16 Feb 08
Originally posted by KunsooYou have lots of choices. Do the programs have to play at beginner levels, or can they be fairly strong?
I don't want anything fancy. Just a simple free chess playing software download for my kids to practice on. It doesn't have to be rated grandmaster or anything, just enough to give my kids a challenge.
Any recommendations?
I'd also like to find a checkers program.
For chess programs: Are you familiar with the Arena graphical user interface (GUI)? You can download it from the Arena site. And if you can find the Ufim engine to install into the Arena GUI, the Ufim engine can be set to play down to about the 800 elo level or so. I can get you links, but I wasn't sure exactly what you're looking for in terms of strength and difficulty of installation. Of course, there are stronger free engines you can load into Arena if that's your goal.
And if you don't want the difficulty of installing a chess GUI, there are simpler all-in-one chess programs you can try.
For checkers: If you're looking for a checkers program that can play a fairly weak game, Checkers 1.3 is pretty good, if it will run on your system. Here's the link:
http://www.magicwandsoft.com/games/index.html
For stronger checkers programs, try searching Bob Newell's checker program reviews at this link:
http://www.bobnewell.net/checkers/checkerprograms.html
And here's some miscellaneous checkers links that you might search:
http://www.bobnewell.net/nucleus/checkers.php
http://www.fierz.ch/checkers.htm
http://www.jimloy.com/checkers/checkers.htm
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/7379/checkers.html
I hope that helped.
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16 Feb 08
Originally posted by Mad RookThanks!
You have lots of choices. Do the programs have to play at beginner levels, or can they be fairly strong?
For chess programs: Are you familiar with the Arena graphical user interface (GUI)? You can download it from the Arena site. And if you can find the Ufim engine to install into the Arena GUI, the Ufim engine can be set to play down to about the 800 el ...[text shortened]... //www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/7379/checkers.html
I hope that helped.
16 Feb 08
Originally posted by KunsooAlso, the link for the Arena GUI:
Thanks!
http://www.playwitharena.com/
Click on the "Arena Downloads" link on the left side of the page. I recommend using the stable Arena version 1.1 rather than the beta versions. The Arena 1.1 Setup 1 choice will give you the Arena 1.1 GUI and the SOS 5.1 engine.
And here's the link for the latest Ufim engine:
http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/download/ufim/ufim_802.zip
Hopefully you can figure out how to install the Ufim engine into Arena.
16 Feb 08
Originally posted by Mad Rooksome free engines:
Also, the link for the Arena GUI:
http://www.playwitharena.com/
Click on the "Arena Downloads" link on the left side of the page. I recommend using the stable Arena version 1.1 rather than the beta versions. The Arena 1.1 Setup 1 choice will give you the Arena 1.1 GUI and the SOS 5.1 engine.
And here's the link for the latest Ufim engine:
http:/ ...[text shortened]... /ufim/ufim_802.zip
Hopefully you can figure out how to install the Ufim engine into Arena.
Free Chess Engines
* Crafty 20.1 (~2526 elo)
* Glaurung 1.02 (~2673 elo)
* Fruit 2.1 (~2754 elo ; also the base package of Gambit Fruit and Toga II)
* Gambit Fruit 1.0 Beta 4bx (~2790 elo)
* Toga II (~2810 elo)
* Others: http://www.uciengines.de/UCI-Engines/uci-engines.html
17 Feb 08
1 edit
I'm not sure how simple you want the chess program to be. Here's a VERY simple chess program called Pawn ver 1.73. You can set the level so that it play absolutely terrible chess. 🙂
http://www.tucows.com/preview/312219
Edit - Here's a better, updated version of Pawn (ver 2.86)
http://www.download.com/Pawn/3000-7562_4-10487833.html
28 Jul 08
I'm hoping to run fruit or toga II on a debian linux machine, but can only seem to find arena in german. Is this a normal problem or am i exceptionally retardededed at the moment. Hopefully if it works i can run rybka on wine with arena. Right now I am trying to download the arena 1.1 from the playwitharena site.