Links

Chess Links

Places to Play Chess Online

  • Freechess.org - a great free Internet chess Server - lots of variants and tournaments.
  • chess.com - Good place for playing longer correspondence games.
  • Internet Chess Club  - Good place to play - price is fairly high.
  • Gameknot.com - Pretty nice correspondence type games. Seems limited compared to chess.com
  • Chessboss - Chessboss has very few players and it is very hard to find a game.  It runs completely within the browser.  I find the limited number of opponents makes it not worthwhile.

ICS Chess Clients

  • Jin Chess Client - Good client to connect to FICS or ICC runs on Linux, OS X and Windows - works the same everywhere.
  • Fixation - newer program - OS X only - currently being developed.
  • Visir - An alright client - runs on OS X, Linux and Windows - interface is a little hard to use.
  • Eboard - pretty good client - Runs on Linux - nice interface
  • iNemesis Internet Chess - I have not had a chance to run this one yet.
  • Babaschess - This is the best interface for Windows users. It is very nice, works great for all of the variants. Too bad it does not work everywhere.
  • Ichess Pack - Good interface for the iphone.   Has some good training options.

Chess programs to help when studying

  • Chess Position Trainer - Great tool for learning openings and having a place to go back and review what you learned.

Places to find games to review

  • Chessgames - Provides a good community to learn and study games of strong players.  Opening Explorer is interesting as well - although it is not 100% usable without a subscription.

Blog and diagram tools

  • chessup.net is a great tool for creating chess diagrams.
  • DiagTransfer is a free Windows program for creating chess diagrams. It has some advanced features and works with Crosssover Office. It might also work in Wine.
  • pgn4web is a good way to share entire games online.

DB programs

These often have a lot of functionality that is more than just a chess database.
  • SCID is an open source database that will meet the needs of most casual chess players for DB functionality.