Software for playing or watching chess on the internet
Chess Assistant Club
See
CA Club
or use the flash interface
here.
Babaschess
The best interface for playing on
FICS
(Free Internet Chess Server) - which is a lot more chatty than CA Club
- with full graphical access to server
commands, and UCI engine support for analysis - with a very good
analyze game function. Highly customisable,
many will prefer this to CA Club. An excellent choice for those who
want to mix some socialising with their chess - this is my choice when
playing longer games while browsing the net!
http://www.babaschess.net/
Jin Applet
A good alternative way to access the Free Internet Chess Server is
using the Jin java applet in your web browser. It doesn't
have
the bells and whistles of Babaschess, but it works well enough!
It is also possible to download as a standalone program from
the
Jinchess
website.
http://www.freechess.org/Login/jin/applet.php
Playchess
Covering most of the top grandmaster
tournaments live, the playchess server is the best place to
watch live chess for free. You can use a nickname for free
for 30 days, after which you
need to enter as a guest (or create a new nickname!). However, even as
a guest, you get full access
to broadcast games. This software is also included as a part of
ChessBase Light 2007.
http://www.playchess.com/
Ectool 7.01
If you play correspondence chess by email (such as on
IECG),
then this former commercial program, now freeware, is a
popular
choice for managing the games. As well as
time-keeping, it
can connect to your POP3 email account to send and retrieve moves.
Recommended!
http://www.ectool.nu/
Chess Theatre 1.12
This is probably the easiest way to upload games to the internet so
that they can be viewed in a web browser: simply select your
pgn
file and enter your ftp details. Using a flash interface
games
can be selected by tournament and round, making it especially good for
large pgn files. Hopefully we will see the ablity to
customise
the board and pieces a little more in future versions, as well as turn
off the "arrows" by default! The software can also act as a
simple pgn viewer with tournament index.
http://www.dgtprojects.com/chesstheatre.htm
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