Crafty is only one of
the engines that you can use to learn chess, or to connect to
a chess server and play games.
Please note that if you
do connect to a chess server please get a computer account, as
computer assistance is abuse, please be honorable.
Ok for starters you will
need one of the following engine to adapt to Winboard. I use these
myself so these will be the ones I use for example.
These are among the best
freeware engines you can get, actually the best.
Now that you have the
program, let's begin by making a simple shortcut.
Right click on your desktop
and select new shortcut, direct it at Winboard.exe, from there
you will need to add the following lines.
/cp /fcp=WCrafty-15.*
/fd="C:\Program Files\Crafty"
/scp=WCrafty-15.* /sd="C:\Program
Files\Crafty"
This will make a shortcut
to play Crafty locally on your machine, if you downloaded one
of the other engines just change the Crafty information to whatever
engine you downloaded.
Next would be adapting
Crafty to Winboard to act as an ICS client, this is what is used
to connect to chess servers like FICS.
For this it is the same
thing but adding a different line to the shortcut.
This is an example of
mine:
"C:\Program Files\WinBoard\winboard.exe"
-zp -ics -icshost freechess.org -icsport 5000 -fd D:\Crafty -fcp
"Crafty winboard " -icshelper timeseal
You will notice that it
is differnet, but when you click this one you connect to FICS
at a computer. Remember using a computer to assist you during
a game is abuse and is grounds to be banned from the server.
Now that you have the
basics, let's go deeper.
These are needed so that
Crafty can avoid bad openings, and speed up the process of moving.
Now you are set, below
are optional files that you may want, like my version of yow.lines,
this will make Crafty or any other engine shout things on a chess
server, most times it is funny
yow.lines
Just read the zippy.readme
that comes with Winboard to see how to use this file.