Kerkia

Chess

Background

Chess games can now be rather complete products. Indeed, in addition to their basic purpose, which is to play against their user at a good level, they can now also feature analysis options, opening books and tutorials, as well as the ability to connect to chess servers such as ICS (Internet Chess Server).

Recommendation

We recommend Arena, a very complete chess program. It features several chess engines including the very strong Rybka 2.2. You can also add your own favorite engine e.g. Stockfish, a very strong and quite aggressive chess engine (http://www.stockfishchess.com/). You can play of course, as well as analyse in plenty of ways. Arena also includes a connected mode that allows connecting to a chess server such as ICS, including a complete graphical interface to this server. We regret the many GUI bugs we have found while using it, but the latest releases do fix many of those and the program appears to be actively worked on. This would be the best program for chess lovers.

For chess passionate who would like more choices, or a program to “just play”, as well as if you are looking for a simple chess program for your kids to learn and progress, we also recommend Chessie, a simple chess program we built for beginners and children (it includes 5 levels dedicated to simulate kids playing style!), as well as for chess passionate players who are looking for a simpler chess program. It has a nice wood-looking board and does not include the ability to take moves back, change level during a game, etc., all features that are not really desirable if you want to learn and get good chess habits. It auto-saves all games for a later analysis if you’d like to do so, and, in short, is the ideal chess opponent if you want to play, not to analyse.