Chinese Chess), with Westernized board and pieces:

A mini variant:

Courier Chess at board size "Petite":

XBoard Engine-Settings dialog

UCI engines running under Polyglot (v 1.4.46b or higher) will get their UCI options transmitted to XBoard, so they can be configured through this XBoard menu. Below you see how this dialog looks for Glaurung, which has quite a few options. The Polyglot options appear also in this dialog.

XBoard file-selector dialog

XBoard now has a decent file-selector dialog, which allows you to browse for a file, while displaying the contents of three levels of directories.