Confused: Need intro to GUIs and Engines

I've been using Chessmaster (10) on a 64-bit Win7 and have started looking at different chess software, but I can't tell:

1) which GUIs work with which engines

2) which features are part of the gui vs. which features are part of the engine

3) how separate opening/endgame/game databases are integrated, or available to which engines/interfaces

4) how to intelligently buy them and put them together, or rather if I need to buy an integrated product.

I guess I'm looking for a good (recent) article explaining the whole thing, or at least maybe some good forum support.

Thanks in advance!

In Chessmaster, Chessmaster is the GUI. The King is the engine. In theory, other engines can be installed, but no one really knows how to do this.

The engine only plays chess, or analyzes chess positions. Everything else is done by the GUI. Access to tablebases is an engine analysis function (although they are accessing existing analysis, rather than generating new analysis).

The industry standard is Fritz (GUI) with Houdini as the engine. Fritz is also the name of an engine. ChessBase sells several engines packaged with the latest Fritz GUI. The name of the product--Houdini, Hiarcs, Shredder, Fritz--is the name of the engine. The GUI is always Fritz. Many engines can be installed in this GUI. Some of the strongest are free and can be downloaded at several places on the internet, including chess.com. Stockfish is a popular choice, as are older versions of Houdini and Rybka.

 Arena is a free GUI that supports numerous UCI and Winboard engines. The Fritz GUI supports UCI and engines in their proprietary format.

The Arena website might be a good place for you to read more: http://www.playwitharena.com/ 

Yeah, you're just going to have to get your hands dirty and read a lot of product listings and reviews, and do a lot of internet surfing. Here's a few places that might be good starting places:

http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:wiki:lists:gui_protocol_support_list

http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:wiki:lists:chess_engine_list

http://adamsccpages.blogspot.com/p/graphical-user-interfaces-for-computer.html

This article is already more than ten years old... but it's still a good read:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070208110241/http://chessbase.com/support/support.asp?pid=213

(I couldn't find it at the chessbase site... but I found it via the WayBack Machine.)

You probably should read this forum

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/gui-and-chess-engine

(assuming you haven't already) and this forum, which is devoted to my favorite GUI, Scid vs PC:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/scid-vs-pc

Thanks for great feedback guys!

Ziryab, you cleared up a lot with that first post, and I'll be reading at all the links everyone's posted.

Any further feedback is appreciated - I think Escher is right, gonna have to do a lot of product reading (and head scratching).

One thing, Is compatibility for import/export/external DB a significant factor in selecting a GUI/Engine product? Anything particular to watch out for in this regard?

Thanks again!

For what it is worth I think the Shredder GUI here:  http://www.shredderchess.com/chess-program/shredder-12-uci.html

Is the easiest to get started with if you are somewhat new to GUIs.  It is not the best at database functions for post game analysis it is really easy to use.

Scid vs PC as mentioned above is AWESOME and FREE!  And gets better with every update.  You still might have to purchase an engine if one of the free ones mentioned elsewhere don't do it for you.

I would recommend trying some of the free demos that Shredder, and Aquarium make available.  Unfortunately I do not think that Fritz has a free demo (might be wrong). 

The are all great and all do different things well.

Most programs can read, import, and export PGN files. Portable Game Notation was designed for this very purpose. Commercial software usually has its own proprietary format that facilitates program function--speeds up searching, for example. But, these programs can convert databases back to PGN for export. Some data in the annotations will be lost or will not be readable, but the games will be intact.

I have moved games that I played online from Chessmaster to ChessBase, and from ChessBase to Chess Informant Expert. CI annotations do not all appear well in CB. CB annotations do not translate into CI format. I do not recall being able to annotate games in Chessmaster, or that it was too difficult to be worthwhile, and none of these export.

Re-read Ziryab's posts.  He's very knowlegable.  Everything he says is 100% correct.