10 Free chess playing software downloads for PC
Looking for free chess software to play chess? Well you have come to right page. In this article I will cover all the major free chess programs available for PC. Please note that I haven’t included any demo or limited version chess programs even if it is free. Also very old chess programs(which are no longer maintained) are also excluded. May be I write another post for them.
Some of these programs are chess engines which will work with third party chess GUI software such as Xboard.
1. Xboard and WinBoard – These are graphical user interfaces for chess engines. They don’t have any built in intelligence but offers an API for displaying and moving pieces on a chess board. Chess engines such as GNU chess can use these as the front end.
2. GNU Chess – This is one of the oldest free chess game available. It was written for Linux operating system and later ported to other platforms. You can download the Windows version here.
3. Brutal Chess – Brutal Chess is an open source chess engine and is targeted for multiple operating systems. It was developed recently and is still in the alpha stage. Brutal Chess features full 3D graphics, an advanced particle engine, and several different levels of intelligent AI. You download source code or a binary version for Windows here.
4. Crafty – Crafty is a chess program written by Robert Hyatt. Source code also is available. You can download crafty from here.
5. ChessV – ChessV is an open-source Universal Chess program with graphical user-interface, sophisticated AI, support for opening books, and other features of traditional Chess programs. You can download windows version of ChessV here.
6. Arasan Chess – Arasan is a free chess program for Windows and Linux. Arasan has Windows GUI but can also work with Arena or Winboard GUI softwares. Arasan also has huge opening book of about 75,000 moves! You can download arasanchess here.
7. Alpha Chess 3 – It is a compact and free chess game for Windows. Board and chess pieces can be customized and the program includes 5 built in themes. Works on Windows 98+. You can download alphachess here.
8. Lord of the Chess – This is free chess program with a clean interface. You can download lord of the chess here.
9. Jester – This is a free Java based online program. This means that there is no need to download anything! You can directly play the game by visiting here. You can also download (128KB) it here.
10. Der Bringer – This is a chess program written by Gerritt Reubold. You can freely download Der Bringer and use it. Der Bringer works in Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP. It has an ELO rating of about 2150.
If you know of any good free chess playing software not included in this list, please do let me know. I plan to keep this list updated regularly.
Cheating in Chess – computer misuse?
As computers have become more powerful in playing chess, its misuse in professional chess is also increasing. Using a wireless or bluetooth device to communicate and get best moves from a remote computer seems too tempting for many players!
Recently Umakant Sharma (an Indian chess player), who was caught with wireless device during the tournament, was banned for 10 years by The All India Chess Federation.
Umakant Sharma was caught with a blue tooth device hidden in his cap when random checking was conducted during the seventh round of the Air Marshal Subroto Mukerjee Memorial All India Open FIDE Rating Chess Tournament.
Sharma, top seeded with ELO 2384, was playing with black pieces against International Master Rahul Shetty.
Recently a chess cheating conference was held in New York. It looked at various aspects of computer based cheating in chess. From the news article,
Bathroom visits also figured prominently in a series of public accusations hurled last month during the World Chess Championship match between Bulgarian Veselin Topalov and Russian Vladimir Kramnik. Cheating charges leveled against Kramnik by Topalov’s manager and publicist were widely covered by the mainstream press. They almost caused the contest to abort mid-way through, when officials responded to the complaint by denying Kramnik the use of his private bathroom, and Kramnik in turn refused to continue playing. (He ultimately relented and went on to win the match.)
So probably in the near future all major chess events are going to be magnetically shielded(!) to prevent such cheating.
Fritz humiliates humans again!
The six game chess match between Vladimir Kramnik and Deep Fritz, ended yesterday in victory for the computer, which won the final game and took the match, 4 games to 2. Kramnik is still a happy man since he earned about 500,000 euros from the match!
The highlight of the series was Kramnik’s biggest blunder in the second game when he was checkmated by Fritz! Following is the position where Kramnik blundered.
This was the position after the 34th move of Deep fritz playing as white. In this position, Kramnik played 34.. Qe3???
Deep fritz didn’t waste even a second and checkmated Kramnik by playing 35.Qh7+.
A possible line which could have ended the game in draw is 34…Kg8 35.Ng6 Bxb2 36.Qd5+ Kh7 37.Nf8+ Kh8 38.Ng6+.
Kramnik is not Kasparov, agreed. But of late computers are becoming more and more efficient and clever in Chess. This is mainly due to faster processors and improved algorithms. Soon there won’t be any significance for such games simply because defeating a computer program will be impossible.
Further Reading
Complete Kramnik vs Fritz games coverage at Chessbase