Chess Links
There are lots of freeware chess programs available on the Net. Many of these do not have their own user interface but instead work with separate interface programs such as Winboard or xboard. For a big list of available programs, see Leo Dijksman's excellent WBEC web site or the Computer Chess Wiki.
Following are
some links to free chess engines I'm especially familiar with, and recommend.
All of these play a decent game of chess, good enough to be challenging for most
amateurs. Stockfish and Critter are probably the strongest of these.
| Amyan | AnMon | The Baron | Bugchess2 | ||
| Crafty | Critter | Fruit | Gaviota | ||
| Pharaon | Scorpio | Slow Chess | Spike | ||
| Stockfish | Toga II | Umko | Wildcat |
The following strong chess engines are now commercial, but have earlier free versions still available:
| Rybka: | free | commercial |
| Houdini: | free | commercial |
| Ruffian: | free | commercial |
Good general chess sites I like include Chess Cafe, TWIC (The Week in Chess), and chessgames.com.
If you want more info about chess programming, you might look at the following sites:- Wikipedia Computer Chess entry
- Chess Programming Wiki
- 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!