Best Free Chess?

[sam-c]

What is best Chess for Kubuntu or Ubuntu? 8)

[Nomad]

Re: Best Free Chess?

I guess the best engine is Crafty, and the nicest KDE frontend I've found is called Knights.

They're both in the repos.

[Raffles10]

Re: Best Free Chess?

This is old isn't it, never mind.

The problem with pc chess engines like crafty and gnuchess is that they play a very strong game, giving little chance for beginners to win, which is very disheartening. Dreamchess has a nice gui and has different level settings so that you can beat the engine no matter how poor you are, which is more encouraging for new players.

sudo apt-get install dreamchess

[Snowhog]

Re: Best Free Chess?

Dreamchess has a nice gui and has different level settings so that you can beat the engine no matter how poor you are, which is more encouraging for new players.

Maybe more encouraging, but it doesn't force skills development (of the user) for the game of chess.

[perspectoff]

Re: Best Free Chess?

I like 3D Pouet chess. (package: pouetchess)

[aqeeliz]

Re: Best Free Chess?

I've been looking for a good chess game too. According to my research (looking at screenshots and reading description), pyChess http://sites.google.com/site/pychess/ seems pretty good, and its also being actively developed, though it is for Gnome.

[toad]

Re: Best Free Chess?

I guess the best engine is Crafty, and the nicest KDE frontend I've found is called Knights.

They're both in the repos.

Ditto, I always lose :P

[verndog]

Re: Best Free Chess?

This is old isn't it, never mind.

The problem with pc chess engines like crafty and gnuchess is that they play a very strong game, giving little chance for beginners to win, which is very disheartening. Dreamchess has a nice gui and has different level settings so that you can beat the engine no matter how poor you are, which is more encouraging for new players.

sudo apt-get install dreamchess

If your playing gnuchess, have it make its in 10 seconds. That makes it move faster without much thought. Still 10 seconds is eternity for computers. Even so, I can win now and again at 10 seconds. I use to be good at chess, now not so much. Or computer chess improved and I haven't.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Best Free Chess?

I was unbeaten in chess through high school and college, but didn't play much after that. When I got my first computer chess game, on my Apple ][+, I ran it with disdain, and promptly got beat. I realized that I wasn't playing the computer, I was playing the chess master who contributed the moves and strategy that the program used.

When my oldest grandson was about 12 years old I taught him how to play. I also gave him a 1,500 page book on the chess moves of all of the world championship games. I figured that would occupy him for months. Within a month I couldn't beat him. He'd identify every move I made by citing some move in a game. I introduced him to computer chess. He quit the game shortly there after.

[kyonides]

Re: Best Free Chess?

That sounds like a good scary movie for chess players

Anyway, I get beaten quite often except for one time when I could draw the game with just my king on the board... and that happened only because it was the only square where I could place it without auto-checkmating...

[JontheEchidna]

Re: Best Free Chess?

My parents gave me and my brother Lego Chess when we were little kids. (I'm 19 now, he's almost 17)

It had an extensive tutorial system that just about anybody could follow, as well as a variable-difficulty "real chess" mode where your board was made up of Lego characters.

Nowadays my brother can beat anybody in the family, and has gone on to online chess. He occasionally uses knights with the fruit chess engine, now that he has an Ubuntu netbook, (Lego Chess was a Windows program...) but mostly he plays Internet chess.