Arasan Chess 7.2 Winboard Readme This readme file contains information about Arasan, a chess-playing program. Versions of Arasan are available for both Linux and Windows. This readme covers only the Windows version. Arasan comes with its own graphical user interface, but it can also be used together with Winboard, a separate interface program. Arasan's own interface has on-line help, which you should see if you need more information. This readme file documents the Winboard version. Copyright, distribution Arasan 7.2 copyright 1994-2003 by Jon Dart. All Rights Reserved. Tablebase code is copyright Eugene Nalimov and Andrew Kadatch. Used by permission. This program may be freely distributed, provided that: 1. It is distributed in unmodified form. 2. No more than a nominal fee is charged for copying or media. Winboard Winboard can be used to play games against Arasan, play Arasan against other chess programs, and connect Arasan to an Internet chess server. You can download Winboard from http://www.tim-mann.org/chess.html and many other locations. Arasan is designed to work with Winboard version 4.2.2 or higher. Other versions of Winboard may work, but this is not guaranteed. Using Winboard as a user interface To play a game against the Arasan chess engine using Winboard, start winboard with the -fcp switch (short for -firstChessProgram), like this: winboard -cp -fcp "d:\arasanx -H 8000" You need to specify the full path to where arasanx is installed (such as d:\arasanx). Arasanx recognizes a -H switch that can be used to specify the hash table size. The hash size is in kilobytes. Arasanx also recognizes an optional -t flag that will show some debugging output in the window or log file when used together with the "-debugMode true" switch to winboard. You normally shouldn't have to turn this on. Playing against another chess program You can use arasanx to make Arasan play games against Crafty, Gnuchess, or other programs that support the Winboard interface. To do this, use the -fcp and -scp switches to Winboard. A typical command line looks like this: winboard -cp -fcp "d:\arasan\arasanx.exe -H 8000" -scp "d:\crafty\crafty.exe" (type this all together on one line. It can also be put into a batch file for convenience). After invoking Winboard, select "Two Machines" in the Mode menu to make the computers play against one another. You can also use the -mg argument to Winboard to cause the two engines to play a match of several games automatically. See the Winboard documen- tation for details. ICS Support Arasan can also be used to make the program play on an Internet chess server (it isn't designed to allow humans to play on a server - there are other and better programs for that.). To make Arasan play on a server, you need an interface program, since arasanx itself has no ability to connect to the Internet. Winboard version 3.5 or higher has the necessary interface code built in. A typical command line to make arasanx play on a server might look like this: winboard -ics -zp -autoflag -fcp "d:\arasan\arasanx.exe -ics -H 8000" Please be honest when you put the computer on a chess server: tell the administrators first, get permission to use a computer, and follow any rules that they have for computer accounts. Options Many aspects of Arasan's behavior can be modified by changing the arasan.rc file that is installed in the program directory. See comments in this file for details. If you do change it, I recommend retaining a backup copy so you can restore the default settings if you make a mis- take or later decide you don't like your changes. Tablebases Arasan supports Nalimov-format compressed tablebases. By default, tablebases are assumed to be in a directory called "TB" under the directory where the Arasan binary is installed. You can select another location for tablebases by modifying the arasan.rc file. The Arasan distribution does not come with any tablebase files. You can download tablebase files from ftp.cis.uab.edu, directory /pub/hyatt, among other locations. Support You can get the latest version of the program and contact information for reporting bugs at http://www.arasanchess.org. If you think you have found a bug in ArasanX, please be sure to specify what version you have and provide as much detail as possible about the problem. It might be helpful if you could run Winboard with the "-debugMode true" switch and ArasanX with the -t switch, and provide me with the log output that Winboard creates. If you have trouble running ArasanX under Winboard, trouble connecting to an Internet chess server, or other operational problems, you might want to check the FAQ on Tim Mann's website (http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard/FAQ.html), which includes more information about Winboard.