Can I use XBoard or WinBoard to play a game of chess with another human?
The only way for two humans on different machines to play chess in real time using XBoard/WinBoard is to use an Internet Chess Server as an intermediary. That is, each player runs his own copy of XBoard or WinBoard, both of them log into an ICS, and they play a game there. Two copies of XBoard/WinBoard cannot communicate with each other directly. Instructions on how to get started with Internet chess are included with the XBoard and WinBoard distributions. The network addresses included in the distribution may not always be current. The oldest and largest ICS is the Internet Chess Club at chessclub.com, which now has a fee for registered use, but still allows free unregistered use. There are also many newer sites with no fees, using the Free Internet Chess Server implementation (FICS). The most active FICS site is freechess.org. On these and most other chess servers, the port number to use is 5000. If you don’t have network connectivity to any ICS site, you can run your own server usin
