Linux chess program PyChess
Checkmate
© © satori, 123rf.com
Powerful and flexible chess programs have been scarce on Linux. But PyChess sees the free operating system checkmate other platforms.
The game of chess is one of the oldest strategic board games known to humankind. Despite its centuries-old history, chess has lost none of its fascination, and the advent of computer technology in recent decades has not stopped the game of kings. Computers with multi-core processors effortlessly beat most human chess players. The market for chess programs is overrun by countless more-or-less sophisticated competitors that spoil users for choice.
Linux did not play a major role as a platform for chess programs for a long time. Although all major desktops have had graphical chess programs for many years, they have been unable to assert themselves because of functional deficits, poor performance of the chess engines, and a lack of compatibility with the commercial offerings from the Windows world. It was only with the publication of the Java-based chess program Shredder [1], available for Linux for the first time in 2006, that the tide began to turn. Shredder is now regarded as one of the most powerful commercial chess programs in the game, but free applications under Linux have also made significant progress.
Most of the current crop of chess programs on Linux are made up of two components: The graphical user interface defines the gaming experience, and above all, supports additional features for advanced users, such as game analysis or replaying matches for training purposes. Underneath the interface, the brain – the actual chess program – interacts with the user. These engines do not have a graphical interface but simply compute the moves.
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