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Chess Software Sites
Links to sites offering chess software, applications, tools or game files.
- Chess Engines
- Personally, I use a flavour of Unix so don't know much about Windows programs. The two biggies (GNUchess and Crafty) though are availalble on many platforms and don't even need a graphical interface to work.
- GNU Chess the original Open Source engine
- Crafty (v18 2603 elo) a newer engine with an enormous opening book and smaller end-game book
- Tim Mann's links - a list of 175 engines supported by Xboard, Winboard & Amyboard
- Chess Tiger currently rated as one of the strongest (v15 2720 elo) GUI and engine for desktop PCs [and also PDAs]; though there are only slight rating differences against Deep Fritz (v8 2762 elo), Junior (v7 2697 elo) and Shredder (v7 2810 elo). The current ratings list is available at SSDF
- Shogi and its GUI (unix) Japanese chess developed under the GNU project
- Xiangqi or Chinese chess: programs available for Unix, Palm OS and online
- 3Dc (rules) 3D Chess for X - unix only: features a three-tiered play space each with a full complement of chess pieces (96)
- GUI
- These programs provide a graphical interface for the chess engines to make it easier to play them using a mouse. Often these GUI are able to interact with many different engines as well as different mechanisms such as chess servers, correspondence chess and even external devices like sensory chessboards or serial interfaces on dedicated chess computers.
- X Board (unix) or WinBoard (Windows) a front-end to both GNUchess and Crafty with support for ICS and email play. Tim Mann's site has lots of links to other software sites for tools, engines and add-ons including code from Deep Thought, the predecessor of Deep Blue, the first chess engine to defeat a reigning champion, Garry Kasparov in 1997.
- Knights( unix) a front-end to GNUchess and Crafty built within the KDE Project; available for various PDAs
- Chess Analysis
- Most chess GUIs let you load PGN files so you can experiment with lines of play; these tools let you do much more.
- PGN Downloads
- Game files in PGN and other formats are available in many places on the Internet, virtually every Chess site has some files. Sites listed below are only a small selection - try Googling
- TWIC - The Week in Chess Magazine: keep up-to-date with current games
- PGN Mentor a large catalogue of games bundled in different ways
- Chessopolis game catalogue
- PGN Utilities: a collections of small PGN tools to help manage your PGN collection
- PGN Standard Documentation The formal specification of the PGN standard format for saving chess games.
If you are interested in developing a chess engine yourself, you can try these sites
- The Computer Chess Programming page has lots of useful links on Computer Chess
- Another good place to look is the International Computer Games Association home page which has taken over where the International Computer Chess Association left off. It has sections on Japanese and Chinese Chess as well as "Indian" (FIDE) along with other games like Go, Backgammon, Poker and more...
- Beowulf is an engine in active development which the author wants
to become a learning engine so that people can learn how to program chess engines
. It is not related to Linux super-computers also known as Beowulfs.