Your trusted source for computer chess information!
Computer-Chess Wiki
News List
Interesting computer-chess announcements and discoveries. (ie: Chess tools, Chess GUIs, pgn collections, computer-chess opening books in various formats, old chess engines, protocol translators, etc.) This list includes commercial, shareware, and free software. The major chess software is shown in bold.
Some of the 'discoveries' are not recent but only recently discovered by us. Some of this information cannot be found anywhere else. (Latest free engine releases can be found at the Chess Engine List.)
| Date | News |
|---|---|
| 2014/10/14 | Kvetka 3.23.2 Chess GUI - Supports UCI only; intended for game viewing and analysis; several plug-ins available; available in a portable version |
| 2014/10/10 | ChestUCI 5.2 & ChestUCI-DB - mate-finder program by Franz Huber & database of mate positions |
| 2014/10/10 | Winboard 4.8.0b - HG Muller's full release for Windows; 4.8.0a(Win) XBoard (Linux) 4.8.0c(Mac) Winboard beta |
| 2014/11/05 | Chess for Android 4.5.1 (WB/UCI) - Aart Bik's free Chess GUI + chess engines for Android |
| 2014/10/25 | Scid vs. PC 4.13 Chess GUI (WB) - open source fork of Scid project enhanced for playing chess; Win32/64, Mac & .tgz source for Linux |
| 2014/10/16 | Winboard/XBoard Alpha News - latest alpha news and latest alpha releases, XBoard Alpha News; latest build for Mac; latest Winboard Beta |
| 2014/10/04 | ChessX 1.2.2 (WB/UCI) - PGN database program for Win32/64, Mac64 & Linux with WB/UCI engine support for analysis only (not for playing) |
| 2014/10/04 | Norm Pollock site - PGN, EPD, and TXT utilities; also Opening Book Databases |
| 2014/09/19 | PgnScanner 0.92 - PGN utility by Gabriel Guillory; scan and extract information from pgn files |
| 2014/09/15 | Lucas Chess 8.09a - play chess against the computer with increasing levels of difficulty and with a limited number of hints that are given by a chess tutor; download |
| 2014/09/15 | Ordo 0.9.7 - command line chess rating software (Elo-like) cross-platform, open source program by Miguel A Ballicora |
| 2014/08/18 | Popeye 4.69 - open source chess problem solving with support for variant play |
| 2014/07/30 | Sedat Opening Book - Perfect 2014 Opening Book by Sedat Canbaz |
| 2014/07/14 | Scid 4.6 - a PGN database program for creating opening books, also a Chess GUI; lots of features; Win32, Linux, Mac & Pocket PC |
| 2014/06/02 | ChessZone - Free monthly chess magazine of annotated GM games |
| 2014/04/10 | Crafty Chess Interface 9.0 (WB) - chess GUI for Crafty with nice wood board by Valters Baumanis (requres VB6 run-time library & includes latest Crafty engine); supports WB engines |
| 2014/04/07 | LiliaChess Chess GUI 4.9.4.0 (WB/UCI) - Chess GUI by Carlo Bellentani written in Java with source code available |
| 2014/03/02 | STS Testsuites - 15 epd testsuites by Swaminathan and Dann Corbit; Undermining; Open Files and Diagonals; Knight Outposts; Square Vacancy; Bishop vs Knight; Re-Capturing; Offer of Simplification; Advancement of f/g/h Pawns; Advancement of a/b/c Pawns; Simplification; Activity of the King; Center Control; Pawn Play in the Center; Queens and Rooks to the 7th; Avoid Pointless Exchange; there is also a STS Stat 3.2 utility and an Elo estimator 1.0 |
| 2014/03/27 | Arasan Test Suite - from Jon Dart |
| 2014/01/13 | Protools 1.4 - Ed Schröder's command-line tool for improving engines |
| 2014/01/05 | Chess Hero 2.5 - Chess trainer; produces test positions from PGN files; compare your best move to your favorite WB/UCI chess engine's choice; default engine is TogaII |
| 2014/01/01 | Arena 3.5 Chess GUI (WB/UCI) - Nice-looking interface! comes with engines, GUI books, & GUI ebtb |
| 2013/12/15 | ChessGUI 0.245g Alternate download site - A nice chess GUI / tournament manager for WB or UCI engines by Matthias Gemuh; there is a separate download for a portable version |
| 2013/12/03 | Olivier Deville's PGN collection - also a Polyglot book based on the PGN games; updated monthly |
| 2013/07/15 | Chess Engines for Android - Aart Bik's download list of Android chess engine binaries |
| 2013/07/12 | Cutechess-cli 0.6.0 (WB/UCI) - by Ilari Pihlajisto; a cross-platform command line interface to run engine-engine games source alt site |
| 2013/07/11 | Jim Ablett Linux Chess Distros - iso images to make a bootable CD/DVD; 32/64-bit versions; booting from this disk will not affect your Windows or Linux installation |
| 2013/07/08 | Tarrasch GUI 2.02ar - open source UCI Chess GUI + chess engine by Bill Forster Code Repository |
| 2013/07/05 | 6 statistical/probability tools (direct link) - by Jesús Muñoz |
| 2013/06/17 | Penguin 10.0 - Penguin is a PGN viewer / reader / editor and GUI with a limited functionality UCI interface |
| 2013/04/01 | Scidb Beta 2013-04-01, rev 701 - open source cross-platform chess database project |
| 2013/03/14 | Scid On The Go 1.42 for Andoid - database browser by Gerhard Kalab; open source fork of Scid project |
| 2013/03/02 | MillionBase 2.22 - huge pgn collection from Ed Shroeder |
| 2013/02/07 | Chessdiagrammer 8.2 - Chess Diagram creator |
| 2012/12/02 | Shredder for for PDAs - commercial engine for Android, and iPhone/iPad/iPod |
| 2012/11/11 | Match 1.3a - Ed Schröder program to monitor live engine-engine games showing win/loss scoring, LOS, & Elo at 10 second intervals, or pgn analysis post-match |
| 2012/10/27 | icsdroneng 0.28 - by Michel Van den Bergh; acts as a command line interface between ICS/FICS and a WB-compatible chess engine; UCI engines are supported by using Polyglot adapter |
| 2012/10/14 | Talkchess 2012 Hard PGN Testset - direct link; very difficult testsuite compiled and maintained by Vincent Lejeune |
| 2012/10/02 | Polyglot 1.4.70b - Michel Van den Bergh's Linux and Windows builds based on Fonzy Bluemers modification of Fabien Letouzey's Polyglot with original work and bugfixes |
| 2012/08/26 | Lantern Chess GUI 4.94 - Chess GUI by Mike Adams supporting WB & UCI for ICC online play/chat for Linux, Windows and Mac |
| 2012/07/17 | P2P 0.3 - HG Muller's WB adapter; runs under a GUI as a WB engine, used for connecting to remote GUIs |
| 2012/06/06 | LittleBlitzer 2.74 (UCI) - Windows tournament manager program for UCI chess engines by Nathan Thom; intended for very fast time control games |
| 2012/06/04 | AlienBoard 1.3 - Android GUI for playing chess, variants, checkers, Go, Reversi, and more |
| 2012/05/30 | Patrick Buchmann Thematic books - Thematic opening books |
| 2012/04/20 | UCI2WB 1.9 - allows UCI engines to play in a WB environment (source) |
| 2012/02/26 | ChessPad 2.0.3 GUI - Create and manage PGN databases; game viewer/editor; WB/UCI engine analysis; annotate games; create position diagrams; play chess engines |
| 2012/01/21 | Polyglot 1.4w29 - Fonzy Bluemers modification of Polyglot by Fabien Letouzey. Polyglot is a UCI to WB adapter. THsi version does not require cygwin.dll, extends the features a bit, and prevents occasional time losses too; it includes Michel Van den Bergh's work to use Polyglot opening books plus some code from Eric Mullins for pv display, white point-of-view scoring, and adjustment of process priority |
| 2011/11/05 | CLOP 0.0.9 - by Rémi Coulom; used to tune chess engine parameters |
| 2011/10/09 | Chess Diagram Generator - creates a graphic board display (png, gif) from a fen position |
| 2011/10/04 | Power Chess PGN Databases - long time control, multiprocessor engine/engine games in PGN format |
| 2011/09/13 | Jin Chess GUI 2.14.1 - GUI for chess servers; supports ICS and FICS on Windows, Mac, and Linux |
| 2011/08/31 | Chess Engine GUI 0.2 Build 1070 (UCI) - Chess GUI; “works with both iCE and mACE engines” |
| 2011/08/19 | BagaturPgnTool - Java source PGN reader & opening book creator for Java programmers |
| 2011/07/25 | ChessMaude 1.34 Chess GUI (WB/UCI) - play against any Winboard or UCI compatible engine or play against included 1600-1700 Elo engine named Tyrell) |
| 2011/06/05 | Charlotte 1.0 - Dr. Wael Deeb Opening Book for ChessGUI |
| 2011/05/12 | FSTM 1.0.8 Beta - Fermin Serrano's Tournament Manager for Winboard |
| 2011/05/11 | Bitboards' Little Helper - by Julien Marcel, written in C++ & used for debugging a chess engine |
| 2011/05/11 | Thief 1.25 - open source chess GUI for FICS chess servers; supports variants |
| 2011/04/15 | UFTE 1.0 (WB/UCI) - UFTE - Ultra Fast Tournament Environment by Onno Garms; command line interface for playing high-speed games |
| 2011/03/31 | ChessBin GUI - simple WB chess GUI; requires .NET Framework 2.0 or higher |
| 2011/03/29 | JavaScript Chess Library - JavaScript source code by Jeff Hlywa |
| 2011/03/11 | Gaviota Endgame Tablebases Probing Code 0.4 - Miguel Ballicora's open source probing code for engine programmers (in C language) |
| 2011/03/08 | ChessTiger for iPhone/iPad/iPod - commercial; chess GUI and engine |
| 2011/02/14 | EPD Endgame Suite - by Martin Wyngaarden direct link |
| 2011/02/14 | FRCPerft - fast Fischer Random Chess perft; C++ source; Win32/64, Linux32/64 & Mac32/64 |
| 2011/02/05 | ChessPartner 6.0.4 - Commercial chess GUI (WB/UCI); opening book database, online play, analysis, etc. |
| 2011/01/03 | Harry Schnapp books - Opening Books for Arena, ChessBase, Aquarium & Shredder Classic; the 'Suite' downloads contain pgn files |
| 2010/12/17 | MaterUCI 3.2 - mate-solver from Franz Huber; “modified and improved version of Valentin Albillo's matesolver 'Mater'” |
| 2010/11/20 | Chess Coach - commercial; includes Naum mp engine; free evaluation version has limited functionality |
| 2010/11/15 | Stockfish 2.2 for iPad/iPhone - iPad/iPhone chess program, source code available; old Glaurung link |
| 2010/09/20 | Jon Dart 4500 opening positions - 4500 opening positions in pgn format |
| 2010/09/09 | ChessMind 0.9.6.2 - play chess online for free |
| 2010/09/01 | Mayura Chess Board 2.3 (UCI) - UCI chess GUI with Toga & Easy Peasey engines; requires .NET version 2.0 or better |
| 2010/08/24 | Pavel Háse testsets - Starting position testsets by Pavel Háse |
| 2010/07/02 | Ajax Chess 3.0 - online Javascript chess opponent by Gary Linscott (GarboChess); it only plays as Black |
| 2010/07/02 | PocketGrandmaster 4.3 - commercial chess program (shareware); for Windows Mobile |
| 2010/06/24 | Maro's EPD2diag JavaScript - create html code from epd/fen diagram or by setting up a position |
| 2010/06/14 | Toledo Javascript Chess - another on-line Javascript chess opponent |
| 2010/04/02 | Chess Game Report - by Jack Welbourne; Win64 only; calculates Elo performance for a single pgn game; uses Stockfish engine; direct link ReadMe.txt |
| 2010/04/01 | Salvo's Opening Suite - PGN file by Salvo Spitaleri of 50 opening positions deemed to be “equal” |
| 2010/03/16 | Awit 09MH1.5 - old chess engine with AlgolW source by Tony Marsland (*not* WB, *not* UCI!); implements selective search (forward pruning); Jim Ablett build |
| 2010/02/25 | David Dahlem Logos - Chess engine logos |
| 2010/01/28 | Thematic books - abk & ctg books by Patrick Buchmann |
| 2010/01/22 | iNemisis 5.0 - Chess GUI for human FICS online play |
| 2010/01/07 | Gaviota Endgame Tablebases - for 3-4-5 man in bzip2 format; hosted by Joshua Shriver |
| 2009/12/21 | iGranMaster 1.0 - commercial engine for iPod/iPhone/iTouch |
| 2009/12/10 | Huo Chess - open source native chess engine for didactic purposes, also available in C#, Visual Basic, or XNA GUI |
| 2009/12/05 | PGN Viewer for iPhone - Free app by Stefano Malloggi (Chaturanga) |
| 2009/11/25 | OliThink - play against this engine online |
| 2009/10/04 | Endgame Testsuite - 180 endgame test positions in PGN & cbv(Chessbase) format. |
| 2009/09/17 | Game Analyser 1.6 - by Thomas McBurney. Analyzes annotated pgn games and Winboard debug files. |
| 2009/08/20 | BremboCE - Humans can play on-line against this Java chess engine by Gianluca Cisana |
| 2009/07/24 | ChesUCI 5.1 - Probably the world´s best and fastest matesolver by Franz Huber |
| 2009/06/14 | Mobile ThinkerBoard 0.2.0028 - play chess on a PocketPC |
| 2009/06/14 | Mainsworthy GUI - Chess GUI for Mainsworthy engine(s) by Mark Ainsworth. Alternate download |
| 2009/06/10 | BayesElo - Elo-rating program by Rémi Coulom |
| 2009/05/15 | Bit functions for Delphi/Pascal - source code for chess engines by Andreas Herrmann |
| 2009/05/13 | ToledoChess 2 - by Óscar Toledo Gutiérrez, a tiny engine with GUI using X11 library |
| 2009/05/04 | Endgame Testsuite - by Ludovic Didierlaurent; in PGN and CBV formats |
| 2009/04/03 | Scorpio bitbases egbbdll 3.3 - by Daniel Shawul; also known as egbbs |
| 2009/03/10 | XECTool - free utility by Andres Valverde to play at the ICCF web server and others by Andres Valverde |
| 2009/03/10 | ECTool 7.01 - free utility by Andres Valverde to help with the management of playing correspondence or email chess |
| 2009/03/09 | HaQiKiD 0.1 - Winboard engine from HG Muller that only plays variant xiangqi |
| 2009/03/09 | Tiny Seal 0.5 - a very small implementation of the TimeSeal utility for FICS (Free Internet Chess Server) |
| 2009/03/05 | OmniPerft - Perft utility, a chess engine debugging tool for 8×8 and 10×8 variants |
| 2009/03/03 | Aquarium GUI - commercial product |
| 2009/02/20 | Chess Openings Wizard - Commercial opening book database & teacher formerly known as Bookup; free limited-time download |
| 2009/01/04 | REGO - A java based live chess game viewer by Andrew Fan that uses the Tom's Live Chess Server/Viewer (TLCS/TLCV) protocol. |
| 2009/01/04 | WBRGO - Winboard Remote Games Observer by Andrew Fan that uses the Tom's Live Chess Server/Viewer (TLCS/TLCV) protocol. |
| 2008/12/22 | UltraFast-WB-0.4 - Marc Lacrosse package to play super-fast time control games in Winboard. |
| 2008/12/06 | Mobi for mobile phones/Palm - free download; FICS/ICC client for mobile phones/Palm |
| 2008/12/06 | ChesBd and Slics - free download; chess viewer and ICS client |
| 2008/12/06 | ChessClient for Palm - free download; FICS/ICC Chess client for Palm OS |
| 2008/12/06 | Chess4Net - free download; online chess server/client system; supports random chess (PP random); can be a plugin service with selected IM systems |
| 2008/12/01 | TLCS 1.72b - Tom's Live Chess Server by Thomas McBurney – for viewing live games |
| 2008/12/01 | Naum Chess Engine for Palm - free download |
| 2008/12/01 | Chessic - chess client for Mac; supports ICC. |
| 2008/12/01 | Fixation - chess client for Mac; supports ICC, FICS, USCL, and ChessNet(limited support for Chessnet). |
| 2008/11/23 | JChess - (also known as 'Little Chess Partner') for human play against a chess engine on-line. |
| 2008/11/17 | Chess programs under Linux - original article in German, translated via Google |
| 2008/11/16 | Omniperft 1.0 - perft utility for 8×8 and 10×8 variants by Ilari Pihlajisto (C source) |
| 2008/11/15 | RWBC download page - RWBC (Guenther Simon) opening books updated |
| 2008/11/15 | Polyglot - Polyglot was written by Fabien Letouzey. This is the bug-fixed Jaap Weidemann modification. source code |
| 2008/11/15 | WinMan 1.3e - by Alex Guerrero, new version; also Polyglot GUI |
| 2008/11/14 | Polyglot opening book - by Denis P Mendoza |
| 2008/11/12 | ChessCube - play chess on the Internet |
| 2008/11/12 | Reptor 2 - free chess opening repertoire trainer by Bill Forster |
| 2008/11/12 | PGN to text tool - cross-table creator by Norm Pollock |
| 2008/11/11 | PSWBTM - a Winboard tournament manager by Pradu Kannan |
| 2008/11/11 | Polyglot opening book specification - by Michel Vandenbergh |
| 2008/11/11 | PGN to html tool - cross-table creator by Fermin Serrano (Spanish language table) |
| 2008/11/09 | ChessGenius - new version for iPhone and iPod touch (not free) |
| 2008/11/02 | Relogeco chess clock - not so easy to install: requires python interpreter, PyQt, and Qt3 |
| 2008/10/22 | OliPow 2.2.e - This is an old version of Oliver Brausch's OliThink |
| 2008/10/18 | Chess Tiger 2009 for Palm - by Christophe Théron |
| 2008/10/18 | Deep Sjeng 3 - Engine upgrade announced (UCI protocol) |
| 2008/09/10 | Cray Blitz source code (Fortran) - On Bob Hyatt's ftp site |
