Chess Software

As of 2008, most chess software is written for Microsoft Windows (mainly XP and Vista) running on PC-based hardware. Compared to Windows, very few chess programs have versions written for Apple Mac OS X systems, so you'll either have to run a Windows emulator or install Windows alongside Mac OS X, using Boot Camp, if you want to use the best chess applications on a Mac. There are more options for Linux (the majority of which is freeware) than for Mac OS X, but you'll still need a Windows emulator to use most of the mainstream stuff (Swiss Sys, Fritz, Rybka, Chessbase, Chess Assistant).

Here are some of the major software titles...

Bookup ("Crafty" & "Ruffian" engines; database GUI; training)
Chess Academy ("Chess Academy" engine; database GUI; training)
Chess Assistant ("Shredder" engine; database GUI; training)
Chess Informant (news; database; training)
Chess Partner ("Chess Tiger" and other engines; database GUI; training)
Chessbase ("Fritz" engine; database GUI; training)
Chessmaster ("The King" engine; database GUI; training)
E.C.O. (training - opening encyclopedia)
Rybka Chess ("Rybka" and other engines; database GUI; training)
Swiss Perfect (tournament administration - DOS & Windows)
Swiss Sys (tournament administration - Windows)
USCF Tournament Administrator (tournament administration - DOS)
WinTD (tournament administration - Mac & Windows)
Vega (tournament administration - Linux & Windows)

For a multi-platform, freeware chess database, check out ChessX (open-source), Jose (frontend for MySQL), ChessDB, or SCID (also SCID-PG). These databases can be used with freeware graphical user interfaces, such as Arena (Windows), Xboard (Linux & Unix), Winboard (Windows), Jin (Linux, Mac, Windows), Palmate (Windows), and Pychess (Linux). Chess Pad (PGN/database GUI - Windows) is also free, but Posbase (positional database - Windows) and PGN Mentor (PGN/database GUI - Windows) both charge a fee to download the full versions.

If you prefer online databases, Chessbase has a free online database at www.chesslive.de, which includes player bios and over three-million games. Others include www.chesslab.com, www.chessgames.com, and db.mychess.com.

For more free chess software, see Zarkon Fischer's website, Eric Bentzen's Chess Programs & Utilities page at En Passant, the Free Software Directory, and Wikipedia's Free Chess Software article.


Chess Engines

This list includes most of the strongest chess playing computer programs (chess engines). These are software applications that can be played on various systems, as opposed to dedicated chess supercomputers such as Hydra and Deep Blue.

Chess Tiger (Windows)
Fritz (Windows)
Gandalf (Windows)
Hiarcs (Mac, Windows, Palm)
Junior (Windows)
Ktulu (Windows)
Rebel (Windows)
Ruffian (Linux, Mac, Windows)
Rybka (Windows)
Shredder (Linux, Mac, Windows, Mobile)
Sjeng (Linux, Mac, Windows)
Smarthink (Windows)
Zappa (Linux, Windows)

Crafty (Linux, Windows) is a strong, open-source, freeware chess engine. Fruit (Linux, Mac, Windows) and Spike (Linux, Windows) are also good freeware engines, although they aren't open-source. These engines can be used with commercial programs, such as Chessbase and Rybka, as well as freeware graphical user interfaces (GUIs), such as Arena (Windows) and Xboard (Linux, Unix). Unforunately, there are more chess engines out there than we have room to list here, but Wikipedia's Chess Engine article includes a fairly comprehensive list of free and commercial chess engines, as does Tim Mann's Chess Pages website. The article Chess Engines For Linux at Linux.com also has a few recommendations.

Typically, whenever a chess engine has "deep" as the first part of its name, it means the engine is designed for use with muti-core processors and/or muti-processor computers. Most of the popular engines have both single and multi versions, as well as 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Often, older versions of commercial engines are released as freeware.


Website Tools

Eric Bentzen and Andrew Templeton created a freeware PGN viewer called Palview, which I've used with previous incarnations of this website (and probably will again). I like it because it has lots of features and is highly customizable, but it requires more time to master and integrate within existing website pages than other viewers I've used. -Stef

In addition to Palview, Eric Bentzen (webmaster of En Passant, the website of the Nørresundby Chess Club in Denmark) has a page full of resources for creating chess diagrams, as well as a few other PGN viewers. Click here.

Mychess.com has an open-source, freeware Java PGN viewer called My Chess Viewer. I haven't yet used this one, but it looks good, although it's not as feature rich as Palview. -Stef

Another freeware viewer I haven't used is LT-PGN-Viewer.

Chess Tutor was the first PGN viewer that I used on this website, several years ago. It's a Java applet, written by Eduardo Suastegui and last updated by Manfred Rosenboom in September 2000. It's dated, and it might not work well with current versions of Java SE (JRE), because it relied on MSJVM, which reached its end of life on December 31, 2007. I'll keep it listed here for a while, just in case. By the way, I still have the MSJVM files, as well as the dependency list, and diagnostic and removal tools, if anyone needs them for research and/or nostalgia purposes. MSJVM was used from Windows 95 until Windows XP SP1a (IE3 through IE6). Of course, I rarely use Internet Explorer these days. -Stef