Chess Links


There are lots of freeware chess programs available on the Net. Many of these require Winboard or xboard as a user interface. For a big list of available programs, see Leo Dijksman's excellent web site. There is a nice free tournament manager available so you can run your own tournaments among Winboard-compatible engines.

Following are some links to free chess engines I'm especially familiar with, and recommend. All of these play a decent game of chess, although Aristarch, Crafty, Fruit, Pro Deo, and Ruffian are particularly strong.

Aristarch
 Comet
 Crafty
 Der Bringer
GNU Chess
 Little Goliath
 Postmodernist
 Slow Chess
Pepito
 King of Kings
 The Baron
 Quark
Ruffian
 Delfi
 Yace
 LambChop
Pharaon
 Phalanx
 Green Light Chess
 Pro Deo
Fruit
 Naum
 Zappa

Good general chess sites I like include Chess Cafe and TWIC (The Week in Chess).

If you want more info about chess programming, you might look at the following sites:

  • Wikipedia Computer Chess entry
  • Paul Verhelt's Computer Chess Programming page
  • Robert Hyatt's web site
  • Programming Topics (Bruce Moreland)
  • Programmer Stuff (Ed Schröder)
  • Chess Programming Theory (Colin Frayn)
  • Computer Chess Forum
  • International Computer Games Association (ICGA)

    • Also check out ERIC, a robot that plays chess using a modified version of Arasan!