xboard(6)xboard(6)NAMExboard - X graphical user interface for chess
SYNOPSISxboard [options]
xboard-ics -icshost hostname [options]
xboard-ncp [options]
|pxboard
cmail [options]
DESCRIPTION
XBoard is a graphical chessboard that can serve as a user interface to
chess engines (such as GNU Chess), the Internet Chess Servers, elec‐
tronic mail correspondence chess, or your own collection of saved
games.
This manual documents version 4.8.0.20151020.3-git:f49e7e1 of XBoard.
MAJOR MODES
XBoard always runs in one of four major modes. You select the major
mode from the command line when you start up XBoard.
xboard [options]
As an interface to GNU Chess or another chess engine running on
your machine, XBoard lets you play a game against the machine,
set up arbitrary positions, force variations, watch a game
between two chess engines, interactively analyze your stored
games or set up and analyze arbitrary positions. (Note: Not all
chess engines support analysis.)
xboard-ics -icshost hostname [options]
As Internet Chess Server (ICS) interface, XBoard lets you play
against other ICS users, observe games they are playing, or
review games that have recently finished. Most of the ICS
"wild" chess variants are supported, including bughouse.
xboard-ncp [options]
XBoard can also be used simply as an electronic chessboard to
play through games. It will read and write game files and allow
you to play through variations manually. You can use it to
browse games off the net or review games you have saved. These
features are also available in the other modes.
|pxboard
If you want to pipe games into XBoard, use the supplied shell
script `pxboard'. For example, from the news reader `xrn', find
a message with one or more games in it, click the Save button,
and type `|pxboard' as the file name.
cmail [options]
As an interface to electronic mail correspondence chess, XBoard
works with the cmail program. See CMail below for instructions.
BASIC OPERATION
To move a piece, you can drag it with the left mouse button, or you can
click the left mouse button once on the piece, then once more on the
destination square. In crazyhouse, bughouse or shogi you can drag and
drop pieces to the board from the holdings squares displayed next to
the board.
Old behavior, where right-clicking a square brings up a menu where you
can select what piece to drop on it can still be selected through the
`Drop Menu' option. Only in Edit Position mode right and middle click‐
ing a square is still used to put a piece on it, and the piece to drop
is selected by sweeping the mouse vertically with the button held down.
The default function of the right mouse button in other modes is to
display the position the chess program thinks it will end up in. While
moving the mouse vertically with this button pressed XBoard will step
through the principal variation to show how this position will be
reached. Lines of play displayed in the engine-output window, or PGN
variations in the comment window can similarly be played out on the
board, by right-clicking on them. Only in Analysis mode, when you walk
along a PV, releasing the mouse button will forward the game upto that
point, like you entered all previous PV moves. As the display of the
PV in that case starts after the first move a simple right-click will
play the move the engine indicates.
In Analysis mode you can also make a move by grabbing the piece with a
double-click of the left mouse button (or while keeping the Ctrl key
pressed). In this case the move you enter will not be played, but will
be excluded from the analysis of the current position. (Or included if
it was already excluded; it is a toggle.) This only works for engines
that support this feature.
When connected to an ICS, it is possible to call up a graphical repre‐
sentation of players seeking a game in stead of the chess board, when
the latter is not in use (i.e. when you are not playing or observing).
Left-clicking the display area will switch between this 'seek graph'
and the chess board. Hovering the mouse pointer over a dot will show
the details of the seek ad in the message field above the board. Left-
clicking the dot will challenge that player. Right-clicking a dot will
'push it to the back', to reveal any dots that were hidden behind it.
Right-clicking off dots will refresh the graph.
Most other XBoard commands are available from the menu bar. The most
frequently used commands also have shortcut keys or on-screen buttons.
These shortcut keystrokes are mostly non-printable characters. Typing
a letter or digit while the board window has focus will bring up a
type-in box with the typed letter already in it. You can use that to
type a move in siuations where it is your turn to enter a move, type a
move number to call up the position after that move in the display, or,
in Edit Position mode, type a FEN. Some rarely used parameters can
only be set through options on the command line used to invoke XBoard.
XBoard uses a settings file, in which it can remember any changes to
the settings that are made through menus or command-line options, so
they will still apply when you restart XBoard for another session. The
settings can be saved into this file automatically when XBoard exits,
or on explicit request of the user. The default name for the settings
file is /etc/xboard/xboard.conf, but in a standard install this file is
only used as a master settings file that determines the system-wide
default settings, and defers reading and writing of user settings to a
user-specific file like ~/.xboardrc in the user's home directory.
When XBoard is iconized, its graphical icon is a white knight if it is
White's turn to move, a black knight if it is Black's turn.
MENUS, BUTTONS, AND KEYS
File Menu
New Game
Resets XBoard and the chess engine to the beginning of a new
chess game. The `Ctrl-N' key is a keyboard equivalent. In Inter‐
net Chess Server mode, clears the current state of XBoard, then
resynchronizes with the ICS by sending a refresh command. If you
want to stop playing, observing, or examining an ICS game, use
an appropriate command from the Action menu, not `New Game'.
See Action Menu.
New Shuffle Game
Similar to `New Game', but allows you to specify a particular
initial position (according to a standardized numbering system)
in chess variants which use randomized opening positions (e.g.
Chess960). You can also press the `Pick Fixed' button to let
XBoard generate a random number for you. The thus selected
opening position will then persistently be chosen on any follow‐
ing New Game command until you use this menu to select another.
Selecting position number -1 (or pushing the `Randomize' button)
will produce a newly randomized position on any new game. Using
this menu item in variants that normally do not shuffle their
opening position does cause these variants to become shuffle
variants until you use the `New Shuffle Game' menu to explicitly
switch the randomization off, or select a new variant.
New Variant
Allows you to select a new chess variant in non-ICS mode. (In
ICS play, the ICS is responsible for deciding which variant will
be played, and XBoard adapts automatically.) The shifted
`Alt+V' key is a keyboard equivalent. If you play with an
engine, the engine must be able to play the selected variant, or
the command will be ignored. XBoard supports all major vari‐
ants, such as xiangqi, shogi, chess, chess960, Capablanca Chess,
shatranj, crazyhouse, bughouse. But not every board size has
built-in bitmaps for un-orthodox pieces! Only sizes bulky (72)
and middling (49) have all pieces, while size petite (33) has
most. These sizes would have to be set at startup through the
`size' command-line option when you start up XBoard for such
variants to be playable.
You can overrule the default board format of the selected vari‐
ant, (e.g. to play suicide chess on a 6 x 6 board), in this dia‐
log, but normally you would not do that, and leave them at '-1',
which means 'default'.
Load Game
Plays a game from a record file. The `Ctrl-O' key is a keyboard
equivalent. A pop-up dialog prompts you for the file name. If
the file contains more than one game, a second pop-up dialog
displays a list of games (with information drawn from their PGN
tags, if any), and you can select the one you want. Alterna‐
tively, you can load the Nth game in the file directly, by typ‐
ing the number `N' after the file name, separated by a space.
The game file parser will accept PGN (portable game notation),
or in fact almost any file that contains moves in algebraic
notation. Notation of the form `P@f7' is accepted for piece-
drops in bughouse games; this is a nonstandard extension to PGN.
If the file includes a PGN position (FEN tag), or an old-style
XBoard position diagram bracketed by `[--' and `--]' before the
first move, the game starts from that position. Text enclosed in
parentheses, square brackets, or curly braces is assumed to be
commentary and is displayed in a pop-up window. Any other text
in the file is ignored. PGN variations (enclosed in parentheses)
also are treated as comments; however, if you rights-click them
in the comment window, XBoard will shelve the current line, and
load the the selected variation, so you can step through it.
You can later revert to the previous line with the `Revert' com‐
mand. This way you can walk quite complex varation trees with
XBoard. The nonstandard PGN tag [Variant "varname"] functions
similarly to the -variant command-line option (see below),
allowing games in certain chess variants to be loaded. Note
that it must appear before any FEN tag for XBoard to recognize
variant FENs appropriately. There is also a heuristic to recog‐
nize chess variants from the Event tag, by looking for the
strings that the Internet Chess Servers put there when saving
variant ("wild") games.
Load Position
Sets up a position from a position file. A pop-up dialog
prompts you for the file name. The shifted `Ctrl-O' key is a
keyboard equivalent. If the file contains more than one saved
position, and you want to load the Nth one, type the number N
after the file name, separated by a space. Position files must
be in FEN (Forsythe-Edwards notation), or in the format that the
Save Position command writes when oldSaveStyle is turned on.
Load Next Position
Loads the next position from the last position file you loaded.
The shifted `PgDn' key is a keyboard equivalent.
Load Previous Position
Loads the previous position from the last position file you
loaded. The shifted `PgUp' key is a keyboard equivalent. Not
available if the last position was loaded from a pipe.
Save Game
Appends a record of the current game to a file. The `Ctrl-S'
key is a keyboard equivalent. A pop-up dialog prompts you for
the file name. If the game did not begin with the standard
starting position, the game file includes the starting position
used. Games are saved in the PGN (portable game notation) for‐
mat, unless the oldSaveStyle option is true, in which case they
are saved in an older format that is specific to XBoard. Both
formats are human-readable, and both can be read back by the
`Load Game' command. Notation of the form `P@f7' is accepted
for piece-drops in bughouse games; this is a nonstandard exten‐
sion to PGN.
Save Position
Appends a diagram of the current position to a file. The
shifted `Ctrl+S' key is a keyboard equivalent. A pop-up dialog
prompts you for the file name. Positions are saved in FEN
(Forsythe-Edwards notation) format unless the `oldSaveStyle'
option is true, in which case they are saved in an older, human-
readable format that is specific to XBoard. Both formats can be
read back by the `Load Position' command.
Save Selected Games
Will cause all games selected for display in the current Game
List to be appended to a file of the user's choice.
Save Games as Book
Creates an opening book from the currently loaded game file,
incorporating only the games currently selected in the Game
List. The book will be saved on the file specified in the `Com‐
mon Engine' options dialog. The value of `Book Depth' specified
in that same dialog will be used to determine how many moves of
each game will be added to the internal book buffer. This com‐
mand can take a long time to process, and the size of the buffer
is currently limited. At the end the buffer will be saved as a
Polyglot book, but the buffer will not be cleared, so that you
can continue adding games from other game files.
Mail Move
Reload CMail Message
See CMail.
Exit Exits from XBoard. The `Ctrl-Q' key is a keyboard equivalent.
Edit Menu
Copy Game
Copies a record of the current game to an internal clipboard in
PGN format and sets the X selection to the game text. The `Ctrl-
C' key is a keyboard equivalent. The game can be pasted to
another application (such as a text editor or another copy of
XBoard) using that application's paste command. In many X
applications, such as xterm and emacs, the middle mouse button
can be used for pasting; in XBoard, you must use the Paste Game
command.
Copy Position
Copies the current position to an internal clipboard in FEN for‐
mat and sets the X selection to the position text. The shifted
`Ctrl-C' key is a keyboard equivalent. The position can be
pasted to another application (such as a text editor or another
copy of XBoard) using that application's paste command. In many
X applications, such as xterm and emacs, the middle mouse button
can be used for pasting; in XBoard, you must use the Paste Posi‐
tion command.
Copy Game List
Copies the current game list to the clipboard, and sets the X
selection to this text. A format of comma-separated double-
quoted strings is used, including all tags, so it can be easily
imported into spread-sheet programs.
Paste Game
Interprets the current X selection as a game record and loads
it, as with Load Game. The `Ctrl-V' key is a keyboard equiva‐
lent.
Paste Position
Interprets the current X selection as a FEN position and loads
it, as with Load Position. The shifted `Ctrl-V' key is a key‐
board equivalent.
Edit Game
Allows you to make moves for both Black and White, and to change
moves after backing up with the `Backward' command. The clocks
do not run. The `Ctrl-E' key is a keyboard equivalent.
In chess engine mode, the chess engine continues to check moves
for legality but does not participate in the game. You can bring
the chess engine into the game by selecting `Machine White',
`Machine Black', or `Two Machines'.
In ICS mode, the moves are not sent to the ICS: `Edit Game'
takes XBoard out of ICS Client mode and lets you edit games
locally. If you want to edit games on ICS in a way that other
ICS users can see, use the ICS `examine' command or start an ICS
match against yourself.
Edit Position
Lets you set up an arbitrary board position. The shifted `Ctrl-
E' key is a keyboard equivalent. Use mouse button 1 to drag
pieces to new squares, or to delete a piece by dragging it off
the board or dragging an empty square on top of it. To drop a
new piece on a square, press mouse button 2 or 3 over the
square. This puts a white or black pawn in the square, respec‐
tively, but you can change that to any other piece type by drag‐
ging the mouse down before you release the button. You will
then see the piece on the originally clicked square cycle
through the available pieces (including those of opposite
color), and can release the button when you see the piece you
want. To alter the side to move, you can click the clock (the
words White and Black above the board) of the side you want to
give the move to. To clear the board you can click the clock of
the side that alread has the move (which is highlighted in
black). The old behavior with a piece menu can still be config‐
ured with the aid of the `pieceMenu' option. Selecting `Edit
Position' causes XBoard to discard all remembered moves in the
current game.
In ICS mode, changes made to the position by `Edit Position' are
not sent to the ICS: `Edit Position' takes XBoard out of `ICS
Client' mode and lets you edit positions locally. If you want to
edit positions on ICS in a way that other ICS users can see, use
the ICS `examine' command, or start an ICS match against your‐
self. (See also the ICS Client topic above.)
Edit Tags
Lets you edit the PGN (portable game notation) tags for the cur‐
rent game. After editing, the tags must still conform to the PGN
tag syntax:
<tag-section> ::= <tag-pair> <tag-section>
<empty>
<tag-pair> ::= [ <tag-name> <tag-value> ]
<tag-name> ::= <identifier>
<tag-value> ::= <string>
See the PGN Standard for full details. Here is an example:
[Event "Portoroz Interzonal"]
[Site "Portoroz, Yugoslavia"]
[Date "1958.08.16"]
[Round "8"]
[White "Robert J. Fischer"]
[Black "Bent Larsen"]
[Result "1-0"]
Any characters that do not match this syntax are silently
ignored. Note that the PGN standard requires all games to have
at least the seven tags shown above. Any that you omit will be
filled in by XBoard with `?' (unknown value), or `-' (inapplica‐
ble value).
Edit Comment
Adds or modifies a comment on the current position. Comments are
saved by `Save Game' and are displayed by `Load Game', PGN vari‐
ations will also be printed in this window, and can be promoted
to main line by right-clicking them. `Forward', and `Backward'.
Edit Book
Pops up a window listing the moves available in the GUI book
(specified in the `Common Engine Settings' dialog) from the cur‐
rently displayed position, together with their weights and
(optionally in braces) learn info. You can then edit this list,
and the new list will be stored back into the book when you
press OK. Note that the listed percentages are neither used,
nor updated when you change the weights; they are just there as
an optical aid.
Revert
Annotate
If you are examining an ICS game and Pause mode is off, Revert
issues the ICS command `revert'. In local mode, when you were
editing or analyzing a game, and the `-variations' command-line
option is switched on, you can start a new variation by holding
the Shift key down while entering a move not at the end of the
game. Variations can also become the currently displayed line
by clicking a PGN variation displayed in the Comment window.
This can be applied recursively, so that you can analyze varia‐
tions on variations; each time you create a new variation by
entering an alternative move with Shift pressed, or select a new
one from the Comment window, the current variation will be
shelved. `Revert' allows you to return to the most recently
shelved variation. The difference between `Revert' and `Anno‐
tate' is that with the latter, the variation you are now aban‐
doning will be added as a comment (in PGN variation syntax, i.e.
between parentheses) to the original move where you deviated,
for later recalling. The `Home' key is a keyboard equivalent to
`Revert'.
Truncate Game
Discards all remembered moves of the game beyond the current
position. Puts XBoard into `Edit Game' mode if it was not there
already. The `End' key is a keyboard equivalent.
Backward
Steps backward through a series of remembered moves. The `[<]'
button and the `Alt+LeftArrow' key are equivalents, as is turn‐
ing the mouse wheel towards you. In addition, pressing the Con‐
trol key steps back one move, and releasing it steps forward
again.
In most modes, `Backward' only lets you look back at old posi‐
tions; it does not retract moves. This is the case if you are
playing against a chess engine, playing or observing a game on
an ICS, or loading a game. If you select `Backward' in any of
these situations, you will not be allowed to make a different
move. Use `Retract Move' or `Edit Game' if you want to change
past moves.
If you are examining an ICS game, the behavior of `Backward'
depends on whether XBoard is in Pause mode. If Pause mode is
off, `Backward' issues the ICS backward command, which backs up
everyone's view of the game and allows you to make a different
move. If Pause mode is on, `Backward' only backs up your local
view.
Forward
Steps forward through a series of remembered moves (undoing the
effect of `Backward') or forward through a game file. The `[>]'
button and the `Alt+RightArrow' key are equivalents, as is turn‐
ing the mouse wheel away from you.
If you are examining an ICS game, the behavior of Forward
depends on whether XBoard is in Pause mode. If Pause mode is
off, `Forward' issues the ICS forward command, which moves
everyone's view of the game forward along the current line. If
Pause mode is on, `Forward' only moves your local view forward,
and it will not go past the position that the game was in when
you paused.
Back to Start
Jumps backward to the first remembered position in the game.
The `[<<]' button and the `Alt+Home' key are equivalents.
In most modes, Back to Start only lets you look back at old
positions; it does not retract moves. This is the case if you
are playing against a local chess engine, playing or observing a
game on a chess server, or loading a game. If you select `Back
to Start' in any of these situations, you will not be allowed to
make different moves. Use `Retract Move' or `Edit Game' if you
want to change past moves; or use Reset to start a new game.
If you are examining an ICS game, the behavior of @samp{Back to
Start} depends on whether XBoard is in Pause mode. If Pause mode
is off, `Back to Start' issues the ICS `backward 999999' com‐
mand, which backs up everyone's view of the game to the start
and allows you to make different moves. If Pause mode is on,
@samp{Back to Start} only backs up your local view.
Forward to End
Jumps forward to the last remembered position in the game. The
`[>>]' button and the `Alt+End' key are equivalents.
If you are examining an ICS game, the behavior of @samp{Forward
to End} depends on whether XBoard is in Pause mode. If Pause
mode is off, `Forward to End' issues the ICS `forward 999999'
command, which moves everyone's view of the game forward to the
end of the current line. If Pause mode is on, `Forward to End'
only moves your local view forward, and it will not go past the
position that the game was in when you paused.
View Menu
Flip View
Inverts your view of the chess board for the duration of the
current game. Starting a new game returns the board to normal.
The `F2' key is a keyboard equivalent.
Show Engine Output
Shows or hides a window in which the thinking output of any
loaded engines is displayed. The shifted `Alt+O' key is a key‐
board equivalent. XBoard will display lines of thinking output
of the same depth ordered by score, (highest score on top),
rather than in the order the engine produced them. Usually this
amounts to the same, as a normal engine search will only find
new PV (and emit it as thinking output) when it searches a move
with a higher score than the previous variation. But when the
engine is in multi-variation mode this needs not always be true,
and it is more convenient for someone analyzing games to see the
moves sorted by score. The order in which the engine found them
is only of interest to the engine author, and can still be
deduced from the time or node count printed with the line.
Right-clicking a line in this window, and then moving the mouse
vertically with the right button kept down, will make XBoard
play through the PV listed there. The use of the board window
as 'variation board' will normally end when you release the
right button, or when the opponent plays a move. But beware: in
Analysis mode, moves thus played out will be added to the game.
The Engine-Output pane for each engine will contain a header
displaying the multi-PV status and a list of excluded moves in
Analysis mode, which are also responsive to right-clicking.
Show Move History
Shows or hides a list of moves of the current game. The shifted
`Alt+H' key is a keyboard equivalent. This list allows you to
move the display to any earlier position in the game by clicking
on the corresponding move.
Show Evaluation Graph
Shows or hides a window which displays a graph of how the engine
score(s) evolved as a function of the move number. The shifted
`Alt+E' key is a keyboard equivalent. Clicking on the graph
will bring the corresponding position in the board display.
Show Game List
Shows or hides the list of games generated by the last `Load
Game' command. The shifted `Alt+G' key is a keyboard equivalent.
Tags Pops up a window which shows the PGN (portable game notation)
tags for the current game. For now this is a duplicate of the
`Edit Tags' item in the `Edit' menu.
Comments
Pops up a window which shows any comments to or variations on
the current move. For now this is a duplicate of the `Edit Com‐
ment' item in the `Edit' menu.
ICS Input Box
If this option is set in ICS mode, XBoard creates an extra win‐
dow that you can use for typing in ICS commands. The input box
is especially useful if you want to type in something long or do
some editing on your input, because output from ICS doesn't get
mixed in with your typing as it would in the main terminal win‐
dow.
Open Chat Window
This menu item opens a window in which you can conduct upto 5
chats with other ICS users (or channels). To use the window,
write the name of your chat partner, the channel number, or the
words 'shouts', 'whispers', 'cshouts' in the upper field (clos‐
ing with <Enter>). Everything you type in the lowest field will
then automatically be sent to the mentioned party, while every‐
thing that party sends to you will appear in the central text
box, rather than appear in the ICS console. The row of buttons
allow you to choose between chat; to start a new chat, just
select an empty button, and complete the `Chat partner' field.
Board Summons a dialog where you can customize the look of the chess
board. Here you can specify the directory from which piece
images should be taken, when you don't want to use the built-in
piece images (see `pieceImageDirectory' option), external images
to be used for the board squares (`liteBackTextureFile' and
`darkBackTextureFile' options), and square and piece colors for
the default pieces.
Game List Tags
a duplicate of the Game List dialog in the Options menu.
Mode Menu
Machine White
Tells the chess engine to play White. The `Ctrl-W' key is a
keyboard equivalent.
Machine Black
Tells the chess engine to play Black. The `Ctrl-B' key is a
keyboard equivalent.
Two Machines
Plays a game between two chess engines. The `Ctrl-T' key is a
keyboard equivalent.
Analysis Mode
XBoard tells the chess engine to start analyzing the current
game/position and shows you the analysis as you move pieces
around. The `Ctrl-A' key is a keyboard equivalent. Note: Some
chess engines do not support Analysis mode.
To set up a position to analyze, you do the following:
1. Select Edit Position from the Mode Menu
2. Set up the position. Use the middle and right buttons to
bring up the white and black piece menus.
3. When you are finished, click on either the Black or White
clock to tell XBoard which side moves first.
4. Select Analysis Mode from the Mode Menu to start the analy‐
sis.
You can now play legal moves to create follow-up positions for
the engine to analyze, while the moves will be remembered as a
stored game, and then step backward through this game to take
the moves back. Note that you can also click on the clocks to
set the opposite side to move (adding a so-called `null move' to
the game).
You can also tell the engine to exclude some moves from analy‐
sis. (Engines that do not support the exclude-moves feature
will ignore this, however.) The general way to do this is to
play the move you want to exclude starting with a double click
on the piece. When you use drag-drop moving, the piece you grab
with a double click will also remain on its square, to show you
that you are not really making the move, but just forbid it from
the current position. Playing a thus excluded move a second
time will include it again. Excluded moves will be listed as
text in a header line in the Engine Output window, and you can
also re-include them by right-clicking them there. This header
line will also contain the words 'best' and 'tail'; right-click‐
ing those will exclude the currently best move, or all moves not
explicitly listed in the header line. Once you leave the cur‐
rent position all memory of excluded moves will be lost when you
return there.
Selecting this menu item while already in `Analysis Mode' will
toggle the participation of the second engine in the analysis.
The output of this engine will then be shown in the lower pane
of the Engine Output window. The analysis function can also be
used when observing games on an ICS with an engine loaded (zippy
mode); the engine then will analyse the positions as they occur
in the observed game.
Analyze Game
This option subjects the currently loaded game to automatic
analysis by the loaded engine. The `Ctrl-G' key is a keyboard
equivalent. XBoard will start auto-playing the game from the
currently displayed position, while the engine is analyzing the
current position. The game will be annotated with the results
of these analyses. In particlar, the score and depth will be
added as a comment, and the PV will be added as a variation.
Normally the analysis would stop after reaching the end of the
game. But when a game is loaded from a multi-game file while
`Analyze Game' was already switched on, the analysis will con‐
tinue with the next game in the file until the end of the file
is reached (or you switch to another mode).
The time the engine spends on analyzing each move can be con‐
trolled through the command-line option `-timeDelay', which can
also be set from the `Load Game Options' menu dialog. Note:
Some chess engines do not support Analysis mode.
Edit Game
Duplicate of the item in the Edit menu. Note that `Edit Game'
is the idle mode of XBoard, and can be used to get you out of
other modes. E.g. to stop analyzing, stop a game between two
engines or stop editing a position.
Edit Position
Duplicate of the item in the Edit menu.
Training
Training mode lets you interactively guess the moves of a game
for one of the players. You guess the next move of the game by
playing the move on the board. If the move played matches the
next move of the game, the move is accepted and the opponent's
response is auto-played. If the move played is incorrect, an
error message is displayed. You can select this mode only while
loading a game (that is, after selecting `Load Game' from the
File menu). While XBoard is in `Training' mode, the navigation
buttons are disabled.
ICS Client
This is the normal mode when XBoard is connected to a chess
server. If you have moved into Edit Game or Edit Position mode,
you can select this option to get out.
To use xboard in ICS mode, run it in the foreground with the
-ics option, and use the terminal you started it from to type
commands and receive text responses from the chess server. See
Chess Servers below for more information.
XBoard activates some special position/game editing features
when you use the `examine' or `bsetup' commands on ICS and you
have `ICS Client' selected on the Mode menu. First, you can
issue the ICS position-editing commands with the mouse. Move
pieces by dragging with mouse button 1. To drop a new piece on
a square, press mouse button 2 or 3 over the square. This
brings up a menu of white pieces (button 2) or black pieces
(button 3). Additional menu choices let you empty the square or
clear the board. Click on the White or Black clock to set the
side to play. You cannot set the side to play or drag pieces to
arbitrary squares while examining on ICC, but you can do so in
`bsetup' mode on FICS. In addition, the menu commands `For‐
ward', `Backward', `Pause', and `Stop Examining' have special
functions in this mode; see below.
Machine Match
Starts a match between two chess programs, with a number of
games and other parameters set through the `Match Options' menu
dialog. When a match is already running, selecting this item
will make XBoard drop out of match mode after the current game
finishes.
Pause Pauses updates to the board, and if you are playing against a
chess engine, also pauses your clock. To continue, select
`Pause' again, and the display will automatically update to the
latest position. The `P' button and keyboard `Pause' key are
equivalents.
If you select Pause when you are playing against a chess engine
and it is not your move, the chess engine's clock will continue
to run and it will eventually make a move, at which point both
clocks will stop. Since board updates are paused, however, you
will not see the move until you exit from Pause mode (or select
Forward). This behavior is meant to simulate adjournment with a
sealed move.
If you select Pause while you are observing or examining a game
on a chess server, you can step backward and forward in the cur‐
rent history of the examined game without affecting the other
observers and examiners, and without having your display jump
forward to the latest position each time a move is made. Select
Pause again to reconnect yourself to the current state of the
game on ICS.
If you select `Pause' while you are loading a game, the game
stops loading. You can load more moves manually by selecting
`Forward', or resume automatic loading by selecting `Pause'
again.
Action Menu
Accept Accepts a pending match offer. The `F3' key is a keyboard
equivalent. If there is more than one offer pending, you will
have to type in a more specific command instead of using this
menu choice.
Decline
Declines a pending offer (match, draw, adjourn, etc.). The `F4'
key is a keyboard equivalent. If there is more than one offer
pending, you will have to type in a more specific command
instead of using this menu choice.
Call Flag
Calls your opponent's flag, claiming a win on time, or claiming
a draw if you are both out of time. The `F5' key is a keyboard
equivalent. You can also call your opponent's flag by clicking
on his clock.
Draw Offers a draw to your opponent, accepts a pending draw offer
from your opponent, or claims a draw by repetition or the
50-move rule, as appropriate. The `F6' key is a keyboard equiva‐
lent.
Adjourn
Asks your opponent to agree to adjourning the current game, or
agrees to a pending adjournment offer from your opponent. The
`F7' key is a keyboard equivalent.
Abort Asks your opponent to agree to aborting the current game, or
agrees to a pending abort offer from your opponent. The `F8'
key is a keyboard equivalent. An aborted game ends immediately
without affecting either player's rating.
Resign Resigns the game to your opponent. The `F9' key is a keyboard
equivalent.
Stop Observing
Ends your participation in observing a game, by issuing the ICS
observe command with no arguments. ICS mode only. The `F10' key
is a keyboard equivalent.
Stop Examining
Ends your participation in examining a game, by issuing the ICS
unexamine command. ICS mode only. The `F11' key is a keyboard
equivalent.
Upload to Examine
Create an examined game of the proper variant on the ICS, and
send the game there that is currenty loaded in XBoard (e.g.
through pasting or loading from file). You must be connected to
an ICS for this to work.
Adjudicate to White
Adjudicate to Black
Adjudicate Draw
Terminate an ongoing game in Two-Machines mode (including match
mode), with as result a win for white, for black, or a draw,
respectively. The PGN file of the game will accompany the
result string by the comment "user adjudication".
Engine Menu
Load Engine
Pops up a dialog where you can select or specify an engine to be
loaded. You will always have to indicate whether you want to
load the engine as first or second engine, through the ‘Load
menitioned engine as’ drop-down list at the bottom of the dia‐
log. You can even replace engines during a game, without dis‐
turbing that game. (Beware that after loading an engine, XBoard
will always be in Edit Game mode, so you will have to tell the
new engine what to do before it does anything!) When you select
an already installed engine from the ‘Select Engine from List’
drop-down list, all other fields of the dialog will be ignored.
In other cases, you have to specify the engine executable, pos‐
sible arguments on the engine command line (if the engine docs
say the engine needs any), and the directory where the engine
should look for its files (if this cannot be deduced automati‐
cally from the specification of the engine executable). You
will also have to specify (with the aid of checkboxes) if the
engine is UCI. If ‘Add this engine to the list’ is ticked
(which it is by default), the engine will be added to the list
of installed engines in your settings file, (provided you save
the settings!), so that next time you can select it from the
drop-down list. You can also specify a ‘nickname’, under which
the engine will then appear in that drop-down list, and even
choose to use that nickname for it in PGN files for engine-
engine games. The info you supply with the checkboxes whether
the engine should use GUI book, or (for variant engines) auto‐
matically switch to the current variant when loaded, will also
be included in the list. For obsolete XBoard engines, which
would normally take a long delay to load because XBoard is wait‐
ing for a response they will not give, you can tick ‘WB protocol
v1’ to speed up the loading process.
Engine #N Settings
Pop up a menu dialog to alter the settings specific to the
applicable engine. (The second engine is only accessible once
it has been used in Two-Machines mode.) For each parameter the
engine allows to be set, a control element will appear in this
dialog that can be used to alter the value. Depending on the
type of parameter (text string, number, multiple choice, on/off
switch, instantaneous signal) the appropriate control will
appear, with a description next to it. XBoard has no idea what
these values mean; it just passes them on to the engine. How
this dialog looks is completely determined by the engine, and
XBoard just passes it on to the user. Many engines do not have
any parameters that can be set by the user, and in that case the
dialog will be empty (except for the OK and cancel buttons).
UCI engines usually have many parameters. (But these are only
visible with a sufficiently modern version of the Polyglot
adapter needed to run UCI engines, e.g. Polyglot 1.4.55b.) For
native XBoard engines this is less common.
Hint Displays a move hint from the chess engine.
Book Displays a list of possible moves from the chess engine's open‐
ing book. The exact format depends on what chess engine you are
using. With GNU Chess 4, the first column gives moves, the sec‐
ond column gives one possible response for each move, and the
third column shows the number of lines in the book that include
the move from the first column. If you select this option and
nothing happens, the chess engine is out of its book or does not
support this feature.
Move Now
Forces the chess engine to move immediately. Chess engine mode
only. The `Ctrl-M' key is a keyboard equivalent.
Retract Move
Retracts your last move. In chess engine mode, you can do this
only after the chess engine has replied to your move; if the
chess engine is still thinking, use `Move Now' first. In ICS
mode, `Retract Move' issues the command `takeback 1' or `take‐
back 2' depending on whether it is your opponent's move or
yours. The `Ctrl-X' key is a keyboard equivalent.
Recently Used Engines
At the bottom of the engine menu there can be a list of names of
engines that you recently loaded through the Load Engine menu
dialog in previous sessions. Clicking on such a name will load
that engine as first engine, so you won't have to search for it
in your list of installed engines, if that is very long. The
maximum number of displayed engine names is set by the `recen‐
tEngines'command-line option.
Options Menu
The following items to set option values appear in the dialog summoned
by the general Options menu item.
Absolute Analysis Scores
Controls if scores on the Engine Output window during analysis
will be printed from the white or the side-to-move point-of-
view.
Almost Always Queen
If this option is on, 7th-rank pawns automatically change into
Queens when you pick them up, and when you drag them to the pro‐
motion square and release them there, they will promote to that.
But when you drag such a pawn backwards first, its identity will
start to cycle through the other available pieces. This will
continue until you start to move it forward; at which point the
identity of the piece will be fixed, so that you can safely put
it down on the promotion square. If this option is off, what
happens depends on the option `alwaysPromoteToQueen', which
would force promotion to Queen when true. Otherwise XBoard
would bring up a dialog box whenever you move a pawn to the last
rank, asking what piece you want to promote to.
Animate Dragging
If Animate Dragging is on, while you are dragging a piece with
the mouse, an image of the piece follows the mouse cursor. If
Animate Dragging is off, there is no visual feedback while you
are dragging a piece, but if Animate Moving is on, the move will
be animated when it is complete.
Animate Moving
If Animate Moving is on, all piece moves are animated. An image
of the piece is shown moving from the old square to the new
square when the move is completed (unless the move was already
animated by Animate Dragging). If Animate Moving is off, a
moved piece instantly disappears from its old square and reap‐
pears on its new square when the move is complete. The shifted
`Ctrl-A' key is a keyboard equivalent.
Auto Flag
If this option is on and one player runs out of time before the
other, XBoard will automatically call his flag, claiming a win
on time. The shifted `Ctrl-F' key is a keyboard equivalent. In
ICS mode, Auto Flag will only call your opponent's flag, not
yours, and the ICS may award you a draw instead of a win if you
have insufficient mating material. In local chess engine mode,
XBoard may call either player's flag and will not take material
into account (?).
Auto Flip View
If the Auto Flip View option is on when you start a game, the
board will be automatically oriented so that your pawns move
from the bottom of the window towards the top.
If you are playing a game on an ICS, the board is always ori‐
ented at the start of the game so that your pawns move from the
bottom of the window towards the top. Otherwise, the starting
orientation is determined by the `flipView' command line option;
if it is false (the default), White's pawns move from bottom to
top at the start of each game; if it is true, Black's pawns move
from bottom to top. See User interface options.
Blindfold
If this option is on, XBoard displays the board as usual but
does not display pieces or move highlights. You can still move
in the usual way (with the mouse or by typing moves in ICS
mode), even though the pieces are invisible.
Drop Menu
Controls if right-clicking the board in crazyhouse / bughouse
will pop up a menu to drop a piece on the clicked square (old,
deprecated behavior) or allow you to step through an engine PV
(new, recommended behavior).
Enable Variation Trees
If this option is on, playing a move in Edit Game or Analyze
mode while keeping the Shift key pressed will start a new varia‐
tion. You can then recall the previous line through the
`Revert' menu item. When off, playing a move will truncate the
game and append the move irreversibly.
Hide Thinking
If this option is off, the chess engine's notion of the score
and best line of play from the current position is displayed as
it is thinking. The score indicates how many pawns ahead (or if
negative, behind) the chess engine thinks it is. In matches
between two machines, the score is prefixed by `W' or `B' to
indicate whether it is showing White's thinking or Black's, and
only the thinking of the engine that is on move is shown. The
shifted `Ctrl-H' key is a keyboard equivalent.
Highlight Last Move
If Highlight Last Move is on, after a move is made, the starting
and ending squares remain highlighted. In addition, after you
use Backward or Back to Start, the starting and ending squares
of the last move to be unmade are highlighted.
Highlight with Arrow
Causes the highlighting described in Highlight Last Move to be
done by drawing an arrow between the highlighted squares, so
that it is visible even when the width of the grid lines is set
to zero.
Move Sound
Enables the sounding of an audible signal when the computer per‐
forms a move. For the selection of the sound, see `Sound
Options'. If you turn on this option when using XBoard with the
Internet Chess Server, you will probably want to give the `set
bell 0' command to the ICS, since otherwise the ICS will ring
the terminal bell after every move (not just yours). (The
`.icsrc' file is a good place for this; see ICS options.)
One-Click Moving
If this option is on, XBoard does not wait for you to click both
the from- and the to-square, or drag the piece, but performs a
move as soon as it is uniqely specified. This applies to click‐
ing an own piece that only has a single legal move, clicking an
empty square or opponent piece where only one of your pieces can
move (or capture) to. Furthermore, a double-click on a piece
that can only make a single capture will cause that capture to
be made. Promoting a Pawn by clicking its to-square will sup‐
press the promotion popup or other methods for selecting an
under-promotion, and make it promote to Queen.
Periodic Updates
If this option is off (or if you are using a chess engine that
does not support periodic updates), the analysis window will
only be updated when the analysis changes. If this option is on,
the Analysis Window will be updated every two seconds.
Play Move(s) of Clicked PV
If this option is on, right-clicking a PV in the Engine Output
window during Analyze mode will cause the first move of that PV
to be played. You could also play more than one (or no) PV move
by moving the mouse to engage in the PV walk such a right-click
will start, to seek out another position along the PV where you
want to continue the analysis, before releasing the mouse but‐
ton.
Ponder Next Move
If this option is off, the chess engine will think only when it
is on move. If the option is on, the engine will also think
while waiting for you to make your move. The shifted `Ctrl-P'
key is a keyboard equivalent.
Popup Exit Message
If this option is on, when XBoard wants to display a message
just before exiting, it brings up a modal dialog box and waits
for you to click OK before exiting. If the option is off,
XBoard prints the message to standard error (the terminal) and
exits immediately.
Popup Move Errors
If this option is off, when you make an error in moving (such as
attempting an illegal move or moving the wrong color piece), the
error message is displayed in the message area. If the option
is on, move errors are displayed in small pop-up windows like
other errors. You can dismiss an error pop-up either by click‐
ing its OK button or by clicking anywhere on the board, includ‐
ing down-clicking to start a move.
Scores in Move List
If this option is on, XBoard will display the depth and score of
engine moves in the Move List, in the format of a PGN comment.
Show Coords
If this option is on, XBoard displays algebraic coordinates
along the board's left and bottom edges.
Show Target Squares
If this option is on, all squares a piece that is 'picked up'
with the mouse can legally move to are highighted with a fat
colored dot in the highlightColor (non-captures) or premoveHigh‐
lightColor (captures). Legality testing must be on for XBoard
to know how the piece moves.
Test Legality
If this option is on, XBoard tests whether the moves you try to
make with the mouse are legal and refuses to let you make an
illegal move. The shifted `Ctrl-L' key is a keyboard equiva‐
lent. Moves loaded from a file with `Load Game' are also
checked. If the option is off, all moves are accepted, but if a
local chess engine or the ICS is active, they will still reject
illegal moves. Turning off this option is useful if you are
playing a chess variant with rules that XBoard does not under‐
stand. (Bughouse, suicide, and wild variants where the king may
castle after starting on the d file are generally supported with
Test Legality on.)
Flash Moves
Flash Rate
If this option is non-zero, whenever a move is completed, the
moved piece flashes the specified number of times. The flash-
rate setting determines how rapidly this flashing occurs.
Animation Speed
Determines the duration (in msec) of an animation step, when
`Animate Moving' is swiched on.
Zoom factor in Evaluation Graph
Sets the valueof the `evalZoom' option, indicating the factor by
which the score interval (-1,1) should be blown up on the verti‐
cal axis of the Evaluation Graph.
Pops up a sub-menu where you can set the time-control parameters inter‐
actively. Allows you to select classical or incremental time controls,
set the moves per session, session duration, and time increment. Also
allows specification of time-odds factors for one or both engines. If
an engine is given a time-odds factor N, all time quota it gets, be it
at the beginning of a session or through the time increment or fixed
time per move, will be divided by N. The shifted `Alt+T' key is a key‐
board equivalent.
Pops up a sub-menu where you can set some engine parameters common to
most engines, such as hash-table size, tablebase cache size, maximum
number of processors that SMP engines can use, and where to find the
Polyglot adapter needed to run UCI engines under XBoard. The feature
that allows setting of these parameters on engines is new since XBoard
4.3.15, so not many XBoard/WinBoard engines respond to it yet, but UCI
engines should.
It is also possible to specify a GUI opening book here, i.e. an opening
book that XBoard consults for any position a playing engine gets in.
It then forces the engine to play the book move, rather than to think
up its own, if that position is found in the book. The book can
switched on and off independently for either engine. The way book
moves are chosen can be influenced through the settings of book depth
and variety. After both sides have played more moves than the speci‐
fied depth, the book will no longer be consulted. When the variety is
set to 50, moves will be played with the probability specified in the
book. When set to 0, only the move(s) with the highest probability
will be played. When set to 100, all listed moves will be played with
equal pobability. Other settings interpolate between that. The
shifted `Alt+U' key is a keyboard equivalent.
Pops up a sub-menu where you can enable or disable various adjudica‐
tions that XBoard can perform in engine-engine games. The shifted
`Alt+J' key is a keyboard equivalent. You can instruct XBoard to
detect and terminate the game on checkmate or stalemate, even if the
engines would not do so, to verify engine result claims (forfeiting
engines that make false claims), rather than naively following the
engine, to declare draw on positions which can never be won for lack of
mating material, (e.g. KBK), or which are impossible to win unless the
opponent seeks its own demise (e.g. KBKN). For these adjudications to
work, `Test Legality' should be switched on. It is also possible to
instruct XBoard to enforce a 50-move or 3-fold-repeat rule and automat‐
ically declare draw (after a user-adjustable number of moves or
repeats) even if the engines are prepared to go on. It is also possi‐
ble to have XBoard declare draw on games that seem to drag on forever,
or adjudicate a loss if both engines agree (for 3 consecutive moves)
that one of them is behind more than a user-adjustable score threshold.
For the latter adjudication to work, XBoard should be able to properly
understand the engine's scores. To facilitate the latter, you can
inform xboard here if the engines report scores from the viewpoint of
white, or from that of their own color.
The following options occur in a dialog summoned by the ICS Options
menu item.
Auto Kibitz
Setting this option when playing with or aginst a chess program
on an ICS will cause the last line of thinking output of the
engine before its move to be sent to the ICS in a kibitz com‐
mand. In addition, any kibitz message received through the ICS
from an opponent chess program will be diverted to the engine-
output window, (and suppressed in the console), where you can
play through its PV by right-clicking it.
Auto Comment
If this option is on, any remarks made on ICS while you are
observing or playing a game are recorded as a comment on the
current move. This includes remarks made with the ICS commands
`say', `tell', `whisper', and `kibitz'. Limitation: remarks
that you type yourself are not recognized; XBoard scans only the
output from ICS, not the input you type to it.
Auto Observe
If this option is on and you add a player to your `gnotify' list
on ICS, XBoard will automatically observe all of that player's
games, unless you are doing something else (such as observing or
playing a game of your own) when one starts. The games are dis‐
played from the point of view of the player on your gnotify
list; that is, his pawns move from the bottom of the window
towards the top. Exceptions: If both players in a game are on
your gnotify list, if your ICS `highlight' variable is set to 0,
or if the ICS you are using does not properly support observing
from Black's point of view, you will see the game from White's
point of view.
Auto Raise Board
If this option is on, whenever a new game begins, the chessboard
window is deiconized (if necessary) and raised to the top of the
stack of windows.
Auto Save
If this option is true, at the end of every game XBoard prompts
you for a file name and appends a record of the game to the file
you specify. Disabled if the `saveGameFile' command-line option
is set, as in that case all games are saved to the specified
file. See Load and Save options.
Background Observe
Setting this option will make XBoard suppress display of any
boards from observed games while you are playing. In stead the
last such board will be remembered, and shown to you when you
right-click the board. This allows you to peek at your bughouse
partner's game when you want, without disturbing your own game
too much.
Dual Board
Setting this option in combination with `Background Observe'
will display boards of observed games while you are playing on a
second board next to that of your own game.
Get Move List
If this option is on, whenever XBoard receives the first board
of a new ICS game (or a different game from the one it is cur‐
rently displaying), it retrieves the list of past moves from the
ICS. You can then review the moves with the `Forward' and
`Backward' commands or save them with `Save Game'. You might
want to turn off this option if you are observing several blitz
games at once, to keep from wasting time and network bandwidth
fetching the move lists over and over. When you turn this
option on from the menu, XBoard immediately fetches the move
list of the current game (if any).
Quiet Play
If this option is on, XBoard will automatically issue an ICS
`set shout 0' command whenever you start a game and a `set shout
1' command whenever you finish one. Thus, you will not be dis‐
tracted by shouts from other ICS users while playing.
Seek Graph
Setting this option will cause XBoard to display an graph of
currently active seek ads when you left-click the board while
idle and logged on to an ICS.
Auto-Refresh Seek Graph
In combination with the `Seek Graph' option this will cause
automatic update of the seek graph while it is up. This only
works on FICS and ICC, and requires a lot of bandwidth on a busy
server.
Premove
Premove White
Premove Black
First White Move
First Black Move
If this option is on while playing a game on an ICS, you can
register your next planned move before it is your turn. Move
the piece with the mouse in the ordinary way, and the starting
and ending squares will be highlighted with a special color (red
by default). When it is your turn, if your registered move is
legal, XBoard will send it to ICS immediately; if not, it will
be ignored and you can make a different move. If you change
your mind about your premove, either make a different move, or
double-click on any piece to cancel the move entirely.
You can also enter premoves for the first white and black moves
of the game.
ICS Alarm
ICS Alarm Time
When this option is on, an alarm sound is played when your clock
counts down to the icsAlarmTime in an ICS game. (By default,
the time is 5 seconds, but you can pecify other values with the
Alarm Time spin control.) For games with time controls that
include an increment, the alarm will sound each time the clock
counts down to the icsAlarmTime. By default, the alarm sound is
the terminal bell, but on some systems you can change it to a
sound file using the soundIcsAlarm option; see below.
Colorize Messages
Ticking this options causes various types of ICS messages do be
displayed with different foreground or background colors in the
console. The colors can be individually selected for each type,
through the accompanying text edits.
Summons a dialog where you can set options important for playing auto‐
matic matches between two chess programs (e.g. by using the `Machine
Match' menu item in the `Mode' menu).
Tournament file
To run a tournament, XBoard needs a file to record its progress,
so it can resume the tourney when it is interrupted. When you
want to conduct anything more complex than a simple two-player
match with the currently loaded engines, (i.e. when you select a
list of participants), you must not leave this field blank.
When you enter the name of an existing tournament file, XBoard
will ignore all other input specified in the dialog, and will
take them from that tournament file. This resumes an inter‐
rupted tournament, or adds another XBoard agent playing games
for it to those that are already doing so. Specifying a not-
yet-existing file will cause XBoard to create it, according to
the tournament parameters specified in the rest of the dialog,
before it starts the tournament on ‘OK’. Provided that you
specify participants; without participants no tournament file
will be made, but other entered values (e.g. for the file with
opening positions) will take effect. Default: configured by the
`defaultTourneyName' option.
Sync after round
Sync after cycle
The sync options, when on, will cause WinBoard to refrain from
starting games of the next round or cycle before all games of
the previous round or cycle are finished. This guarantees cor‐
rect ordering in the games file, even when multiple XBoard
instances are concurrently playing games for the same tourney.
Default: sync after cycle, but not after round.
Select Engine
Tourney participants
With the Select Engine drop-down list you can pick an engine
from your list of installed engines in the settings file, to be
added to the tournament. The engines selected so far will be
listed in the ‘Tourney participants’ memo. The latter is a nor‐
mal text edit, so you can use normal text-editing functions to
delete engines you selected by accident, or change their order.
Do not type names yourself there, because names that do not
exactly match one of the names from the drop-down list will lead
to undefined behavior.
Tourney type
Here you can specify the type of tournament you want. XBoard’s
intrinsic tournament manager support round-robins (type = 0),
where each participant plays every other participant, and
(multi-)gauntlets, where one (or a few) so-called ‘gauntlet
engines’ play an independent set of opponents. In the latter
case, you specify the number of gauntlet engines. E.g. if you
specified 10 engines, and tourney type = 2, the first 2 engines
each play the remaining 8. A value of -1 instructs XBoard to
play Swiss; for this to work an external pairing engine must be
specified through the `pairingEngine' option. Each Swiss round
will be considered a tourney cycle in that case. Default:0
Number of tourney cycles
Default number of Games
You can specify tourneys where every two opponents play each
other multiple times. Such multiple games can be played in a
row, as specified by the ‘number of games per pairing’, or by
repeating the entire tournament schedule a number of times
(specified by the ‘number of tourney cycles’). The total number
of times two engine meet will be the product of these two.
Default is 1 cycle; the number of games per pairing is the same
as the default number of match games, stored in your settings
file through the `defaultMatchGames' option.
Save Tourney Games
File where the tournament games are saved (duplicate of the item
in the `Save Game Options').
Game File with Opening Lines
File with Start Positions
Game Number
Position Number
Rewind Index after
These items optionally specify the file with move sequences or
board positions the tourney games should start from. The corre‐
sponding numbers specify the number of the game or position in
the file. Here a value -1 means automatic stepping through all
games on the file, -2 automatic stepping every two games. The
Rewind-Index parameter causes a stepping index to reset to one
after reaching a specified value. A setting of -2 for the game
number will also be effective in a tournament without specifying
a game file, but playing from the GUI book instead. In this
case the first (odd) games will randomly select from the book,
but the second (even) games will select the same moves from the
book as the previous game. (Note this leads to the same opening
only if both engines use the GUI book!) Default: No game or
position file will be used. The default index if such a file is
used is 1.
Disable own engine bools be default
Setting this option reverses the default situation for use of
the GUI opening book in tournaments from what it normally is,
namely not using it. So unless the engine is installed with an
option to explicitly specify it should not use the GUI book
(i.e. `-firstHasOwnBookUCI true'), it will be made to use the
GUI book.
Replace Engine
Upgrade Engine
With these two buttons you can alter the participants of an
already running tournament. After opening the Match Options
dialog on an XBoard that is playing for the tourney, you will
see all the tourney parameters in the dialog fields. You can
then replace the name of one engine by that of another by edit‐
ing the `participants' field. (But preserve the order of the
others!) Pressing the button after that will cause the substi‐
tution. With the `Upgrade Engine' button the substitution will
only affect future games. With `Replace Engine' all games the
substituted engine has already played will be invalidated, and
they will be replayed with the substitute engine. In this lat‐
ter case the engine must not be playing when you do this, but
otherwise there is no need to pause the tournament play for mak‐
ing a substitution.
Clone Tourney
Pressing this button after you have specified an existing tour‐
nament file will copy the contents of the latter to the dialog,
and then puts the originally proposed name for the tourney file
back. You can then run a tourney with the same parameters (pos‐
sibly after changing the proposed name of the tourney file for
the new tourney) by pressing 'OK'.
Summons a dialog where you can set the `autoDisplayComment' and
`autoDisplayTags' options, (which control popups when viewing loaded
games), and specify the rate at which loaded games are auto-played, in
seconds per move (which can be a fractional number, like 1.6). You can
also set search criteria for determining which games will be displayed
in the Game List for a multi-game file, and thus be eligible for load‐
ing:
Elo of strongest player
Elo of weakest player
year These numeric fields set thresholds (lower limits) on the Elo
rating of the mentioned player, or the date the game was played.
Defaults: 0
Search mode
This setting determines which positions in a game will be con‐
sidered a match to the position currently displayed in the board
window when you press the `find position' button in the Game
List. You can search for an exact match, a position that has
all shown material in the same place, but might contain addi‐
tional material, a position that has all Pawns in the same
place, but can have the shown material anywhere, a position
that can have all shown material anywhere, or a position
that has material between certain limits anywhere. For the lat‐
ter you have to place the material that must be present in the
four lowest ranks of the board, and optional additional material
in the four highest ranks of the board. You can request the
optional material to be balanced. The `narrow' button is simi‐
lar in fuction to the `find position' button, but only searches
in the already selected games, rather than the complete game
file, and can thus be used to refine a search based on multiple
criteria.
number of consecutive positions
When you are searching by material, rather than for an exact
match, this parameter indicates forhowmany consecutive game
positions the same amount of material must be on the board
before it is considered a match.
Also match reversed colors
Also match left-right flipped position
When looking for matching positions rather than by material,
these settings determine whether mirror images (in case of a
vertical flip in combination with color reversal) will be also
considered a match. The left-right flipping is only useful
after all castling rights have expired (or in Xiangqi).
Summons a dialog where you can specify the files on which XBoard should
automatically save any played or entered games, (the `saveGameFile'
option), or the final position of such games (the `savePositionfile'
option). You can also select 'auto-save' without a file name, in which
case XBoard will prompt the user for a file name after each game. In
ICS mode you can limit the auto-saving to your own games (i.e. suppress
saving of observed games). You can also set the default value for the
PGN Event tag that will be used for each new game you start. Various
options for the format of the game can be specified as well, such as
whether scores and depths of engine games should be saved as comments,
and if a tag with info about the score with which the engine came out
of book should be included. For Chess, always set the format to PGN,
rather than "old save stye"!
Pops up a dialog where you can select the PGN tags that should appear
on the lines in the game list, and their order.
Summons a dialog where you can specify the sounds that should accompany
various events that can occur XBoard. Most events are only relevant to
ICS play, but the move sound is an important exception. For each event
listed in the dialog, you can select a standard sound from a menu. You
can also select a user-supplied sound file, by typing its name into the
designated text-edit field first, and then selecting "Above WAV File"
from the menu for the event. A dummy event has been provided for try‐
ing out the sounds with the "play" button next to it. The directory
with standard sounds, and the external program for playing the sounds
can be specified too, but normally you would not touch these once
XBoard is properly installed. When a move sound other than 'None' is
selected, XBoard alerts you by playing that sound after each of your
opponent's moves (or after every move if you are observing a game on
the Internet Chess Server). The sound is not played after moves you
make or moves read from a saved game file.
Selecting this menu item causes the current XBoard settings to be writ‐
ten to the settings file, so they will also apply in future sessions.
Note that some settings are 'volatile', and are not saved, because
XBoard considers it too unlikely that you want those to apply next
time. In particular this applies to the Chess program names, and all
options giving information on those Chess programs (such as their
directory, if they have their own opening book, if they are UCI or
native XBoard), or the variant you are playing. Such options would
still be understood when they appear in the settings file in case they
were put there with the aid of a text editor, but they would disappear
from the file as soon as you save the settings.
Note that XBoard no longer pays attention to options values specified
in the .Xresources file. (Specifying key bindings there will still
work, though.) To alter the default of volatile options, you can use
the following method: Rename your ~/.xboardrc settings file (to
~/.yboardrc, say), and create a new file ~/.xboardrc, which only con‐
tains the options
-settingsFile ~/.yboardrc
-saveSettingsFile ~/.yboardrc
This will cause your settings to be saved on ~/.yboardrc in the future,
so that ~/.xboardrc is no longer overwritten. You can then safely
specify volatile options in ~/.xboardrc, either before or after the
settingsFile options. Note that when you specify persistent options
after the settingsFile options in ~/.xboardrc, you will essentially
turn them into volatile options with the specified value as default,
because that value will overrule the value loaded from the settings
file (being read later).
Setting this option has no immediate effect, but causes the settings to
be saved when you quit XBoard. What happens then is otherwise identical
to what happens when you use select "Save Settings Now", see there.
Help Menu
Info XBoard
Displays the XBoard documentation in info format. For this fea‐
ture to work, you must have the GNU info program installed on
your system, and the file `xboard.info' must either be present
in the current working directory, or have been installed by the
`make install' command when you built XBoard.
Man XBoard
Displays the XBoard documentation in man page format. The `F1'
key is a keyboard equivalent. For this feature to work, the
file `xboard.6' must have been installed by the `make install'
command when you built XBoard, and the directory it was placed
in must be on the search path for your system's `man' command.
About XBoard
Shows the current XBoard version number.
Other Shortcut Keys
Show Last Move
By hitting `Enter' the last move will be re-animated.
Load Next Game
Loads the next game from the last game record file you loaded.
The `Alt+PgDn' key triggers this action.
Load Previous Game
Loads the previous game from the last game record file you
loaded. The `Alt+PgUp' key triggers this action. Not available
if the last game was loaded from a pipe.
Reload Same Game
Reloads the last game you loaded. Not available if the last
game was loaded from a pipe. Currently no keystroke is assigned
to this ReloadGameProc.
Reload Same Position
Reloads the last position you loaded. Not available if the last
position was loaded from a pipe. Currently no keystroke is
assigned to this ReloadPositionProc.
In the Xaw build of XBoard you can add or remove shortcut keys using
the X resources `paneA.translations'. Here is an example of what could
go into your `.Xdefaults' file:
XBoard*paneA.translations: \
Shift<Key>?: MenuItem(Help.About) \n\
Ctrl<Key>y: MenuItem(Action.Accept) \n\
Ctrl<Key>n: MenuItem(Action.Decline) \n\
Ctrl<Key>i: MenuItem(Nothing)
So the key should always be bound to the action 'MenuItem', with the
(hierarchical) name of the menu item as argument. There are a few
actions available for which no menu item exists: Binding a key to
`Nothing' makes it do nothing, thus removing it as a shortcut key.
Other such functions that can be bound to keys are:
AboutGame, DebugProc (switches the -debug option on or off),
LoadNextGame, LoadPrevGame, ReloadGame, ReloadPosition.
OPTIONS
This section documents the command-line options to XBoard. You can set
these options in two ways: by typing them on the shell command line you
use to start XBoard, or by editing the settings file (usually
~/.xboardrc) to alter the value of the setting that was saved there.
Some of the options cannot be changed while XBoard is running; others
set the initial state of items that can be changed with the Options
menu.
Most of the options have both a long name and a short name. To turn a
boolean option on or off from the command line, either give its long
name followed by the value true or false (`-longOptionName true'), or
give just the short name to turn the option on (`-opt'), or the short
name preceded by `x' to turn the option off (`-xopt'). For options that
take strings or numbers as values, you can use the long or short option
names interchangeably.
Chess Engine Options
-tc or -timeControl minutes[:seconds]
Each player begins with his clock set to the `timeControl'
period. Default: 5 minutes. The additional options `movesPerS‐
ession' and `timeIncrement' are mutually exclusive.
-mps or -movesPerSession moves
When both players have made `movesPerSession' moves, a new
`timeControl' period is added to both clocks. Default: 40
moves.
-inc or -timeIncrement seconds
If this option is specified, `movesPerSession' is ignored.
Instead, after each player's move, `timeIncrement' seconds are
added to his clock. Use `-inc 0' if you want to require the
entire game to be played in one `timeControl' period, with no
increment. Default: -1, which specifies `movesPerSession' mode.
-clock/-xclock or -clockMode true/false
Determines whether or not to display the chess clocks. If clock‐
Mode is false, the clocks are not shown, but the side that is to
play next is still highlighted. Also, unless `searchTime' is
set, the chess engine still keeps track of the clock time and
uses it to determine how fast to make its moves.
-st or -searchTime minutes[:seconds]
Tells the chess engine to spend at most the given amount of time
searching for each of its moves. Without this option, the chess
engine chooses its search time based on the number of moves and
amount of time remaining until the next time control. Setting
this option also sets clockMode to false.
-depth or -searchDepth number
Tells the chess engine to look ahead at most the given number of
moves when searching for a move to make. Without this option,
the chess engine chooses its search depth based on the number of
moves and amount of time remaining until the next time control.
With the option, the engine will cut off its search early if it
reaches the specified depth.
-firstNPS number
-secondNPS number
Tells the chess engine to use an internal time standard based on
its node count, rather then wall-clock time, to make its timing
decisions. The time in virtual seconds should be obtained by
dividing the node count through the given number, like the num‐
ber was a rate in nodes per second. Xboard will manage the
clocks in accordance with this, relying on the number of nodes
reported by the engine in its thinking output. If the given num‐
ber equals zero, it can obviously not be used to convert nodes
to seconds, and the time reported by the engine is used to
decrement the XBoard clock in stead. The engine is supposed to
report in CPU time it uses, rather than wall-clock time, in this
mode. This option can provide fairer conditions for engine-
engine matches on heavily loaded machines, or with very fast
games (where the wall clock is too inaccurate). `showThinking'
must be on for this option to work. Default: -1 (off). Not many
engines might support this yet!
-firstTimeOdds factor
-secondTimeOdds factor
Reduces the time given to the mentioned engine by the given fac‐
tor. If pondering is off, the effect is indistinguishable from
what would happen if the engine was running on an n-times slower
machine. Default: 1.
-timeOddsMode mode
This option determines how the case is handled where both
engines have a time-odds handicap. If mode=1, the engine that
gets the most time will always get the nominal time, as speci‐
fied by the time-control options, and its opponent's time is
renormalized accordingly. If mode=0, both play with reduced
time. Default: 0.
-hideThinkingFromHuman true/false
Controls the Hide Thinking option. See Options Menu. Default:
true. (Replaces the Show-Thinking option of older xboard ver‐
sions.)
-thinking/-xthinking or -showThinking true/false
Forces the engine to send thinking output to xboard. Used to be
the only way to control if thinking output was displayed in
older xboard versions, but as the thinking output in xboard 4.3
is also used for several other purposes (adjudication, storing
in PGN file) the display of it is now controlled by the new
option Hide Thinking. See Options Menu. Default: false. (But if
xboard needs the thinking output for some purpose, it makes the
engine send it despite the setting of this option.)
-ponder/-xponder or -ponderNextMove true/false
Sets the Ponder Next Move menu option. See Options Menu.
Default: true.
-smpCores number
Specifies the maximum number of CPUs an SMP engine is allowed to
use. Only works for engines that support the XBoard/WinBoard-
protocol cores feature.
-mg or -matchGames n
Automatically runs an n-game match between two chess engines,
with alternating colors. If the `loadGameFile' or `loadPosi‐
tionFile' option is set, XBoard starts each game with the given
opening moves or the given position; otherwise, the games start
with the standard initial chess position. If the `saveGameFile'
option is set, a move record for the match is appended to the
specified file. If the `savePositionFile' option is set, the
final position reached in each game of the match is appended to
the specified file. When the match is over, XBoard displays the
match score and exits. Default: 0 (do not run a match).
-mm/-xmm or -matchMode true/false
Setting `matchMode' to true is equivalent to setting
`matchGames' to 1.
-sameColorGames n
Automatically runs an n-game match between two chess engines,
without alternating colors. Otherwise the same applies as for
the `-matchGames' option, over which it takes precedence if both
are specified. (See there.) Default: 0 (do not run a match).
-fcp or -firstChessProgram program
Name of first chess engine. Default: `Fairy-Max'.
-scp or -secondChessProgram program
Name of second chess engine, if needed. A second chess engine
is started only in Two Machines (match) mode. Default: `Fairy-
Max'.
-fe or -firstEngine nickname
This is an alternative to the `fcp' option for specifying the
first engine, for engines that were already configured (using
the `Load Engine' dialog) in XBoard's settings file. It will
not only retrieve the real name of the engine, but also all
options configured with it. (E.g. if it is UCI, whether it
should use book.)
-se or -secondEngine nickname
As `fe', but for the second engine.
-fb/-xfb or -firstPlaysBlack true/false
In games between two chess engines, firstChessProgram normally
plays white. If this option is true, firstChessProgram plays
black. In a multi-game match, this option affects the colors
only for the first game; they still alternate in subsequent
games.
-fh or -firstHost host
-sh or -secondHost host
Hosts on which the chess engines are to run. The default for
each is `localhost'. If you specify another host, XBoard uses
`rsh' to run the chess engine there. (You can substitute a dif‐
ferent remote shell program for rsh using the `remoteShell'
option described below.)
-fd or -firstDirectory dir
-sd or -secondDirectory dir
Working directories in which the chess engines are to be run.
The default is "", which means to run the chess engine in the
same working directory as XBoard itself. (See the CHESSDIR
environment variable.) This option is effective only when the
chess engine is being run on the local host; it does not work if
the engine is run remotely using the -fh or -sh option.
-initString string or -firstInitString
-secondInitString string
The string that is sent to initialize each chess engine for a
new game. Default:
new
random
Setting this option from the command line is tricky, because you
must type in real newline characters, including one at the very
end. In most shells you can do this by entering a `\' character
followed by a newline. Using the character sequence `\n' in the
string should work too, though.
If you change this option, don't remove the `new' command; it is
required by all chess engines to start a new game.
You can remove the `random' command if you like; including it
causes GNU Chess 4 to randomize its move selection slightly so
that it doesn't play the same moves in every game. Even without
`random', GNU Chess 4 randomizes its choice of moves from its
opening book. Many other chess engines ignore this command
entirely and always (or never) randomize.
You can also try adding other commands to the initString; see
the documentation of the chess engine you are using for details.
-firstComputerString string
-secondComputerString string
The string that is sent to the chess engine if its opponent is
another computer chess engine. The default is `computer\n'.
Probably the only useful alternative is the empty string (`'),
which keeps the engine from knowing that it is playing another
computer.
-reuse/-xreuse or -reuseFirst true/false
-reuse2/-xreuse2 or -reuseSecond true/false
If the option is false, XBoard kills off the chess engine after
every game and starts it again for the next game. If the option
is true (the default), XBoard starts the chess engine only once
and uses it repeatedly to play multiple games. Some old chess
engines may not work properly when reuse is turned on, but oth‐
erwise games will start faster if it is left on.
-firstProtocolVersion version-number
-secondProtocolVersion version-number
This option specifies which version of the chess engine communi‐
cation protocol to use. By default, version-number is 2. In
version 1, the "protover" command is not sent to the engine;
since version 1 is a subset of version 2, nothing else changes.
Other values for version-number are not supported.
-firstScoreAbs true/false
-secondScoreAbs true/false
If this option is set, the score reported by the engine is taken
to be that in favor of white, even when the engine plays black.
Important when XBoard uses the score for adjudications, or in
PGN reporting.
-niceEngines priority
This option allows you to lower the priority of the engine pro‐
cesses, so that the generally insatiable hunger for CPU time of
chess engines does not interfere so much with smooth operation
of XBoard (or the rest of your system). Negative values could
increase the engine priority, which is not recommended.
-firstOptions string
-secondOptions string
The given string is a comma-separated list of (option
name=option value) pairs, like the following example:
"style=Karpov,blunder rate=0". If an option announced by the
engine at startup through the feature commands of the
XBoard/WinBoard protocol matches one of the option names (i.e.
"style" or "blunder rate"), it would be set to the given value
(i.e. "Karpov" or 0) through a corresponding option command to
the engine. This provided that the type of the value (text or
numeric) matches as well.
-firstNeedsNoncompliantFEN string
-secondNeedsNoncompliantFEN string
The castling rights and e.p. fields of the FEN sent to the men‐
tioned engine with the setboard command will be replaced by the
given string. This can for instance be used to run engines that
do not understand Chess960 FENs in variant fischerandom, to make
them at least understand the opening position, through setting
the string to "KQkq -". (Note you also have to give the e.p.
field!) Other possible applications are to provide work-arounds
for engines that want to see castling and e.p. fields in vari‐
ants that do not have castling or e.p. (shatranj, courier,
xiangqi, shogi) so that XBoard would normally omit them (string
= "- -"), or to add variant-specific fields that are not yet
supported by XBoard (e.g. to indicate the number of checks in
3check).
-shuffleOpenings
Forces shuffling of the opening setup in variants that normally
have a fixed initial position. Shufflings are symmetric for
black and white, and exempt King and Rooks in variants with nor‐
mal castling. Remains in force until a new variant is selected.
UCI + WB Engine Settings
-fUCI or -firstIsUCI true/false
-sUCI or -secondIsUCI true/false
Indicates if the mentioned engine executable file is an UCI
engine, and should be run with the aid of the Polyglot adapter
rather than directly. Xboard will then pass the other UCI
options and engine name to Polyglot on its command line, accord‐
ing to the option `adapterCommand'.
-fUCCI
-sUCCI
-fUSI
-sUSI Options similar to `fUCI' and `sUCI', except that they use the
indicated engine with the protocol adapter specified in the
`uxiAdapter' option. This can then be configured for running an
UCCI or USI adapter, as the need arises.
-adapterCommand string
The string conatins the command that should be issued by XBoard
to start an engine that is accompanied by the `fUCI' option.
Any identifier following a percent sign in the command (e.g.
%fcp) will be considered the name of an XBoard option, and be
replaced by the value of that option at the time the engine is
started. For starting the second engine, any leading "f" or
"first" in the option name will first be replaced by "s" or
"second", before finding its value. Default: 'polyglot -noini
-ec "%fcp" -ed "%fd"'
-uxiAdapter string
Similar to `adapterCommand', but used for engines accompanied by
the `fUCCI' or `fUSI' option, so you can configure XBoard to be
ready to handle more than one flavor of non-native protocols.
Default: ""
-polyglotDir filename
Gives the name of the directory in which the Polyglot adapter
for UCI engines resides. Default: "".
-usePolyglotBook true/false
Specifies if the Polyglot book should be used as GUI book.
-polyglotBook filename
Gives the filename of the opening book. The book is only used
when the `usePolyglotBook' option is set to true, and the option
`firstHasOwnBookUCI' or `secondHasOwnBookUCI' applying to the
engine is set to false. The engine will be kept in force mode
as long as the current position is in book, and XBoard will
select the book moves for it. Default: "".
-fNoOwnBookUCI or -firstXBook or -firstHasOwnBookUCI true/false
-sNoOwnBookUCI or -secondXBook or -secondHasOwnBookUCI true/false
Indicates if the mentioned engine has its own opening book it
should play from, rather than using the external book through
XBoard. Default: depends on setting of the option `discourage‐
OwnBooks'.
-discourageOwnBooks true/false
When set, newly loaded engines will be assumed to use the GUI
book, unless they explicitly specify differently. Otherwise
they will be assumed to not use the GUI book, unless the specify
differently (e.g. with `firstXBook'). Default: false.
-bookDepth n
Limits the use of the GUI book to the first n moves of each
side. Default: 12.
-bookVariation n
A value n from 0 to 100 tunes the choice of moves from the GUI
books from totally random to best-only. Default: 50
-mcBookMode
When this volatile option is specified, the probing algorithm of
the GUI book is altered to always select the move that is most
under-represented based on its performance. When all moves are
played in approximately the right proportion, a book miss will
be reported, to give the engine opportunity to explore a new
move. In addition score of the moves will be kept track of dur‐
ing the session in a book buffer. By playing an match in this
mode, a book will be built from scratch. The only output are
the saved games, which can be converted to an actual book later,
with the `Save Games as Book' command. This command can also be
used to pre-fill the book buffer before adding new games based
on the probing algorithm.
-fn string or -firstPgnName string
-sn string or -secondPgnName string
Indicates the name that should be used for the engine in PGN
tags of engine-engine games. Intended to allow you to install
verions of the same engine with different settings, and still
distinguish them. Default: "".
-defaultHashSize n
Sets the size of the hash table to n MegaBytes. Together with
the EGTB cache size this number is also used to calculate the
memory setting of XBoard/WinBoard engines, for those that sup‐
port the memory feature of the XBoard/WinBoard protocol.
Default: 64.
-defaultCacheSizeEGTB n
Sets the size of the EGTB cache to n MegaBytes. Together with
the hash-table size this number is also used to calculate the
memory setting of XBoard/WinBoard engines, for those that sup‐
port the memory feature of the XBoard/WinBoard protocol.
Default: 4.
-defaultPathEGTB filename
Gives the name of the directory where the end-game tablebases
are installed, for UCI engines. Default:
"/usr/local/share/egtb".
-egtFormats string
Specifies which end-game tables are installed on the computer,
and where. The argument is a comma-separated list of format
specifications, each specification consisting of a format name,
a colon, and a directory path name, e.g. "nal‐
imov:/usr/local/share/egtb". If the name part matches that of a
format that the engine requests through a feature command,
xboard will relay the path name for this format to the engine
through an egtpath command. One egtpath command for each match‐
ing format will be sent. Popular formats are "nalimov" DTM
tablebases and "scorpio" bitbases. Default: "".
-firstChessProgramNames={names}
This option lets you customize the drop-down list of chess
engine names that appears in the `Load Engine' and `Match
Options' dialog. It consists of a list of strings, one per
line. When an engine is loaded, the corresponding line is pre‐
fixed with "-fcp ", and processed like it appeared on the com‐
mand line. That means that apart from the engine command, it
can contain any list of XBoard options you want to use with this
engine. (Commonly used options here are -fd, -firstXBook,
-fUCI, -variant.)
The value of this option is gradually built as you load new
engines through the `Load Engine' menu dialog, with `Add to
list' ticked. To change it, edit your settings file with a
plain text editor.
Tournament options
-defaultMatchGames n
Sets the number of games that will be used for a match between
two engines started from the menu to n. Also used as games per
pairing in other tournament formats. Default: 10.
-matchPause n
Specifies the duration of the pause between two games of a match
or tournament between engines as n milliseconds. Especially
engines that do not support ping need this option, to prevent
that the move they are thinking on when an opponent unexpectedly
resigns will be counted for the next game, (leading to illegal
moves there). Default: 10000.
-tf filename or -tourneyFile filename
Specifies the name of the tournament file used in match mode to
conduct a multi-player tournament. This file is a special set‐
tings file, which stores the description of the tournament
(including progress info), through normal options (e.g. for time
control, load and save files), and through some special-purpose
options listed below.
-tt number or -tourneyType number
Specifies the type of tourney: 0 = round-robin, N>0 =
(multi-)gauntlet with N gauntlet engines, -1 = Swiss through
external pairing engine. Volatile option, but stored in tourney
file.
-cy number or -tourneyCycles number
Specifies the number of cycles in a tourney. Volatile option,
but stored in tourney file.
-participants list
The list is a multi-line text string that specifies engines
occurring in the `firstChesProgramNames' list in the settings
file by their (implied or explicitly given) nicknames, one
engine per line. The mentioned engines will play in the tour‐
ney. Volatile option, but stored in tourney file.
-results string
The string of +=- characters lists the result of all played
games in a toruney. Games currently playing are listed as *,
while a space indicates a game that is not yet played or playing
. Volatile option, but stored in tourney file.
-defaultTourneyName string
Specifies the name of the tournament file XBoard should propose
when the `Match Options' dialog is opened. Any %y, %M, %d, %h,
%m, %s in the string are replaced by the current year, month,
day of the month, hours, minutes, seconds of the current time,
respectively, as two-digit number. A %Y would be replaced by
the year as 4-digit number. Default: empty string.
-pairingEngine filename
Specifies the external program to be used to pair the partici‐
pants in Swiss tourneys. XBoard communicates with this engine
in the same way as it communicates with Chess engines. The only
commands sent to the pairing engine are “results N string”,
(where N is the number of participants, and string the results
so far in the format of the results option), and “pairing N”,
(where N is the number of the tourney game). To the latter the
pairing engine should answer with “A-B”, where A and B are par‐
ticipant numbers (in the range 1-N). (There should be no reply
to the results command.) Default: empty string.
-afterGame string
-afterTourney string
When non-empty, the given string will be executed as a system
command after each tournament game, orafterthe tourney com‐
pletes, respectively. This can be used, for example, to autmat‐
ically run a cross-table generator on the PGN file where games
are saved, to update the tourney standings. Default: ""
-syncAfterRound true/false
-syncAfterCycle true/false
Controls whether different instances of XBoard concurrently run‐
ning the same tournament will wait for each other. Defaults:
sync after cycle, but not after round.
-seedBase number
Used to store the seed of the pseudo-random-number generator in
the tourneyFile, so that separate instances of XBoard working on
the same tourney can take coherent 'random' decisions, such as
picking an opening for a given game number.
ICS options
-ics/-xics or -internetChessServerMode true/false
Connect with an Internet Chess Server to play chess against its
other users, observe games they are playing, or review games
that have recently finished. Default: false.
-icshost or -internetChessServerHost host
The Internet host name or address of the chess server to connect
to when in ICS mode. Default: `chessclub.com'. Another popular
chess server to try is `freechess.org'. If your site doesn't
have a working Internet name server, try specifying the host
address in numeric form. You may also need to specify the
numeric address when using the icshelper option with timestamp
or timeseal (see below).
-icsport or -internetChessServerPort port-number
The port number to use when connecting to a chess server in ICS
mode. Default: 5000.
-icshelper or -internetChessServerHelper prog-name
An external helper program used to communicate with the chess
server. You would set it to "timestamp" for ICC (chessclub.com)
or "timeseal" for FICS (freechess.org), after obtaining the cor‐
rect version of timestamp or timeseal for your computer. See
"help timestamp" on ICC and "help timeseal" on FICS. This
option is shorthand for `-useTelnet -telnetProgram program'.
-telnet/-xtelnet or -useTelnet true/false
This option is poorly named; it should be called useHelper. If
set to true, it instructs XBoard to run an external program to
communicate with the Internet Chess Server. The program to use
is given by the telnetProgram option. If the option is false
(the default), XBoard opens a TCP socket and uses its own inter‐
nal implementation of the telnet protocol to communicate with
the ICS. See Firewalls.
-telnetProgram prog-name
This option is poorly named; it should be called helperProgram.
It gives the name of the telnet program to be used with the
`gateway' and `useTelnet' options. The default is `telnet'. The
telnet program is invoked with the value of `inter‐
netChessServerHost' as its first argument and the value of
`internetChessServerPort' as its second argument. See Fire‐
walls.
-gateway host-name
If this option is set to a host name, XBoard communicates with
the Internet Chess Server by using `rsh' to run the `telnetPro‐
gram' on the given host, instead of using its own internal
implementation of the telnet protocol. You can substitute a dif‐
ferent remote shell program for `rsh' using the `remoteShell'
option described below. See Firewalls.
-internetChessServerCommPort or -icscomm dev-name
If this option is set, XBoard communicates with the ICS through
the given character I/O device instead of opening a TCP connec‐
tion. Use this option if your system does not have any kind of
Internet connection itself (not even a SLIP or PPP connection),
but you do have dial-up access (or a hardwired terminal line) to
an Internet service provider from which you can telnet to the
ICS.
The support for this option in XBoard is minimal. You need to
set all communication parameters and tty modes before you enter
XBoard.
Use a script something like this:
stty raw -echo 9600 > /dev/tty00
xboard-ics -icscomm /dev/tty00
Here replace `/dev/tty00' with the name of the device that your
modem is connected to. You might have to add several more
options to these stty commands. See the man pages for `stty' and
`tty' if you run into problems. Also, on many systems stty works
on its standard input instead of standard output, so you have to
use `<' instead of `>'.
If you are using linux, try starting with the script below.
Change it as necessary for your installation.
#!/bin/sh -f
# configure modem and fire up XBoard
# configure modem
(
stty 2400 ; stty raw ; stty hupcl ; stty -clocal
stty ignbrk ; stty ignpar ; stty ixon ; stty ixoff
stty -iexten ; stty -echo
) < /dev/modem
xboard-ics -icscomm /dev/modem
After you start XBoard in this way, type whatever commands are
necessary to dial out to your Internet provider and log in.
Then telnet to ICS, using a command like `telnet chessclub.com
5000'. Important: See the paragraph below about extra echoes,
in Limitations.
-icslogon or -internetChessServerLogonScript file-name
Whenever XBoard connects to the Internet Chess Server, if it
finds a file with the name given in this option, it feeds the
file's contents to the ICS as commands. The default file name is
`.icsrc'. Usually the first two lines of the file should be
your ICS user name and password. The file can be either in
$CHESSDIR, in XBoard's working directory if CHESSDIR is not set,
or in your home directory.
-msLoginDelay delay
If you experience trouble logging on to an ICS when using the
`-icslogon' option, inserting some delay between characters of
the logon script may help. This option adds `delay' milliseconds
of delay between characters. Good values to try are 100 and 250.
-icsinput/-xicsinput or -internetChessServerInputBox true/false
Sets the ICS Input Box menu option. See Mode Menu. Default:
false.
-autocomm/-xautocomm or -autoComment true/false
Sets the Auto Comment menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
false.
-autoflag/-xautoflag or -autoCallFlag true/false
Sets the Auto Flag menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
false.
-autobs/-xautobs or -autoObserve true/false
Sets the Auto Observe menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
false.
-autoKibitz
Enables kibitzing of the engines last thinking output (depth,
score, time, speed, PV) before it moved to the ICS, in zippy
mode. The option `showThinking' must be switched on for this
option to work. Also diverts similar kibitz information of an
opponent engine that is playing you through the ICS to the
engine-output window, as if the engine was playing locally.
-seekGraph true/false or -sg
Enables displaying of the seek graph by left-clicking the board
when you are logged on to an ICS and currently idle. The seek
graph show all players currently seeking games on the ICS, plot‐
ted according to their rating and the time control of the game
they seek, in three different colors (for rated, unrated and
wild games). Computer ads are displayed as squares, human ads
are dots. Default: false.
-autoRefresh true/false
Enables automatic updating of the seek graph, by having the ICS
send a running update of all newly placed and removed seek ads.
This consumes a substantial amount of communication bandwidth,
and is only supported for FICS and ICC. Default: false.
-backgroundObserve true/false
When true, boards sent to you by the ICS from other games while
you are playing (e.g. because you are observing them) will not
be automatically displayed. Only a summary of time left and
material of both players will appear in the message field above
the board. XBoard will remember the last board it has received
this way, and will display it in stead of the position in your
own game when you press the right mouse button. No other infor‐
mation is stored on such games observed in the background; you
cannot save such a game later, or step through its moves. This
feature is provided solely for the benefit of bughouse players,
to enable them to peek at their partner's game without the need
to logon twice. Default: false.
-dualBoard true/false
In combination with -backgroundObserve true, this option will
display the board of the background game side by side with that
of your own game, so you can have it in view permanently. Any
board or holdings info coming in will be displayed on the sec‐
ondary board immediately. This feature is still experimental
and largely unfinished. There is no animation or highlighting
of moves on the secondary board. Default: false.
-disguisePromotedPieces true/false
When set promoted Pawns in crazyhouse/bughouse are displayed
identical to primordial pieces of the same type, rather than
distinguishable. Default: true.
-moves/-xmoves or -getMoveList true/false
Sets the Get Move List menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
true.
-alarm/-xalarm or -icsAlarm true/false
Sets the ICS Alarm menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
true.
-icsAlarmTime ms
Sets the time in milliseconds for the ICS Alarm menu option.
See Options Menu. Default: 5000.
lowTimeWarning true/false
Controls a color change of the board as a warning your time is
running out. See Options Menu. Default: false.
-pre/-xpre or -premove true/false
Sets the Premove menu option. See Options Menu. Default: true.
-prewhite/-xprewhite or -premoveWhite
-preblack/-xpreblack or -premoveBlack
-premoveWhiteText string
-premoveBlackText string
Set the menu options for specifying the first move for either
color. See Options Menu. Defaults: false and empty strings, so
no pre-moves.
-quiet/-xquiet or -quietPlay true/false
Sets the Quiet Play menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
false.
-colorizeMessages or -colorize/-xcolorize
Setting colorizeMessages to true tells XBoard to colorize the
messages received from the ICS. Colorization works only if your
xterm supports ISO 6429 escape sequences for changing text col‐
ors. Default: true.
-colorShout foreground,background,bold
-colorSShout foreground,background,bold
-colorCShout foreground,background,bold
-colorChannel1 foreground,background,bold
-colorChannel foreground,background,bold
-colorKibitz foreground,background,bold
-colorTell foreground,background,bold
-colorChallege foreground,background,bold
-colorRequest foreground,background,bold
-colorSeek foreground,background,bold
-colorNormal foreground,background,bold
These options set the colors used when colorizing ICS messages.
All ICS messages are grouped into one of these categories:
shout, sshout, channel 1, other channel, kibitz, tell, chal‐
lenge, request (including abort, adjourn, draw, pause, and take‐
back), or normal (all other messages).
Each foreground or background argument can be one of the follow‐
ing: black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white, or
default. Here ``default'' means the default foreground or back‐
ground color of your xterm. Bold can be 1 or 0. If background
is omitted, ``default'' is assumed; if bold is omitted, 0 is
assumed.
-soundProgram progname
If this option is set to a sound-playing program that is
installed and working on your system, XBoard can play sound
files when certain events occur, listed below. The default pro‐
gram name is "play". If any of the sound options is set to "$",
the event rings the terminal bell by sending a ^G character to
standard output, instead of playing a sound file. If an option
is set to the empty string "", no sound is played for that
event.
-soundDirectory directoryname
This option specifies where XBoard will look for sound files,
when these are not given as an absolute path name.
-soundShout filename
-soundSShout filename
-soundCShout filename
-soundChannel filename
-soundChannel1 filename
-soundKibitz filename
-soundTell filename
-soundChallenge filename
-soundRequest filename
-soundSeek filename
These sounds are triggered in the same way as the colorization
events described above. They all default to "", no sound. They
are played only if the colorizeMessages is on. CShout is syn‐
onymous with SShout.
-soundMove filename
This sound is used by the Move Sound menu option. Default: "$".
-soundIcsAlarm filename
This sound is used by the ICS Alarm menu option. Default: "$".
-soundIcsWin filename
This sound is played when you win an ICS game. Default: "" (no
sound).
-soundIcsLoss filename
This sound is played when you lose an ICS game. Default: "" (no
sound).
-soundIcsDraw filename
This sound is played when you draw an ICS game. Default: "" (no
sound).
-soundIcsUnfinished filename
This sound is played when an ICS game that you are participating
in is aborted, adjourned, or otherwise ends inconclusively.
Default: "" (no sound).
Load and Save options
-lgf or -loadGameFile file
-lgi or -loadGameIndex index
If the `loadGameFile' option is set, XBoard loads the specified
game file at startup. The file name `-' specifies the standard
input. If there is more than one game in the file, XBoard pops
up a menu of the available games, with entries based on their
PGN (Portable Game Notation) tags. If the `loadGameIndex'
option is set to `N', the menu is suppressed and the N th game
found in the file is loaded immediately. The menu is also sup‐
pressed if `matchMode' is enabled or if the game file is a pipe;
in these cases the first game in the file is loaded immediately.
Use the `pxboard' shell script provided with XBoard if you want
to pipe in files containing multiple games and still see the
menu. If the loadGameIndex specifies an index -1, this triggers
auto-increment of the index in `matchMode', which means that
after every game the index is incremented by one, causing each
game of the match to be played from the next game in the file.
Similarly, specifying an index value of -2 causes the index to
be incremented every two games, so that each game in the file is
used twice (with reversed colors). The `rewindIndex' option
causes the index to be reset to the first game of the file when
it has reached a specified value.
-rewindIndex n
Causes a position file or game file to be rewound to its begin‐
ning after n positions or games in auto-increment `matchMode'.
See `loadPositionIndex' and `loadGameIndex'. default: 0 (no
rewind).
-td or -timeDelay seconds
Time delay between moves during `Load Game' or `Analyze File'.
Fractional seconds are allowed; try `-td 0.4'. A time delay
value of -1 tells XBoard not to step through game files automat‐
ically. Default: 1 second.
-sgf or -saveGameFile file
If this option is set, XBoard appends a record of every game
played to the specified file. The file name `-' specifies the
standard output.
-autosave/-xautosave or -autoSaveGames true/false
Sets the Auto Save menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
false. Ignored if `saveGameFile' is set.
-onlyOwnGames true/false
Suppresses auto-saving of ICS observed games. Default: false.
-lpf or -loadPositionFile file
-lpi or -loadPositionIndex index
If the `loadPositionFile' option is set, XBoard loads the speci‐
fied position file at startup. The file name `-' specifies the
standard input. If the `loadPositionIndex' option is set to N,
the Nth position found in the file is loaded; otherwise the
first position is loaded. If the loadPositionIndex specifies an
index -1, this triggers auto-increment of the index in `match‐
Mode', which means that after every game the index is incre‐
mented by one, causing each game of the match to be played from
the next position in the file. Similarly, specifying an index
value of -2 causes the index to be incremented every two games,
so that each position in the file is used twice (with the
engines playing opposite colors). The `rewindIndex' option
causes the index to be reset to the first position of the file
when it has reached a specified value.
-spf or -savePositionFile file
If this option is set, XBoard appends the final position reached
in every game played to the specified file. The file name `-'
specifies the standard output.
-pgnExtendedInfo true/false
If this option is set, XBoard saves depth, score and time used
for each move that the engine found as a comment in the PGN
file. Default: false.
-pgnEventHeader string
Sets the name used in the PGN event tag to string. Default:
"Computer Chess Game".
-pgnNumberTag true/false
Include the (unique) sequence number of a tournament game into
the saved PGN file as a 'number' tag. Default: false.
-saveOutOfBookInfo true/false
Include the information on how the engine(s) game out of its
opening book in a special 'annotator' tag with the PGN file.
Default: true.
-oldsave/-xoldsave or -oldSaveStyle true/false
Sets the Old Save Style menu option. See Options Menu.
Default: false.
-gameListTags string
The character string lists the PGN tags that should be printed
in the Game List, and their order. The meaning of the codes is
e=event, s=site, d=date, o=round, p=players, r=result, w=white
Elo, b=black Elo, t=time control, v=variant, a=out-of-book info,
c=result comment. Default: "eprd"
-ini or -settingsFile filename
-saveSettingsFile filename
@filename
When XBoard encounters an option -settingsFile (or -ini for
short), or @filename, it tries to read the mentioned file, and
substitutes the contents of it (presumaby more command-line
options) in place of the option. In the case of -ini or -set‐
tingsFile, the name of a successfully read settings file is also
remembered as the file to use for saving settings (automatically
on exit, or on user command). An option of the form @filename
does not affect saving. The option -saveSettingsFile does spec‐
ify a name of the file to use for saving, without reading any
options from it, and is thus also effective when the file did
not exist yet. So the settings will be saved to the file speci‐
fied in the last -saveSettingsFile or succesfull -settingsFile /
-ini command, if any, and in /etc/xboard/xboard.conf otherwise.
Usualy the latter is only accessible for the system administra‐
tor, though, and will be used to contain system-wide default
setings, amongst which a -saveSettingsFile and -settingsFile
options to specify a settings file accessible to the individual
user, such as ~/.xboardrc in the user's home directory.
-saveSettingsOnExit true/false
Controls saving of options on the settings file. See Options
Menu. Default: true.
User interface options
-display
-geometry
-iconic
-name These and most other standard Xt options are accepted.
-noGUI Suppresses all GUI functions of XBoard (to speed up automated
ultra-fast engine-engine games, which you don't want to watch).
There will be no board or clock updates, no printing of moves,
and no update of the icon on the task bar in this mode.
-logoSize N
This option controls the drawing of player logos next to the
clocks. The integer N specifies the width of the logo in pix‐
els; the logo height will always be half the width. When N = 0,
no logos will be diplayed. Default: 0.
-firstLogo imagefile
-secondLogo imagefile
Specify the images to be used as player logos when `logoSize' is
non-zero, next to the white and black clocks, respectively.
-autoLogo true/false
-logoDir filename
When `autoLogo' is set, XBoard will search for a PNG image file
with the name of the engine or ICS in the directory specified by
`logoDir'.
-recentEngines number
-recentEngineList list
When the number is larger than zero, it determines how many
recently used engines will be appended at the bottom of the
`Engines' menu. The engines will be saved in your settings file
as the option `recentEngineList', by their nicknames, and the
most recently used one will always be sorted to the top. If the
list after that is longer than the specified number, the last
one is discarded. Changes in the list will only become visible
the next session, provided you saved the settings. Default: 6.
-autoInstall list
When the list is set to a non-empty string, XBoard will scan the
operating system's plugin directory for engines supporting UCI
and XBoard protocol at startup. When it finds an engine that
was installed after it last saved its settings, a line to launch
that engine (as per specs in the plugin file) is appended to the
-firstChessProgramNames list of installed engines. In the
future it will be possible to use the list to limit this auto‐
matic adding of engines to a certain types of variants.
-oneClickMove true/false
When set, this option allows you to enter moves by only clicking
the to- or from-square, when only a single legal move to or from
that square is possible. Double-clicking a piece (or clicking
an already selected piece) will instruct that piece to make the
only capture it can legally do. Default: false.
-movesound/-xmovesound or -ringBellAfterMoves true/false
Sets the Move Sound menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
false. For compatibility with old XBoard versions, -bell/-xbell
are also accepted as abbreviations for this option.
-exit/-xexit or -popupExitMessage true/false
Sets the Popup Exit Message menu option. See Options Menu.
Default: true.
-popup/-xpopup or -popupMoveErrors true/false
Sets the Popup Move Errors menu option. See Options Menu.
Default: false.
-queen/-xqueen or -alwaysPromoteToQueen true/false
Sets the Always Queen menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
false.
-sweepPromotions true/false
Sets the `Almost Always Promote to Queen' menu option. See
Options Menu. Default: false.
-legal/-xlegal or -testLegality true/false
Sets the Test Legality menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
true.
-size or -boardSize (sizeName | n1,n2,n3,n4,n5,n6,n7)
Determines how large the board will be, by selecting the pixel
size of the pieces and setting a few related parameters. The
sizeName can be one of: Titanic, giving 129x129 pixel pieces,
Colossal 116x116, Giant 108x108, Huge 95x95, Big 87x87, Large
80x80, Bulky 72x72, Medium 64x64, Moderate 58x58, Average 54x54,
Middling 49x49, Mediocre 45x45, Small 40x40, Slim 37x37, Petite
33x33, Dinky 29x29, Teeny 25x25, or Tiny 21x21. Xboard installs
with a set of scalable (svg) piece images, which it scales to
any of the requested sizes. The square size can further be con‐
tinuously scaled by sizing the board window, but this only
adapts the size of the pieces, and has no effect on the width of
the grid lines or the font choice (both of which would depend on
he selected boardSize). The default depends on the size of your
screen; it is approximately the largest size that will fit with‐
out clipping.
You can select other sizes or vary other layout parameters by
providing a list of comma-separated values (with no spaces) as
the argument. You do not need to provide all the values; for
any you omit from the end of the list, defaults are taken from
the nearest built-in size. The value `n1' gives the piece size,
`n2' the width of the black border between squares, `n3' the
desired size for the clockFont, `n4' the desired size for the
coordFont, `n5' the desired size for the messageFont, `n6' the
smallLayout flag (0 or 1), and `n7' the tinyLayout flag (0 or
1). All dimensions are in pixels. If the border between
squares is eliminated (0 width), the various highlight options
will not work, as there is nowhere to draw the highlight. If
smallLayout is 1 and `titleInWindow' is true, the window layout
is rearranged to make more room for the title. If tinyLayout is
1, the labels on the menu bar are abbreviated to one character
each and the buttons in the button bar are made narrower.
-overrideLineGap n
When n >= 0, this forces the width of the black border between
squares to n pixels for any board size. Mostly used to suppress
the grid entirely by setting n = 0, e.g. in xiangqi or just get‐
ting a prettier picture. When n < 0 this the size-dependent
width of the grid lines is used. Default: -1.
-coords/-xcoords or -showCoords true/false
Sets the Show Coords menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
false. The `coordFont' option specifies what font to use.
-autoraise/-xautoraise or -autoRaiseBoard true/false
Sets the Auto Raise Board menu option. See Options Menu.
Default: true.
-autoflip/-xautoflip or -autoFlipView true/false
Sets the Auto Flip View menu option. See Options Menu.
Default: true.
-flip/-xflip or -flipView true/false
If Auto Flip View is not set, or if you are observing but not
participating in a game, then the positioning of the board at
the start of each game depends on the flipView option. If
flipView is false (the default), the board is positioned so that
the white pawns move from the bottom to the top; if true, the
black pawns move from the bottom to the top. In any case, the
Flip menu option (see Options Menu) can be used to flip the
board after the game starts.
-title/-xtitle or -titleInWindow true/false
If this option is true, XBoard displays player names (for ICS
games) and game file names (for `Load Game') inside its main
window. If the option is false (the default), this information
is displayed only in the window banner. You probably won't want
to set this option unless the information is not showing up in
the banner, as happens with a few X window managers.
-buttons/-xbuttons or -showButtonBar True/False
If this option is False, xboard omits the [<<] [<] [P] [>] [>>]
button bar from the window, allowing the message line to be
wider. You can still get the functions of these buttons using
the menus or their keyboard shortcuts. Default: true.
-evalZoom factor
The score interval (-1,1) is blown up on the vertical axis of
the Evaluation Graph by the given factor. Default: 1
-evalThreshold n
Score below n (centiPawn) are plotted as 0 in the Evaluation
Graph. Default: 25
-mono/-xmono or -monoMode true/false
Determines whether XBoard displays its pieces and squares with
two colors (true) or four (false). You shouldn't have to specify
`monoMode'; XBoard will determine if it is necessary.
-showTargetSquares true/false
Determines whether XBoard can highlight the squares a piece has
legal moves to, when you grab that piece with the mouse.
Default: false.
-flashCount count
-flashRate rate
-flash/-xflash
These options enable flashing of pieces when they land on their
destination square. `flashCount' tells XBoard how many times to
flash a piece after it lands on its destination square.
`flashRate' controls the rate of flashing (flashes/sec). Abbre‐
viations: `flash' sets flashCount to 3. `xflash' sets flash‐
Count to 0. Defaults: flashCount=0 (no flashing), flashRate=5.
-highlight/-xhighlight or -highlightLastMove true/false
Sets the Highlight Last Move menu option. See Options Menu.
Default: false.
-highlightMoveWithArrow true/false
Sets the Highlight with Arrow menu option. See Options Menu.
Default: false.
-blind/-xblind or -blindfold true/false
Sets the Blindfold menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
false.
-periodic/-xperiodic or -periodicUpdates true/false
Controls updating of current move andnode counts in analysis
mode. Default: true.
-fSAN
-sSAN Causes the PV in thinking output of the mentioned engine to be
converted to SAN before it is further processed. Warning: this
might lose engine output not understood by the parser, and uses
a lot of CPU power. Default: the PV is displayed exactly as the
engine produced it.
-showEvalInMoveHistory true/false
Controls whether the evaluation scores and search depth of
engine moves are displayed with the move in the move-history
window. Default: true.
-clockFont font
The font used for the clocks. If the option value is a pattern
that does not specify the font size, XBoard tries to choose an
appropriate font for the board size being used. Default Xaw:
-*-helvetica-bold-r-normal--*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*. Default GTK: Sans
Bold %d.
-coordFont font
The font used for rank and file coordinate labels if `showCo‐
ords' is true. If the option value is a pattern that does not
specify the font size, XBoard tries to choose an appropriate
font for the board size being used. Default Xaw: -*-helvetica-
bold-r-normal--*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*. Default GTK: Sans Bold %d.
-messageFont font
The font used for popup dialogs, menus, etc. If the option
value is a pattern that does not specify the font size, XBoard
tries to choose an appropriate font for the board size being
used. Default Xaw: -*-helvetica-medium-r-nor‐
mal--*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*. Default GTK: Sans Bold %d. The font used
in the Edit Tags dialog. If the option value contains %d,
XBoard will replace it by an appropriate font for the board size
being used. (Only used in GTK build.) Default: Sans Normal %d.
The font used in the Edit Comment dialog. If the option value
contains %d, XBoard will replace it by an appropriate font for
the board size being used. (Only used in GTK build.) Default:
Sans Normal %d. The font used to display ICS output in the ICS
Chat window. As ICS output often contains tables aligned by
spaces, a mono-space font is recommended here. If the option
value contains %d, XBoard will replace it by an appropriate font
for the board size being used. (Only used in GTK build.)
Default: Monospace Normal %d. The font used in Move History and
Engine Output windows. As these windows display mainly moves,
one could use a figurine font here. If the option value con‐
tains %d, XBoard will replace it by an appropriate font for the
board size being used. (Only used in GTK build.) Default: Sans
Normal %d. The font used in the listbox of the Game List win‐
dow. If the option value contains %d, XBoard will replace it by
an appropriate font for the board size being used. (Only used
in GTK build.) Default: Sans Bold %d.
-fontSizeTolerance tol
In the font selection algorithm, a nonscalable font will be pre‐
ferred over a scalable font if the nonscalable font's size dif‐
fers by `tol' pixels or less from the desired size. A value of
-1 will force a scalable font to always be used if available; a
value of 0 will use a nonscalable font only if it is exactly the
right size; a large value (say 1000) will force a nonscalable
font to always be used if available. Default: 4.
-pid or -pieceImageDirectory dir
This options control what piece images xboard uses. XBoard will
look in the specified directory for an image in png or svg for‐
mat for every piece type, with names like BlackQueen.svg,
WhiteKnight.svg etc. When neither of these is found (or no
valid directory is specified) XBoard will use the svg piece that
was installed with it (from the source-tree directory `svg').
Both svg and png images will be scaled by XBoard to the required
size, but the png pieces lose much in quality when scaled too
much.
-whitePieceColor color
-blackPieceColor color
-lightSquareColor color
-darkSquareColor color
-highlightSquareColor color
-preoveHighlightColor color
-lowTimeWarningColor color
Colors to use for the pieces, squares, and square highlights.
Defaults:
-whitePieceColor #FFFFCC
-blackPieceColor #202020
-lightSquareColor #C8C365
-darkSquareColor #77A26D
-highlightSquareColor #FFFF00
-premoveHighlightColor #FF0000
-lowTimeWarningColor #FF0000
On a grayscale monitor you might prefer:
-whitePieceColor gray100
-blackPieceColor gray0
-lightSquareColor gray80
-darkSquareColor gray60
-highlightSquareColor gray100
-premoveHighlightColor gray70
-lowTimeWarningColor gray70
The PieceColor options only work properly if the image files
defining the pieces were pure black & white (possibly anti-
aliased to produce gray scales and semi-transparancy), like the
pieces images that come with the install. Their effect on col‐
ored pieces is undefined. The SquareColor option only have an
effect when no board textures are used.
-trueColors true/false
When set, this option suppresses the effect of the PieceColor
options mentioned above. This is recommended for images that
are already colored.
-useBoardTexture true/false
-liteBackTextureFile filename
-darkBackTextureFile filename
Indicate the png image files to be used for drawing the board
squares, and if they should be used rather than using simple
colors. The algorithm for cutting squares out of a given bitmap
is such that the picture is perfectly reproduced when a bitmap
the size of the complete board is given. If the filename ends
in "-NxM.png", with integer N and M, it is assumed to contain a
bitmap of a complete board of N files and M ranks, and XBoard
will scale it to exactly match the current square size. If
N=M=0 it scales the entire bitmap to the size of the board,
irrespective of the number of files and ranks of the latter.
Without any -NxM suffix textures are only blown up by an integer
factor when they are smaller than the square size, or, when the
name starts with "xq", too small to cover the complete Xiangqi
board. Default: false and ""
-drag/-xdrag or -animateDragging true/false
Sets the Animate Dragging menu option. See Options Menu.
Default: true.
-animate/-xanimate or -animateMoving true/false
Sets the Animate Moving menu option. See Options Menu. Default:
true.
-animateSpeed n
Number of milliseconds delay between each animation frame when
Animate Moves is on.
-autoDisplayComment true/false
-autoDisplayTags true/false
If set to true, these options cause the window with the move
comments, and the window with PGN tags, respectively, to pop up
automatically when such tags or comments are encountered during
the replaying a stored or loaded game. Default: true.
-pasteSelection true/false
If this option is set to true, the Paste Position and Paste Game
options paste from the currently selected text. If false, they
paste from the clipboard. Default: false.
-autoCopyPV true|false
When this option is set, the position displayed on the board
when you terminate a PV walk (initiated by a right-click on
board or engine-output window) will be automatically put on the
clipboard as FEN. Default: false.
-dropMenu true|false
This option allows you to emulate old behavior, where the right
mouse button brings up the (now deprecated) drop menu rather
than displaying the position at the end of the principal varia‐
tion. Default: False.
-pieceMenu true|false
This option allows you to emulate old behavior, where the right
mouse button brings up the (now deprecated) piece menu in Edit
Position mode. From this menu you can select the piece to put
on the square you clicked to bring up the menu, or select items
such as `clear board'. You can also `promote' or `demote' a
clicked piece to convert it into an unorthodox piece that is not
directly in the menu, or give the move to `black' or `white'.
-variations true|false
When this option is on, you can start new variations in Edit
Game or Analyze mode by holding the Shift key down while enter‐
ing a move. When it is off, the Shift key will be ignored.
Default: False.
-appendPV true|false
When this option is on, right-clicking a PV in the Engine Output
window will play the first move of that PV in Analyze mode, or
as many moves as you walk through by moving the mouse. Default:
False.
-absoluteAnalysisScores true|false
When true, scores on the Engine Output window during analysis
will be printed from the white point-of-view, rather than the
side-to-move point-of-view. Default: False.
-scoreWhite true|false
When true, scores will always be printed from the white point-
of-view, rather than the side-to-move point-of-view. Default:
False.
-memoHeaders true|false
When true, column headers will be displayed in the Engine Output
window for the depth, score, time and nodes data. Right-click‐
ing on these headers will hide or show the corresponding data.
(Not intended for dynamic use, as already printed data of the
current search will not be affected!) Defaul: False.
Adjudication Options
-adjudicateLossThreshold n
If the given value is non-zero, XBoard adjudicates the game as a
loss if both engines agree for a duration of 6 consecutive ply
that the score is below the given score threshold for that
engine. Make sure the score is interpreted properly by XBoard,
using `-firstScoreAbs' and `-secondScoreAbs' if needed.
Default: 0 (no adjudication)
-adjudicateDrawMoves n
If the given value is non-zero, XBoard adjudicates the game as a
draw if after the given number of moves it was not yet decided.
Default: 0 (no adjudication)
-checkMates true/false
If this option is set, XBoard detects all checkmates and stale‐
mates, and ends the game as soon as they occur. Legality-test‐
ing must be switched on for this option to work. Default: true
-testClaims true/false
If this option is set, XBoard verifies all result claims made by
engines, and those who send false claims will forfeit the game
because of it. Legality-testing must be switched on for this
option to work. Default: true
-materialDraws true/false
If this option is set, XBoard adjudicates games as draws when
there is no sufficient material left to inflict a checkmate.
This applies to KBKB with like bishops (any number, actually),
and to KBK, KNK and KK. Legality-testing must be switched on
for this option to work. Default: true
-trivialDraws true/false
If this option is set, XBoard adjudicates games as draws that
cannot be usually won without opponent cooperation. This applies
to KBKB with unlike bishops, and to KBKN, KNKN, KNNK, KRKR and
KQKQ. The draw is called after 6 ply into these end-games, to
allow quick mates that can occur in some exceptional positions
to be found by the engines. KQKQ does not really belong in this
category, and might be taken out in the future. (When bitbase-
based adjudications are implemented.) Legality-testing must be
on for this option to work. Default: false
-ruleMoves n
If the given value is non-zero, XBoard adjudicates the game as a
draw after the given number of consecutive reversible moves.
Engine draw claims are always accepted after 50 moves, irrespec‐
tive of the given value of n.
-repeatsToDraw n
If the given value is non-zero, xboard adjudicates the game as a
draw if a position is repeated the given number of times.
Engines draw claims are always accepted after 3 repeats, (on the
3rd occurrence, actually), irrespective of the value of n.
Beware that positions that have different castling or en-passant
rights do not count as repeats, XBoard is fully e.p. and
castling aware!
Other options
-ncp/-xncp or -noChessProgram true/false
If this option is true, XBoard acts as a passive chessboard; it
does not start a chess engine at all. Turning on this option
also turns off clockMode. Default: false.
-viewer
-viewerOptions string
Presence of the volatile option `viewer' on the command line
will cause the value of the persistent option `viewerOptions' as
stored in the settings file to be appended to the command line.
The `view' option will be used by desktop associations with game
or position file types, so that `viewerOptions' can be used to
configure the exact mode XBoard will start in when it should act
on such a file (e.g. in -ncp mode, or analyzing with your
favorite engine). The options are also automatically appended
when Board is invoked with a single argument not being an option
name, which is then assumed to be the name of a `loadGameFile'
or (when the name ends in .fen) a `loadPositionFile'. Default:
"-ncp -engineOutputUp false -saveSettingsOnExit false".
-tourneyOptions string
When XBoard is invoked with a single argument that is a file
with .trn extension, it will assume this argument to be the
value of a `tourneyFile' option, and apped the value of the per‐
sistent option `tourneyOptions' as stored in the settings file
to the command line. Thus the value of `tourneyOptions' can be
used to configure XBoard to automatically start running a tour‐
nament when it should act on such a file. Default: "-ncp -mm
-saveSettingsOnExit false".
-mode or -initialMode modename
If this option is given, XBoard selects the given modename from
the Mode menu after starting and (if applicable) processing the
loadGameFile or loadPositionFile option. Default: "" (no selec‐
tion). Other supported values are MachineWhite, MachineBlack,
TwoMachines, Analysis, AnalyzeFile, EditGame, EditPosition, and
Training.
-variant varname
Activates preliminary, partial support for playing chess vari‐
ants against a local engine or editing variant games. This flag
is not needed in ICS mode. Recognized variant names are:
normal Normal chess
wildcastle Shuffle chess, king can castle from d file
nocastle Shuffle chess, no castling allowed
fischerandom Fischer Random shuffle chess
bughouse Bughouse, ICC/FICS rules
crazyhouse Crazyhouse, ICC/FICS rules
losers Lose all pieces or get mated (ICC wild 17)
suicide Lose all pieces including king (FICS)
giveaway Try to have no legal moves (ICC wild 26)
twokings Weird ICC wild 9
kriegspiel Opponent's pieces are invisible
atomic Capturing piece explodes (ICC wild 27)
3check Win by giving check 3 times (ICC wild 25)
shatranj An ancient precursor of chess (ICC wild 28)
xiangqi Chinese Chess (on a 9x10 board)
shogi Japanese Chess (on a 9x9 board & piece drops)
capablanca Capablanca Chess (10x8 board, with Archbishop
and Chancellor pieces)
gothic similar, with a better initial position
caparandom An FRC-like version of Capablanca Chess (10x8)
janus A game with two Archbishops (10x8 board)
courier Medieval intermediate between shatranj and
modern Chess (on 12x8 board)
falcon Patented 10x8 variant with two Falcon pieces
berolina Pawns capture straight ahead, and move diagonal
cylinder Pieces wrap around the board edge
knightmate King moves as Knight, and vice versa
super Superchess (shuffle variant with 4 exo-pieces)
makruk Thai Chess (shatranj-like, P promotes on 6th rank)
asean ASEAN Chess (a modernized version of Makruk)
spartan Spartan Chess (black has unorthodox pieces)
fairy A catchall variant in which all piece types
known to XBoard can participate (8x8)
unknown Catchall for other unknown variants
NOT ALL BOARDSIZES PROVIDE A COMPLETE SET OF BUILT-IN BITMAPS
FOR ALL UN-ORTHODOX PIECES, though. Only in `boardSize' middling
and bulky all 22 piece types are provided, while -boardSize
petite has most of them. Archbishop, Chancellor and Amazon are
supported in every size from petite to bulky. Kings or Amazons
are substituted for missing bitmaps. You can still play variants
needing un-orthodox pieces in other board sizes providing your
own bitmaps through the `bitmapDirectory' or `pixmapDirectory'
options.
In the shuffle variants, XBoard now does shuffle the pieces,
although you can still do it by hand using Edit Position. Some
variants are supported only in ICS mode, including bughouse, and
kriegspiel. The winning/drawing conditions in crazyhouse (off-
board interposition on mate) are not fully understood, but
losers, suicide, giveaway, atomic, and 3check should be OK.
Berolina and cylinder chess can only be played with legality
testing off. In crazyhouse, XBoard now does keep track of off-
board pieces. In shatranj it does implement the baring rule
when mate detection is switched on.
-boardHeight N
Allows you to set a non-standard number of board ranks in any
variant. If the height is given as -1, the default height for
the variant is used. Default: -1
-boardWidth N
Allows you to set a non-standard number of board files in any
variant. If the width is given as -1, the default width for the
variant is used. With a non-standard width, the initial posi‐
tion will always be an empty board, as the usual opening array
will not fit. Default: -1
-holdingsSize N
Allows you to set a non-standard size for the holdings in any
variant. If the size is given as -1, the default holdings size
for the variant is used. The first N piece types will go into
the holdings on capture, and you will be able to drop them on
the board in stead of making a normal move. If size equals 0,
there will be no holdings. Default: -1
-defaultFrcPosition N
Specifies the number of the opening position in shuffle games
like Chess960. A value of -1 means the position is randomly
generated by XBoard at the beginning of every game. Default: -1
-pieceToCharTable string
The characters that are used to represent the piece types XBoard
knows in FEN diagrams and SAN moves. The string argument has to
have an even length (or it will be ignored), as white and black
pieces have to be given separately (in that order). The last
letter for each color will be the King. The letters before that
will be PNBRQ and then a whole host of fairy pieces in an order
that has not fully crystallized yet (currently FEACWMOHIJGDVSLU,
F=Ferz, Elephant, A=Archbishop, C=Chancellor, W=Wazir, M=Com‐
moner, O=Cannon, H=Nightrider). You should list at least all
pieces that occur in the variant you are playing. If you have
less than 44 characters in the string, the pieces not mentioned
will get assigned a period, and you will not be able to distin‐
guish them in FENs. You can also explicitly assign pieces a
period, in which case they will not be counted in deciding which
captured pieces can go into the holdings. A tilde '~' as a
piece name does mean this piece is used to represent a promoted
Pawn in crazyhouse-like games, i.e. on capture it turns back
onto a Pawn. A '+' similarly indicates the piece is a shogi-
style promoted piece, that should revert to its non-promoted
version on capture (rather than to a Pawn). Note that promoted
pieces are represented by pieces 11 further in the list. You
should not have to use this option often: each variant has its
own default setting for the piece representation in FEN, which
should be sufficient in normal use. Default: ""
-pieceNickNames string
The characters in the string are interpreted the same way as in
the `pieceToCharTable' option. But on input, piece-ID letters
are first looked up in the nicknames, and only if not defined
there, in the normal pieceToCharTable. This allows you to have
two letters designate the same piece, (e.g. N as an alternative
to H for Horse in Xiangqi), to make reading of non-compliant
notations easier. Default: ""
-colorNickNames string
The side-to-move field in a FEN will be first matched against
the letters in the string (first character for white, second for
black), before it is matched to the regular 'w' and 'b'. This
makes it easier to read non-compliant FENs, which, say, use 'r'
for white. Default: ""
-debug/-xdebug or -debugMode true/false
Turns on debugging printout.
-debugFile filename or -nameOfDebugFile filename
Sets the name of the file to which XBoard saves debug informa‐
tion (including all communication to and from the engines). A
`%d' in the given file name (e.g. game%d.debug) will be replaced
by the unique sequence number of a tournament game, so that the
debug output of each game will be written on a separate file.
-engineDebugOutput number
Specifies how XBoard should handle unsolicited output from the
engine, with respect to saving it in the debug file. The output
is further (hopefully) ignored. If number=0, XBoard refrains
from writing such spurious output to the debug file. If num‐
ber=1, all engine output is written faithfully to the debug
file. If number=2, any protocol-violating line is prefixed with
a '#' character, as the engine itself should have done if it
wanted to submit info for inclusion in the debug file. This
option is provided for the benefit of applications that use the
debug file as a source of information, such as the broadcaster
of live games TLCV / TLCS. Such applications can be protected
from spurious engine output that might otherwise confuse them.
-rsh or -remoteShell shell-name
Name of the command used to run programs remotely. The default
is `rsh' or `remsh', determined when XBoard is configured and
compiled.
-ruser or -remoteUser user-name
User name on the remote system when running programs with the
`remoteShell'. The default is your local user name.
-userName username
Name under which the Human player will be listed in the PGN
file. Default is the login name on your local computer.
-delayBeforeQuit number
-delayAfterQuit number
These options order pauses before and after sending the "quit"
command to an engine that must be terminated. The pause between
quit and the previous command is specified in milliseconds. The
pause after quit is used to schedule a kill signal to be sent to
the engine process after the number of specified seconds plus
one. This signal is a different one as the terminiation signal
described in the protocol specs which engines can suppress or
ignore, and which is sent directly after the "quit" command.
Setting `delayAfterQuit' to -1 will suppress sending of the kill
signal. Default: 0
-searchMode n
The integer n encodes the mode for the `find position' function.
Default: 1 (= Exact position match)
-eloThresholdBoth elo
-eloThresholdAny elo
Defines a lower limit for the Elo rating, which has to be sur‐
passed before a game will be considered when searching for a
board position. Default: 0
-dateThreshold year
Only games not played before the given year will be considered
when searching for a board position
CHESS SERVERS
An "Internet Chess Server", or "ICS", is a place on the Internet where
people can get together to play chess, watch other people's games, or
just chat. You can use either `telnet' or a client program like XBoard
to connect to the server. There are thousands of registered users on
the different ICS hosts, and it is not unusual to meet 200 on both
chessclub.com and freechess.org.
Most people can just type `xboard -ics' to start XBoard as an ICS
client. Invoking XBoard in this way connects you to the Internet Chess
Club (ICC), a commercial ICS. You can log in there as a guest even if
you do not have a paid account. To connect to the largest Free ICS
(FICS), use the command `xboard -ics -icshost freechess.org' instead,
or substitute a different host name to connect to your favorite ICS.
For a full description of command-line options that control the connec‐
tion to ICS and change the default values of ICS options, see ICS
options.
While you are running XBoard as an ICS client, you use the terminal
window that you started XBoard from as a place to type in commands and
read information that is not available on the chessboard.
The first time you need to use the terminal is to enter your login name
and password, if you are a registered player. (You don't need to do
this manually; the `icsLogon' option can do it for you. See ICS
options.) If you are not registered, enter `g' as your name, and the
server will pick a unique guest name for you.
Some useful ICS commands include
help <topic>
to get help on the given <topic>. To get a list of possible top‐
ics type "help" without topic. Try the help command before you
ask other people on the server for help.
For example `help register' tells you how to become a registered
ICS player.
who <flags>
to see a list of people who are logged on. Administrators (peo‐
ple you should talk to if you have a problem) are marked with
the character `*', an asterisk. The <flags> allow you to display
only selected players: For example, `who of' shows a list of
players who are interested in playing but do not have an oppo‐
nent.
games to see what games are being played
match <player> [<mins>] [<inc>]
to challenge another player to a game. Both opponents get <mins>
minutes for the game, and <inc> seconds will be added after each
move. If another player challenges you, the server asks if you
want to accept the challenge; use the `accept' or `decline' com‐
mands to answer.
accept
decline
to accept or decline another player's offer. The offer may be
to start a new game, or to agree to a `draw', `adjourn' or
`abort' the current game. See Action Menu.
If you have more than one pending offer (for example, if more
than one player is challenging you, or if your opponent offers
both a draw and to adjourn the game), you have to supply addi‐
tional information, by typing something like `accept <player>',
`accept draw', or `draw'.
draw
adjourn
abort asks your opponent to terminate a game by mutual agreement.
Adjourned games can be continued later. Your opponent can
either `decline' your offer or accept it (by typing the same
command or typing `accept'). In some cases these commands work
immediately, without asking your opponent to agree. For exam‐
ple, you can abort the game unilaterally if your opponent is out
of time, and you can claim a draw by repetition or the 50-move
rule if available simply by typing `draw'.
finger <player>
to get information about the given <player>. (Default: your‐
self.)
vars to get a list of personal settings
set <var> <value>
to modify these settings
observe <player>
to observe an ongoing game of the given <player>.
examine
oldmoves
to review a recently completed game
Some special XBoard features are activated when you are in examine mode
on ICS. See the descriptions of the menu commands `Forward', `Back‐
ward', `Pause', `ICS Client', and `Stop Examining' on the Edit Menu,
Mode Menu, and Action Menu.
FIREWALLS
By default, XBoard communicates with an Internet Chess Server by open‐
ing a TCP socket directly from the machine it is running on to the ICS.
If there is a firewall between your machine and the ICS, this won't
work. Here are some recipes for getting around common kinds of fire‐
walls using special options to XBoard. Important: See the paragraph in
the below about extra echoes, in Limitations.
Suppose that you can't telnet directly to ICS, but you can telnet to a
firewall host, log in, and then telnet from there to ICS. Let's say
the firewall is called `firewall.example.com'. Set command-line options
as follows:
xboard-ics -icshost firewall.example.com -icsport 23
Then when you run XBoard in ICS mode, you will be prompted to log in to
the firewall host. This works because port 23 is the standard telnet
login service. Do so, then telnet to ICS, using a command like `telnet
chessclub.com 5000', or whatever command the firewall provides for tel‐
netting to port 5000.
If your firewall lets you telnet (or rlogin) to remote hosts but
doesn't let you telnet to port 5000, you may be able to connect to the
chess server on port 23 instead, which is the port the telnet program
uses by default. Some chess servers support this (including chess‐
club.com and freechess.org), while some do not.
If your chess server does not allow connections on port 23 and your
firewall does not allow you to connect to other ports, you may be able
to connect by hopping through another host outside the firewall that
you have an account on. For instance, suppose you have a shell account
at `foo.edu'. Follow the recipe above, but instead of typing `telnet
chessclub.com 5000' to the firewall, type `telnet foo.edu' (or `rlogin
foo.edu'), log in there, and then type `telnet chessclub.com 5000'.
Suppose that you can't telnet directly to ICS, but you can use rsh to
run programs on a firewall host, and that host can telnet to ICS.
Let's say the firewall is called `rsh.example.com'. Set command-line
options as follows:
xboard-ics -gateway rsh.example.com -icshost chessclub.com
Then when you run XBoard in ICS mode, it will connect to the ICS by
using `rsh' to run the command `telnet chessclub.com 5000' on host
`rsh.example.com'.
Suppose that you can telnet anywhere you want, but you have to run a
special program called `ptelnet' to do so.
First, we'll consider the easy case, in which `ptelnet chessclub.com
5000' gets you to the chess server. In this case set command line
options as follows:
xboard-ics -telnet -telnetProgram ptelnet
Then when you run XBoard in ICS mode, it will issue the command `ptel‐
net chessclub.com 5000' to connect to the ICS.
Next, suppose that `ptelnet chessclub.com 5000' doesn't work; that is,
your `ptelnet' program doesn't let you connect to alternative ports. As
noted above, your chess server may allow you to connect on port 23
instead. In that case, just add the option `-icsport ""' to the above
command. But if your chess server doesn't let you connect on port 23,
you will have to find some other host outside the firewall and hop
through it. For instance, suppose you have a shell account at
`foo.edu'. Set command line options as follows:
xboard-ics -telnet -telnetProgram ptelnet -icshost foo.edu -icsport ""
Then when you run XBoard in ICS mode, it will issue the command `ptel‐
net foo.edu' to connect to your account at `foo.edu'. Log in there,
then type `telnet chessclub.com 5000'.
ICC timestamp and FICS timeseal do not work through some firewalls.
You can use them only if your firewall gives a clean TCP connection
with a full 8-bit wide path. If your firewall allows you to get out
only by running a special telnet program, you can't use timestamp or
timeseal across it. But if you have access to a computer just outside
your firewall, and you have much lower netlag when talking to that com‐
puter than to the ICS, it might be worthwhile running timestamp there.
Follow the instructions above for hopping through a host outside the
firewall (foo.edu in the example), but run timestamp or timeseal on
that host instead of telnet.
Suppose that you have a SOCKS firewall that will give you a clean 8-bit
wide TCP connection to the chess server, but only after you authenti‐
cate yourself via the SOCKS protocol. In that case, you could make a
socksified version of XBoard and run that. If you are using timestamp
or timeseal, you will to socksify it, not XBoard; this may be difficult
seeing that ICC and FICS do not provide source code for these programs.
Socksification is beyond the scope of this document, but see the SOCKS
Web site at http://www.socks.permeo.com/. If you are missing SOCKS,
try http://www.funbureau.com/.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
Game and position files are found in a directory named by the `CHESS‐
DIR' environment variable. If this variable is not set, the current
working directory is used. If `CHESSDIR' is set, XBoard actually
changes its working directory to `$CHESSDIR', so any files written by
the chess engine will be placed there too.
LIMITATIONS AND KNOWN BUGS
There is no way for two people running copies of XBoard to play each
other without going through an Internet Chess Server.
Under some circumstances, your ICS password may be echoed when you log
on.
If you are connecting to the ICS by running telnet on an Internet
provider or firewall host, you may find that each line you type is
echoed back an extra time after you hit <Enter>. If your Internet
provider is a Unix system, you can probably turn its echo off by typing
`stty -echo' after you log in, and/or typing <^E><Enter> (Ctrl+E fol‐
lowed by the Enter key) to the telnet program after you have logged
into ICS. It is a good idea to do this if you can, because the extra
echo can occasionally confuse XBoard's parsing routines.
The game parser recognizes only algebraic notation.
Many of the following points used to be limitations in XBoard 4.2.7 and
earlier, but are now fixed: The internal move legality tester in XBoard
4.3.xx does look at the game history, and is fully aware of castling or
en-passant-capture rights. It permits castling with the king on the d
file because this is possible in some "wild 1" games on ICS. The
piece-drop menu does not check piece drops in bughouse to see if you
actually hold the piece you are trying to drop. But this way of drop‐
ping pieces should be considered an obsolete feature, now that pieces
can be dropped by dragging them from the holdings to the board. Anyway,
if you would attempt an illegal move when using a chess engine or the
ICS, XBoard will accept the error message that comes back, undo the
move, and let you try another. FEN positions saved by XBoard do
include correct information about whether castling or en passant are
legal, and also handle the 50-move counter. The mate detector does not
understand that non-contact mate is not really mate in bughouse. The
only problem this causes while playing is minor: a "#" (mate indicator)
character will show up after a non-contact mating move in the move
list. XBoard will not assume the game is over at that point, not even
when the option Detect Mates is on. Edit Game mode always uses the
rules of the selected variant, which can be a variant that uses piece
drops. You can load and edit games that contain piece drops. The
(obsolete) piece menus are not active, but you can perform piece drops
by dragging pieces from the holdings. Fischer Random castling is fully
understood. You can enter castlings by dragging the King on top of
your Rook. You can probably also play Fischer Random successfully on
ICS by typing castling moves into the ICS Interaction window.
The menus may not work if your keyboard is in Caps Lock or Num Lock
mode. This seems to be a problem with the Athena menu widget, not an
XBoard bug.
Also see the ToDo file included with the distribution for many other
possible bugs, limitations, and ideas for improvement that have been
suggested.
REPORTING PROBLEMS
You can report bugs and problems with XBoard using the bug tracker at
`https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/xboard/' or by sending mail to
`<bug-xboard@gnu.org>'. It can also be useful to report or discuss
bugs in the WinBoard Forum at `http://www.open-aurec.com/wbforum/',
WinBoard development section.
Please use the `script' program to start a typescript, run XBoard with
the `-debug' option, and include the typescript output in your message.
Also tell us what kind of machine and what operating system version you
are using. The command `uname -a' will often tell you this.
If you improve XBoard, please send a message about your changes, and we
will get in touch with you about merging them in to the main line of
development.
AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
Chris Sears and Dan Sears wrote the original XBoard. They were respon‐
sible for versions 1.0 through 1.2. The color scheme was taken from
Wayne Christopher's `XChess' program.
Tim Mann was primarily responsible for XBoard versions 1.3 through
4.2.7, and for WinBoard (a port of XBoard to Microsoft Win32) from its
inception through version 4.2.7.
John Chanak contributed the initial implementation of ICS mode. Evan
Welsh wrote `CMail', and Patrick Surry helped in designing, testing,
and documenting it. Elmar Bartel contributed the new piece bitmaps
introduced in version 3.2. Jochen Wiedmann converted the documentation
to texinfo. Frank McIngvale added click/click moving, the Analysis
modes, piece flashing, ZIICS import, and ICS text colorization to
XBoard. Hugh Fisher added animated piece movement to XBoard, and Hen‐
rik Gram added it to WinBoard. Mark Williams contributed the initial
(WinBoard-only) implementation of many new features added to both
XBoard and WinBoard in version 4.1.0, including copy/paste, premove,
icsAlarm, autoFlipView, training mode, auto raise, and blindfold. Ben
Nye contributed X copy/paste code for XBoard.
In a fork from version 4.2.7, Alessandro Scotti added many elements to
the user interface of WinBoard, including the board textures and font-
based rendering, the evaluation-graph, move-history and engine-output
window. He was also responsible for adding the UCI support.
H. G. Muller continued this fork of the project, producing version 4.3.
He made WinBoard castling- and e.p.-aware, added variant support with
adjustable board sizes, the crazyhouse holdings, and the fairy pieces.
In addition he added most of the adjudication options, made WinBoard
more robust in dealing with buggy and crashing engines, and extended
time control with a time-odds and node-count-based modes. Most of the
options that initially were WinBoard only have now been back-ported to
XBoard.
Michel van den Bergh provided the code for reading Polyglot opening
books.
Meanwhile, some work continued on the GNU XBoard project maintained at
savannah.gnu.org, but version 4.2.8 was never released. Daniel
Mehrmann was responsible for much of this work.
Most recently, Arun Persaud worked with H. G. Muller to merge all the
features of the never-released XBoard/WinBoard 4.2.8 of the GNU XBoard
project and the never-released 4.3.16 from H. G.'s fork into a unified
XBoard/WinBoard 4.4, which is now available both from the savan‐
nah.gnu.org web site and the WinBoard forum.
CMAIL
The `cmail' program can help you play chess by email with opponents of
your choice using XBoard as an interface.
You will usually run `cmail' without giving any options.
CMail options
-h Displays `cmail' usage information.
-c Shows the conditions of the GNU General Public License. See
Copying.
-w Shows the warranty notice of the GNU General Public License.
See Copying.
-v
-xv Provides or inhibits verbose output from `cmail' and XBoard,
useful for debugging. The `-xv' form also inhibits the cmail
introduction message.
-mail
-xmail Invokes or inhibits the sending of a mail message containing the
move.
-xboard
-xxboard
Invokes or inhibits the running of XBoard on the game file.
-reuse
-xreuse
Invokes or inhibits the reuse of an existing XBoard to display
the current game.
-remail
Resends the last mail message for that game. This inhibits run‐
ning XBoard.
-game <name>
The name of the game to be processed.
-wgames <number>
-bgames <number>
-games <number>
Number of games to start as White, as Black or in total. Default
is 1 as white and none as black. If only one color is specified
then none of the other color is assumed. If no color is speci‐
fied then equal numbers of White and Black games are started,
with the extra game being as White if an odd number of total
games is specified.
-me <short name>
-opp <short name>
A one-word alias for yourself or your opponent.
-wname <full name>
-bname <full name>
-myname <full name>
-oppname <full name>
The full name of White, Black, yourself or your opponent.
-wna <net address>
-bna <net address>
-na <net address>
-oppna <net address>
The email address of White, Black, yourself or your opponent.
-dir <directory>
The directory in which `cmail' keeps its files. This defaults to
the environment variable `$CMAIL_DIR' or failing that, `$CHESS‐
DIR', `$HOME/Chess' or `~/Chess'. It will be created if it does
not exist.
-arcdir <directory>
The directory in which `cmail' archives completed games.
Defaults to the environment variable `$CMAIL_ARCDIR' or, in its
absence, the same directory as cmail keeps its working files
(above).
-mailprog <mail program>
The program used by cmail to send email messages. This defaults
to the environment variable `$CMAIL_MAILPROG' or failing that
`/usr/ucb/Mail', `/usr/ucb/mail' or `Mail'. You will need to set
this variable if none of the above paths fit your system.
-logFile <file>
A file in which to dump verbose debugging messages that are
invoked with the `-v' option.
-event <event>
The PGN Event tag (default `Email correspondence game').
-site <site>
The PGN Site tag (default `NET').
-round <round>
The PGN Round tag (default `-', not applicable).
-mode <mode>
The PGN Mode tag (default `EM', Electronic Mail).
Other options
Any option flags not listed above are passed through to XBoard.
Invoking XBoard through CMail changes the default values of two
XBoard options: The default value for `-noChessProgram' is
changed to true; that is, by default no chess engine is started.
The default value for `-timeDelay' is changed to 0; that is, by
default XBoard immediately goes to the end of the game as played
so far, rather than stepping through the moves one by one. You
can still set these options to whatever values you prefer by
supplying them on CMail's command line. See Options.
Starting a CMail Game
Type `cmail' from a shell to start a game as white. After an opening
message, you will be prompted for a game name, which is optional -- if
you simply press <Enter>, the game name will take the form `you-VS-
opponent'. You will next be prompted for the short name of your oppo‐
nent. If you haven't played this person before, you will also be
prompted for his/her email address. `cmail' will then invoke XBoard in
the background. Make your first move and select `Mail Move' from the
`File' menu. See File Menu. If all is well, `cmail' will mail a copy of
the move to your opponent. If you select `Exit' without having selected
`Mail Move' then no move will be made.
Answering a Move
When you receive a message from an opponent containing a move in one of
your games, simply pipe the message through `cmail'. In some mailers
this is as simple as typing `| cmail' when viewing the message, while
in others you may have to save the message to a file and do `cmail <
file' at the command line. In either case `cmail' will display the game
using XBoard. If you didn't exit XBoard when you made your first move
then `cmail' will do its best to use the existing XBoard instead of
starting a new one. As before, simply make a move and select `Mail
Move' from the `File' menu. See File Menu. `cmail' will try to use the
XBoard that was most recently used to display the current game. This
means that many games can be in progress simultaneously, each with its
own active XBoard.
If you want to look at the history or explore a variation, go ahead,
but you must return to the current position before XBoard will allow
you to mail a move. If you edit the game's history you must select
`Reload Same Game' from the `File' menu to get back to the original
position, then make the move you want and select `Mail Move'. As
before, if you decide you aren't ready to make a move just yet you can
either select `Exit' without sending a move or just leave XBoard run‐
ning until you are ready.
Multi-Game Messages
It is possible to have a `cmail' message carry more than one game.
This feature was implemented to handle IECG (International Email Chess
Group) matches, where a match consists of one game as white and one as
black, with moves transmitted simultaneously. In case there are more
general uses, `cmail' itself places no limit on the number of
black/white games contained in a message; however, XBoard does.
Completing a Game
Because XBoard can detect checkmate and stalemate, `cmail' handles game
termination sensibly. As well as resignation, the `Action' menu allows
draws to be offered and accepted for `cmail' games.
For multi-game messages, only unfinished and just-finished games will
be included in email messages. When all the games are finished, they
are archived in the user's archive directory, and similarly in the
opponent's when he or she pipes the final message through `cmail'. The
archive file name includes the date the game was started.
Known CMail Problems
It's possible that a strange conjunction of conditions may occasionally
mean that `cmail' has trouble reactivating an existing XBoard. If this
should happen, simply trying it again should work. If not, remove the
file that stores the XBoard's PID (`game.pid') or use the `-xreuse'
option to force `cmail' to start a new XBoard.
Versions of `cmail' after 2.16 no longer understand the old file format
that XBoard used to use and so cannot be used to correspond with anyone
using an older version.
Versions of `cmail' older than 2.11 do not handle multi-game messages,
so multi-game correspondence is not possible with opponents using an
older version.
OTHER PROGRAMS YOU CAN USE WITH XBOARD
Here are some other programs you can use with XBoard
GNU Chess
The GNU Chess engine is available from:
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuchess/
You can use XBoard to play a game against GNU Chess, or to interface
GNU Chess to an ICS.
Fairy-Max
Fairy-Max is a derivative from the once World's smallest Chess program
micro-Max, which measures only about 100 lines of source code. The
main difference with micro-Max is that Fairy-Max loads its move-genera‐
tor tables from a file, so that the rules for piece movement can be
easily configured to implement unorthodox pieces. Fairy-Max can there‐
fore play a large number of variants, normal Chess being one of those.
In addition it plays Knightmate, Capablanca and Gothic Chess, Shatranj,
Courier Chess, Cylinder chess, Berolina Chess, while the user can eas‐
ily define new variants. It can be obtained from:
http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/dwnldpage.html
HoiChess
HoiChess is a not-so-very-strong Chess engine, which comes with a de‐
rivative HoiXiangqi, able to play Chinese Chess. It can be obtained
from the standard Linux repositories through:
sudo apt-get install hoichess
Crafty
Crafty is a chess engine written by Bob Hyatt. You can use XBoard to
play a game against Crafty, hook Crafty up to an ICS, or use Crafty to
interactively analyze games and positions for you.
Crafty is a strong, rapidly evolving chess program. This rapid pace of
development is good, because it means Crafty is always getting better.
This can sometimes cause problems with backwards compatibility, but
usually the latest version of Crafty will work well with the latest
version of XBoard. Crafty can be obtained from its author's FTP site:
ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/hyatt/.
To use Crafty with XBoard, give the -fcp and -fd options as follows,
where <crafty's directory> is the directory in which you installed
Crafty and placed its book and other support files.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1991 Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, Massachu‐
setts.
All Rights Reserved.
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, pro‐
vided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that
both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in sup‐
porting documentation, and that the name of Digital not be used in
advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software
without specific, written prior permission.
Digital disclaims all warranties with regard to this software, includ‐
ing all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness. In no event
shall Digital be liable for any special, indirect or consequential dam‐
ages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or
profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortious
action, arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of
this software.
Enhancements copyright (C) 1992-2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008,
2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Published by the Free Software Foundation
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GNU $Date: xboard(6)
