Chess

From Freehackers

Features:

• FICS : can connect to chess servers.
• ggz : another network way.
• Chess Engine Communication Protocol or CECP : can connect to backend such as gnuchess or crafty.
• UCI : universal chess interface, new open standard.
• pgn : can read pgn.

Contents 1 Frontends 1.1 xboard 1.2 pouetchess 1.3 pychess 1.4 dreamchess 1.5 glchess 2 Old frontend 2.1 Slibo 2.2 brutal chess 2.3 gnome-chess 2.4 knights 2.5 tagua (previously kboard) 3 chess engines 3.1 gnuchess 3.2 crafty (also) 3.3 fruit 3.4 faile 3.5 sjeng

[edit] Frontends

summary of features

	Network	backend protocol	PGN
Xboard	FICS	CECP	yes
pouetchess	no	no	no
pychess	FICS	UCI/CECP	yes
dreamchess	no(planned)	CECP	save
glchess(gnome-games)	ggz planned	CECP	?

Old ones

	Network	backend protocol	PGN
slibo	no	CECP	?

[edit] xboard

The original one, not very beautiful. can also do 'email chess'

[edit] pouetchess

Nice 3D gui, bad wiki. Use http://faile.sourceforge.net/ as an internal engine.

wont compile on gentoo/ppc

[edit] pychess

Require the whole gnome dependencies... nice graphics. Has also its own engine ("pychess")

Available in gentoo but not for ppc. Patching the gentoo ebuild to add ~ppc and remove some dependencies, it works on ppc:

 DEPEND="dev-python/pygtk
     dev-python/pygobject
     dev-python/pycairo
     dev-python/pysqlite
     dev-python/pygtksourceview
     gstreamer? ( dev-python/gst-python )
     x11-themes/gnome-icon-theme"

[edit] dreamchess

Include its own engine (dreamer).

Great graphics.

Not yet in gentoo. (strange??)

[edit] glchess

technos : python/gtk+/cairo Now a member of gnome-games.

[edit] Old frontend

[edit] Slibo

Last release 0.4.4 in 2003. Nice 3d graphics. doesn't seem maintained, ebuilds in gentoo, but not for ppc nor amd64. Indeed, the code wont compile (size_t!=unsigned int..)

[edit] brutal chess

Inspired by some well known previous chess software. the main web page is dead, sourceforge svn untouched since january 2007

[edit] gnome-chess

Untouched since 2001

[edit] knights

Was promising, but has been dead for long now.

[edit] tagua (previously kboard)

Ambitious project for kde, can do more than chess, not in gentoo. (Git checkout in ~orzel/git)

The team seems to have hard time keeping on working on it. Uses lua.

As of november 1st, 2008, the git repository has not been touched for very long, and the domain name was dropped. So i guess it's dead. Googling for 'tagua chess' gives nothing.

[edit] chess engines

[edit] gnuchess

The original one, gave birth to the Chess Engine Communication Protocol

[edit] crafty (also)

The challenger, also speaks the Chess Engine Communication Protocol.

[edit] fruit

Only for UCI.

[edit] faile

Strong (~ 2050 - 2250 ELO) free engine, used by pouet internally. Doesn't seem maintained.

[edit] sjeng

some close source thinguy