hoary: crafty

[crashtest]

I haven't actually tried crafty with xboard - I normally just use
gnuchess with xboard.  I have installed crafty with no difficulty in
scid, which a is great data base program.  You probably are already
familiar with scid, but if not, check it out right away!  I'm not sure
which repository scid is in, but if you use the "standard" sources list
that is recommended in the User Guide, you can sudo apt-get install
scid.



I like to use chess engines to analyze games, but I rarely play against
them, because they are all much too strong for me.  Oh, by the way...
have you ever tried a program called knights?  It's a KDE interface
that can be used for gnuchess, crafty, and for online play.  Their
default theme is ugly, but you can set up the board and pieces to look
*-exactly-*  like Fritz 8, which I think is the best looking interface
ever, and was previously only available in Windows. Play against Crafty
in the knights interface, and it feels like playing against Fritz.  For
a player at my level, who can tell the difference between a 2750 ELO
engine like Fritz, or a 2500+ ELO engine like Crafty?  Both of them
smoke me 100% of the time. Info on knights can be found here:
http://knights.sourceforge.net/



Speaking of Linux distros, I have tried all the ones you mentioned, and
most of the ones listed on distrowatch.  (Not kidding about that.) 
Libranet will always hold a special place in my heart -  it is one of
the very best Debian based distro's and also has a great community in
the forums.  A lot like Ubuntu in that respect.  They have their new
version 3.0 out now, and I'd love to see it, but I can't really justify
spending $50 or $70 or whatever it is, when Ubuntu is available as a
free download.



Hope to 'talk' to you again soon.  If I get a chance to mess around
with Crafty and xboard, I'll tell you what I find.


-- 
crashtest