Chessbase GUI-Winboard-YaY-Yahoo

                                                                                                 YaY ( Yet  another Ytoics)
                               New Version YaY 2.1.0 Ultimate Edition download from:

  Leer este tutorial en Español

    For the old connection method click here

  ( AbOuT Us )

The purpose of this page is to explain how to make a chess engine that works under any chessbase GUI interface (like fritz 10, deep fritz 9, shredder 9 and others) to play games automatically in yahoo chess servers using YaY, Winboard and Winboard232d.exe  under a Windows XP environment. Note: This tutorial was written having in mind an English Windows XP installation, if your Windows XP language is other than English, then the path "c:\program files\" should be changed accordingly( For example, in Spanish will be "c:\archivos de programa"). Another Note: This tutorial and all the executables, programs and scripts mentioned in this page also work for Windows XP x64 and I am sure that any person with good computer knowledge will be able to find the way to make this work for Windows XP x64.

These instructions won't work at all if  your IP is banned from yahoo games.

You will need:

-A basic knowledge of windows on how to create folders, create batch files, create shortcuts, rename directories, etc. You might also need to know and understand your way around the command prompt.

-A GUI chessbase interface like the ones I mentioned above.

-YaY 2.1.0 Ultimate Edition , is free under the GNU General Public License and it was branched from YtoICS, it can be found here. 

Note: New version!!, New format(exe not pl)!!!, New commands!!!!, some bugs fixed!! 

ActivePerl is not needed any more!!!!

Next you will install Winboard. Install it in the default directory and make a note of this directory, when writing this tutorial the default directory was: C:\Program Files\WinBoard-4.2.7  . Winboard should had come with its own installation instructions or you can find them wherever you downloaded it from. Now, copy to Winboard's default directory  the Winboard232d.exe file downloaded previously. We will need a shortcut to Winboard with special instructions, please follow these steps to create the shortcut:

Go to Winboard's directory and right click on Winboard.exe, select "Send to" then click on "Desktop(create shortcut)".

Go to your desktop and right click on the new created Shortcut to Winboard.exe and select properties:

The next window will be displayed:

 At the end of the target command, insert a space and this:

/zp /ics /icshost 127.0.0.1 /icsport 6000 /fcp="Winboard232d.exe -pipe"

The shortcut properties window should look similar to this now:

Note: The picture above was taken in Windows XP x64, do not pay attention to other fields, the only field that needs to be modify is the target field as stated above.

 Now you need to decompress the file YaY 2.1.0 Ultimate Edition  and extract its contents to  wherever you want and then copy the file YaY.exe to the desktop( if you prefer to use YaY.pl, read the old tutorial).  And that's all, very easy, isn't it?

For a list of yahoo chess rooms, download this text file, or this excel file. 

OK folks I think we are all set now.   In your desktop, double click on YaY.exe , you will get a window similar to this:

Note: In case you get an error and the command prompt windows closes right away, try again but instead of double clicking in YaY.exe, launch YaY from a command prompt, this way the command prompt window won't close and you are going to be able to read the error description. To launch YaY.exe from a command prompt, you will have to open a CMD window, change directories and go to the desktop folder and then type YaY.exe and hit enter, this method is also good to be able to see errors that occurred afterwards.

Enter the desire user's name, user's password and room accordingly as shown above.

If the ID or password are incorrect, YaY will ask you to enter them again. There is no way for YaY to test if the correct room name was entered, if an invalid room name was entered, the script will display an error and stop, be sure you enter the correct room name. Once the ID and password had been accepted you will get the Test Word window:


                                                                               

Enter the test word and click Submit.. Note: If you enter the test word incorrectly, YaY will retrieve a new test word and display the Test Word window again.

Once the test word has been accepted, and if you are using Windows XP, and depending on your firewall settings, you might or might not get a Windows Security Alert window. If you get this window, click on Unblock to continue.

Launch your chessbase GUI program. NOTE: The pictures I will use to show you how to do this might be a little be different from what you will see in your screen because I am using FRITZ 8 and you might be using something else, but they should be close enough.

Click on tools then on "Connect Hardware" as shown in the next picture:

Now click on OK and a small window will pop-up stating that the program is waiting for a connection:

Ok, now you need to double click on the shortcut to winboard.exe you created earlier. If you get errors, verify everything. If you don't get errors , congratulations you are almost there. At this point you will get two new windows: One will be the winboard interface window that looks like this:

And the other window will be the ICS Interaction window that looks like this:

Now, go to your chessbase program, and click on File, New, Two Computer Match as shown in the picture:

( or you can just hit Ctrl-Alt-J keys at the same time)  and the next window will pop up:

Un-check "Master" and leave "Opponent save" checked as shown in the picture and click OK.

That's all my friends. You should be ready to go and play. You need to learn how to chat, create tables, start games,, leave tables, set timers, etc , etc, etc. There is enough information in the oldcommands.html  file you decompressed earlier.

I almost forgot, I don't remember exactly when, but if you don't have the endgame table bases you are going to get a window stating that you don't have them or that they are incomplete. Just go ahead and click ok and continue with the procedure.

Piece of advice, save and back up this page and the files you downloaded because they won't be available for ever.