3.1 Invoking gnuchess ¶

The format for running the GNU Chess program is:

gnuchess option ...

With no options, gnuchess starts in interactive mode and it is ready to start a chess game.

gnuchess supports the following options:

--help ¶

-h

Print an informative help message on the standard output and exit successfully.

--version ¶

-v

Print the version number and licensing information on the standard output and then exit successfully.

--quiet

--silent ¶

-q

Make the program silent on startup.

--xboard ¶

-x

Start the program in xboard mode, i.e. as an xboard engine. This is typically used for using the program as backend of other chess GUI such as XBoard.

Option xboard is accepted without leading dashes for backward compatibility.

--post ¶

-p

Start up showing thinking.

Option post is accepted without leading dashes for backward compatibility.

--easy ¶

-e

Disable thinking in opponent’s time. By default, the program runs in hard mode, i.e. it uses opponent’s time to think too.

--manual ¶

-m

Enable manual mode.

--uci ¶

-u

Enable UCI protocol (i.e. externally behave as an UCI engine). It is not compatible with other options.

--memory SIZE ¶

-M SIZE

Specify memory usage in MB for hashtable.

--addbook FILENAME ¶

-a fFILENAME

Compile book.bin from pgn book FILENAME and quits.

--graphic ¶

-g

Enable graphic mode based on Unicode chess symbols.