Chess

References

Engines

• StockFish

Free and open-source engine. Currently one of the best engine (top 3) on TCEC.

General

• TCEC - Top Chess Engine Championship.
• CPW - Chess Programming Wiki.

Play

• Rating of several chess engines on wikipedia.org

Any platforms

• Shredder

Android

• Chess Free by AI Factory Limited

Play in PRO mode (no undo). Excellent for beginner, each level gives an average of computer strength. Sometimes computer makes "mistake" moves a bit like beginner human would do.

• DroidFish

Powered by StockFish engine.

• Lichess

Play against the machine (StockFish) or online.

• Shredder Chess

Play against the machine (but very slow in timed game, even in low levels).

Windows

• Rybka (windows) (best chess engine as of 2010 along with Rybka)
• Houdini (windows) (best chess engine as of 2010 along with Rybka)
• Fritz (windows)
• ChessMaster (windows) (en) (best seller)

Linux

• Crafty (linux)

Analyze

Tips

• Use engine that displays several thinking lines at once. This way you get not only the best move, but also a list of possibly equally good moves.
• Use engine that displays 2-depth best move. Sometimes this helps to better understand why a given move is good.

General game

Online

• http://en.lichess.org/paste

Excellent. Very fast. Easy to browse, play variation, etc. Also local computer analysis.

• https://nextchessmove.com/

Enter a position and ask to get the next best move. Based on GNU Chess and Stockfish engines.

Android

• DroidFish

Powerful and easy to use chess engine, with clear analysis. Show 2-depth moves with green/red arrows.

• Chess Analyze This by Asim Pereira

Awesome game analyzer, with indication of blunders, bad moves. Analysis takes quite some time though.

Endgame

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame_tablebase

Online

• Endgame database on shredderchess.com

Easy to use endgame database (6 men or less).

• Analysis board on lichess.org

Very powerful analysis board, including complete endgame database. Position are encoded in the URL (e.g. https://en.lichess.org/analysis/8/8/5k2/8/8/2P5/3K4/8_w_-_-)

Android

• Lomonosov Tablebases

Probably the best endgame browser out there. Perfect endgame analysis, up to 7 men. Offline DB for 3 men, more require network access. Pieces can be moved around, and the score for all possible positions on the board are shown on the board itself, which is very useful to analyze alternate positions.

Using Stockfish

Use stockfish from the command line:

stockfish
position startpos moves e2e4
go depth 10
...
bestmove b8c6 ponder d2d4

Stockfish will reply with the best move for black (Nc6) and best counter play for white (d4).

History

• Kasparov versus the World

Theory

• Chess-End Game

Problems

• Chess Problem Database

Publishing

Looking for tools for chess game or diagram publishing.

pgn4web

• Provide a tool to generate HTML page.
• Also exist as a javascript plugin to convert PGN games. See for instance joomla integration.
• There is a mediawiki extension!
• More integration available (link missing).

PgnViewerJS

PgnViewerJS is a simple JavaScript implementation to show PGN files (Portable Game Notation == Chess) in a web page.

• Best plugin out there?
• At least the most good looking and suited for a wiki.

Learn

Learn Chess

Tips & Pits

• (Frequent mistake) In start position, b2 and g2 are only protected resp. by Bc1 and Bf1 → move these Bishops only if these pawns are not threatened / protected by other pieces!