user7479: I played around with cutechess and stockfish to simulate a specific situation in chess. But I ended up playing complete games against a human or cpu. Is it even possible to set up a chess situation by hand and let the chess engine compute solutions?

user7473: You could use Fritz (or any other engine under the ChessBase GUI) to do this, using the "Infinite Analysis" function, so it's definitely possible, though I have no experience with other chess software and therefore don't know how to do this with other GUIs.
As for simulations, it is possible to have the engine play many games against itself, available in the ChessBase GUI again, called Monte Carlo analysis.

user7479: Okay I ended up using jerry which is very easy to use, platform independent and also supportes various engines. Recommend it.

7479: <p>I played around with <a href="https://github.com/cutechess/cutechess" rel="nofollow">cutechess</a> and <a href="http://stockfishchess.org/" rel="nofollow">stockfish</a> to simulate a specific situation in chess. But I ended up playing complete games against a human or cpu. Is it even possible to set up a chess situation by hand and let the chess engine compute solutions?</p>
 7473: <p>You could use Fritz (or any other engine under the ChessBase GUI) to do this, using the "Infinite Analysis" function, so it's definitely possible, though I have no experience with other chess software and therefore don't know how to do this with other GUIs.</p>

<p>As for simulations, it is possible to have the engine play many games against itself, available in the ChessBase GUI again, called Monte Carlo analysis.</p>
 7479: <p>Okay I ended up using <a href="http://asdfjkl.github.io/jerry/" rel="nofollow">jerry</a> which is very easy to use, platform independent and also supportes various engines. Recommend it.</p>
