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ATPM reviewed five chess software programs in the September 1999 issue. Since that review, Sigma Chess was upgraded, and Vanessa Chess was released. Since Macintosh chess software is my hobby (I own dozens of Macintosh chess programs, and maintain the Macintosh Chess Software Index), I volunteered to write about them. Sigma Chess 5.12 is the strongest Macintosh freeware/shareware chess program reviewed in ATPM. I’ve played 100-game matches between each of five programs using the excellent freeware chess umpire/database program, ExaChess Lite 2.1. Sigma Chess beat all the others—their score against Sigma Chess was: Crafty 14.11B (47%), MacChess 4.0e (39%), Screamer 1.0 (25%), and Vanessa Chess 2.01 (10%). These days, chess strength should seldom be your primary decision factor in selecting a chess program. With the power of modern Macs, even Vanessa Chess is a much stronger player than most humans when set to full strength. For an opponent that is challenging, rather than unbeatable, one must usually set the computer to an “easy” level, or limit the number of moves the program looks ahead to one or two moves (“fixed depth 1” or “fixed depth 2” in computer chess argot). Price and convenience of acquisition are important factors, and commercial programs can’t touch the price of freeware/shareware programs (Vanessa Chess is $10 shareware, the other four are freeware) or the convenience of downloading. For those of you who find chess program strength of supreme importance, HIARCS 7.0, available online at Your Move Chess and Games and GambitSoft, is by far the strongest Mac chess program. Two other important factors are ease of use and features, which is why I’m not reviewing Crafty: Most of Crafty’s features can only be accessed through a command line interface. Sigma ChessDeveloper: Ole K. Christensen (product page) Price: free Requirements: PowerPC-based Mac with System 7.5. Recommended: 800x600 display with thousands of colors, 10 MB of application RAM. Sigma Chess is the strongest, prettiest, and most full-featured freeware/shareware GUI Mac chess program. It has many nice things no other Mac freeware/shareware chess program includes, such as a double-clickable chess tutorial (“Rules of Chess”), an illustrated online manual, and a collection of instructive games, endgames, combinations, and chess problems. The last ATPM review rated Sigma Chess 4.02 higher than all the rest, and Sigma Chess 5.1.2 is much better than 4.0.2, with many major improvements and a host of minor improvements. Starting with Sigma Chess 5, Sigma Chess was optimized for Power Macintosh, making it much stronger. If the “Novice Levels” in Sigma Chess are too easy for you, Sigma Chess 5.0 now has a “Playing Strength” feature, where you can set Sigma Chess’s approximate strength numerically (higher numbers are stronger), as an alternative to setting the time Sigma uses or the number of moves it looks ahead. Sigma is the only free Macintosh program with the option of displaying the board in a 3D view using “true perspective” pieces like those in the commercial chess programs Chessmaster 6000 and Virtual Chess. The 3D display has been polished since the earlier version. The menu bar is now visible in 3D mode, the optional digital clocks are less obtrusive, and the side to move is now indicated by glowing yellow LEDs embedded in the right edge of the wood board. These changes are representative of the many improvements made throughout the program.
I personally prefer the 2D display, which I think is the nicest looking Macintosh chess interface available at any price. The pieces are gorgeous, and the on-screen control buttons save a lot of time otherwise spent in travelling to the menu bar. The menu selections each have color menu icons. I like these icons, but those who don’t can turn them off in “Preferences.” I also love the digitized sound of the felted pieces landing on the wooden board, and the “clack” of wood on wood when pieces are captured, though I usually have this turned off in “Preferences” so as not to annoy others. For those who like chess puzzles of the “White to move and mate in 2” variety, Sigma Chess is the only Mac program whose “Mate Finder” mode is not only guaranteed to find such a mate if it exists, but which will find all such mates, if you tell it to. Sigma Chess has scores of other features, including rating your play, annotating your games, and printing them in double-column format with diagrams and comments. If there is something you want Sigma Chess to do, you can probably find out how in the online manual. Vanessa ChessDeveloper: Schubert-it (product page) Price: $10 (shareware) Requirements: 200 MHz PowerPC-based Mac, Mac OS 8.6, 12 MB application RAM. Recommended: G4-based Mac with Mac OS 9. Trial: Fully-featured (30 days) Vanessa Chess has a nice-looking interface and a reasonably complete set of features (albeit far fewer than Sigma Chess). Three things about Vanessa chess might make it a better choice than Sigma Chess for some tasks: it can read games out loud, it is much weaker than Sigma Chess, and it can print formatted game scores with color chess diagrams. The ability to have games read out loud is one I wished for when studying games from chess books. When playing such games on a physical board, I found my attention distracted by the need to look back and forth between the book and the board to follow the game. Almost all modern computer programs are an improvement in the sense that games stored in the computer can be viewed on-screen without needing to look away. However, some feel that the best way to study for over-the-board play is to play games out on a real board. With a program that reads chess game moves out loud, this can be done while keeping one’s attention on the board. The only other downloadable program that does this is the $10 shareware program PGNTalk, which doesn’t play chess or print games. The tournament results indicate that Vanessa Chess is about a tenth as strong as Sigma Chess. Paradoxically, this can be a good thing. If you find other chess programs too overwhelming, it may be easier to configure Vanessa Chess to a comfortable level. Besides the usual ability to limit the computer’s thinking by setting a time limit or the number of moves it looks ahead, Vanessa Chess offers a unique “Adaptive strength” feature that is supposed to match its strength to yours, but I have not used it enough to know how well it works.
One use of computer chess programs is printing games with diagrams and notes. Vanessa Chess and Sigma Chess Lite are the only Mac freeware/shareware chess playing programs that let you do this. Vanessa Chess is the more capable program in this regard. While Vanessa Chess does not permit printing in figurine notation (mini-icons rather than letters for pieces) like Sigma Chess, it is the only program that allows your printed game to include color chess diagrams, multiple diagram formats, and multiple annotation fonts and styles. If you want to print nice-looking chess output, Vanessa Chess might be worth considering for this alone.
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Reader Comments (32)
I live in Nigeria where access to a standard chess board is expensive. I thought your site will provide me with the opportunity of down loading. I just started playing chess not quite long ago. I could have appreciated you better if i was able to get the download. Anyway, thanks for having a site on the web.
Remi.
Is there any chance of doing an updated Mac chess round-up?
I will gladly pay for the full version of either Sigma or Vector. I suppose I will have to try the demos once I get my Mac. I am also wondering about the feasibility of running Fritz or CM9000 through VirtualPC or the like. Any insight?
BTW, I would kill to have the ChessMaster series resumed for the Mac. CM9000 is very, very good.
I've used SigmaChess a bit, and I like it. —Chris Lawson
We published a mini-roundup of two chess programs and the article also makes reference to an older bunch of chess program reviews. (The article claims to be part 1, but part 2 never happened.) —Paul Fatula
However, Sigma Chess is up to version 6.03 and updated for OS X, and the OS X version of Vanessa Chess is Vector 3. The Macintosh Chess Software Index has links to 64 Macintosh chess software pages, including Sigma Chess and Vector 3. Chessmaster 6000 is still available for the Mac, even though 9000 is not.
Regarding Virtual PC, I have used it in the (long) past to run a number of Windows chess programs, so I would expect it to work, though the program speed won't be as fast as on a Windows hardware machine.
Before you get your Mac, you can read the full manual of Sigma Chess on the web.
Update: For those of you who find chess program strength of supreme importance, HIARCS 7.0, available online at Your Move Chess and Games, is by far the strongest Mac chess program.
This announcement came out today:
Macintosh HIARCS
----------------
The new Mac HIARCS product is nearing completion and we hope to have it
available before Christmas. We believe it will be the strongest chess
software ever on Macintosh computers and will also have a high quality
graphical user interface. We will be updating the website accordingly over
the next week to explain the product offering in more detail.
Thank you for the wealth of information you have provided and for your many insights into chess programs for the MAC.On behalf of the world's chess community, we appreciate your efforts !
Yours in chess,
Scott Pfeiffer
Thanks for help
A direct method is for both players to play each other over the Internet or intranet using the free program, ChessWorks. Both players would download ChessWorks for their operating system from Ekim.
A very popular method is for both players to log into one of the Internet "chess server" sites such as the Internet Chess Club and the Free Internet Chess Club. Many such sites let you to play using your Web browser, or you can download a freeware interface program, such as Fixation. Your Windows opponent will have similar choices. Most sites offer "free trial" memberships, or you can login as a "guest". If you are both logging in as "guest", you will typically be assigned a random user ID at each session, and will need to contact each other somehow (email, instant message, or phone) to figure out the ID of your intended opponent.
For more Macintosh links about person-person chess over the Internet, see the links at dmoz
Is anyone having problems with the HIARCS feature in SigmaChess
(registered) product. It appears that HIARCS is not recognizing my
KEY number.
With 10.3.8 I had no problems.
how do I watch the old games from the library with the famous players?
I opened them up, and each game starts in the FINISHED position?
so I click "undo all" and it appears to be the start position, then I click "go" each move and it appears to be making the moves of the famous game, then suddenly it stops, then I have to click "stop" and then "go" and it seems to start again
but then... it says it "resigns I win" or some such thing, which makes me think it's no longer playing the famous game at all, then at the end it asks me if I want to save the game?
but it's a game that is already saved from the library
what gives?
this is supposed to be the best chess program?
when I had the old Chessmaster 2000 or 3000 I can't remember which, it was so simple to view famous games
Fritz does not run native on the Mac, and while Crafty could be compiled to take advantage of multiple processors on the Mac, I'm not aware of anyone who has done it. Unless that is done, I would expect the differences between the platforms you mention to be slight.
However, Deep Shredder 9 for Macintosh:
http://www.shredderchess.com/chess-program/shredder-9-mac.html
will take advantage of multiple processors. Since computer strength generally increases by about 60 rating points with a doubling of speed or number of processors, and Shredder is one of the strongest chess programs in the world (many times World Computer Chess Champion), this program should have awesome strength on the Quad.
Like so many things, it is extremely simple, once you know how.
Don't use the "Go" button when replaying games - the "Go" button starts the chess engine thinking.
The most natural way, for me, is to use the "left cursor arrow" key to back up, and the "right cursor key" to move forward. If you keep either key held down continuously, then the program will move continuously. Use "OPTION- left cursor arrow" to rewind all the way to the front.
If you want to use the on-screen buttons rather than the keys:
Use the "undo all" button to rewind to the start,
Use the "redo" button to single-step through the game.
If you tire of rewinding every game to get to the start, there is a preference option to have opened games begin from the starting position. Go to the Sigma Chess menu, and under
Preferences: Games:: When Opening a game", click on the radio
button "Show Initial Position" (the default is "Show Final Position".
http://www.sigmachess.com
Since Sigma Chess now supports "plug-in" chess engines using the UCI chess protocol, including the use of the Nalimov endgame tablebases, it can act as the control console for many of the world's most powerful chess engines, including Shredder, HIARCS, Fruit, Ruffian and Deep Sjeng. The most powerful free UCI chess engine is probably Fruit 2.1.
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