Monday, December 29, 2008

Chess Resources at www.jrobichess.com

Added a new section on the main page for free chess resources, mostly of programs and things that I have found useful in my personal study so far. Here's a list:

Aquarium w/Rybka Demo Engines/Interface
Solid program I use for a variety of things, including engine analysis, multi-engine competition, annotations and diagrams, and quick database and tree checks. This is the demo of the program with limited functionality, but it showcases it very well.

Babaschess 4.0 (Graphical Interface for http://www.freechess.org )
This is the graphical interface I use to connect to the Free Internet Chess server. It acts as a player obviously, has some engine analysis capabilities, and saves the game PGN files when you're done. This is in addition to all the play options of the FICS.

ChessDB – Chess Database SoftwareReliable and free chess database software. Currently I use it with a database of around 5 million games. One of the things I like about ChessDB is it has download from TWIC (This Week in Chess) and other locations built into the menu structures. It's a good program to find out what database programs are all about before spending some money on a retail package.

ChessPad – PGN Editor/Viewer
This is a no bells and whistles PGN writer/viewer. I use it to create annotated PGN's when I need them to work in a variety of PGN viewers. Some software lets your write PGN's but places it's own symbols into the PGN, making it useless for other viewers - especially when it comes to annotations and symbols. This one does it in a very basic but universal way.

Chess Score Sheet – "jrobi style"
A chess score sheet for OTB play with a reflections section for thoughts after the game.

Fritz 5.32 Chess Engine/Interface
This is one of the best free engine interfaces out there. The engine itself isn't strong anymore compared to the new generations, but it's free and works great for a variety of quick tasks. If you have Aquarium or something similar already like I do, you won't need this at all, but for people with nothing it's a good free one to get.

WEBMASTER ITEMS
Chess Theatre - PGN viewer that creates online versions of PGN's for people to see at your page.
Chess Viewer Deluxe - The best online viewer out there in my opinion.
Little Chess Partner - Add the option to play chess on your website via java.
Shredder Daily Chess Puzzle - Puzzle code to the left.

The links to all of these are on the main site at http://www.jrobichess.com. If you think something else should be listed, post a comment here and I will check it out.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think Rybk 2.2 is free now (since rybka 3's out) and it's superior to fritz 5, and can be used with Arena, a free software very similar to chessbase :) .

jrobi said...

Absolutely! I didn't include it on the list because it comes with the Aquarium interface for free, so it can be used in other viewers as well.