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I'm trying to run StockFish under WIndows 8.1, but I'm just getting the prompt as copied below. Also, Winboard Load First/Second Engine doesn't work: nothing is happening. How can I run StockFish ?

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StockFish under WIndows 8 doesn't work

This is false.

I think you misunderstand what Stockfish is. It is not a runnable program. It is an engine which plugs in to a GUI. I am writing this reply on W8.1 where I run both Scid vs PC, which is a free download, and an old copy of Fritz both with Stockfish as the main engine plug in.

Here is a screen grab of Fritz

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Note that some configuration is required in the GUI to use the engine. It's a while since I last did it but I think it may be more complicated for Fritz than for Scid vs PC, which I think just requires copying the engine to the right directory and then telling Scid what is going on.

Here is my Scid configuration for Stockfish:

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I think that your problem is really that Winboard doesn't work with the UCI protocol used by Stockfish and many other engines. I think Winboard works with the XBoard protocol. In which casae you need something to sit between Winboard and Stockfish and do the conversion.

That looks like you need Polyglot. Here is what it says:

Polyglot is open source, licensed under the GPL, and is able to run on various operating systems, which allows to run UCI engines not only under Windows with its native chess GUIs, but also under Linux and Mac OS using XBoard.

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    Small nitpick, Stockfish is a runnable program. As you can see in the original post, it runs perfectly fine in a terminal, and you can test whether it works properly by e.g. entering "go depth 10" and seeing if it successfully calculates some variations. Just, running it in a terminal is for most purposes not very practical.
    – koedem
    Jun 12, 2022 at 22:32
  • @koedem Well, can someone write an exact sequence of steps how can I make [Stockfish,Winboard and Polyglot] run together under windows 8 ? Which programs copy to the same directory, where to touch something, etc. so that I can eventually play against stockfish on my PC ...
    – user852508
    Jun 13, 2022 at 13:50
  • Brian, I have now installed ` Scid vs PC` and I have made my first move with White to e4. Now the engine computes the position tree. How can I stop it and make it move with black ?
    – user852508
    Jun 13, 2022 at 14:33

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