Chess software Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black in chess, White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's King (chess), king. It is sometimes called interna ...

comes in different forms. A chess playing program provides a graphical chessboard on which one can play a chess game against a computer. Such programs are available for

personal computers A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or techn ...

video game consoles A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a t ...

smartphones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...

tablet computers A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being comput ...

mainframes A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

supercomputers A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions p ...

. A

chess engine In computer chess, a chess engine is a computer program that analyzes chess or chess variant positions, and generates a move or list of moves that it regards as strongest. A chess engine is usually a back end with a command-line interface wit ...

generates moves, but is accessed via a

command-line interface A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

with no graphics. A dedicated chess computer has been purpose built solely to play chess. A

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

(GUI) allows one to import and load an engine, and play against it. A chess database allows one to import, edit, and analyze a large archive of past games.

Chess-playing programs for personal computers

Chess engines

This list contains only chess engines for which Wikipedia articles exist yet and therefore is very incomplete. It does not reflect or imply current or historic play strength as this characteristic in itself usually does not warrant an entry on Wikipedia.

Chess graphical user interfaces

Chess-playing programs for video game consoles

Chess apps for phones/tablets

Chess computers

The following are special-purpose hardware/software combinations that are inextricably connected:

Programs for reading and editing chess databases

Chess Assistant Chess Assistant is a commercial database program produced by Convekta, Ltd. The company started in Russia, but also has offices in England and the United States. The software is a management tool for organising chess information (databases of mill ...

Chess Informant Expert Chess Informant (Šahovski Informator) is a publishing company from Belgrade (Serbia, former Yugoslavia) that periodically (since 2012, four volumes per year) produces a book entitled ''Chess Informant'', as well as the ''Encyclopaedia of Chess O ...

* ChessBase *

Shane's Chess Information Database Shane's Chess Information Database (Scid) is a free and open source UNIX, Windows, Linux, and Mac application for viewing and maintaining large databases of chess games. It has features comparable to popular commercial chess software. Scid is ...

Chess-playing programs for mainframes/supercomputers

AlphaZero AlphaZero is a computer program developed by artificial intelligence research company DeepMind to master the games of chess, shogi and go. This algorithm uses an approach similar to AlphaGo Zero. On December 5, 2017, the DeepMind team rel ...

Chess (Northwestern University) Chess was a pioneering chess program from the 1970s, written by Larry Atkin, David Slate and Keith Gorlen at Northwestern University. Chess ran on Control Data Corporation's line of supercomputers. Work on the program began in 1968 while the aut ...

CilkChess Cilk, Cilk++, Cilk Plus and OpenCilk are general-purpose programming languages designed for multithreaded parallel computing. They are based on the C and C++ programming languages, which they extend with constructs to express parallel loops ...

Kaissa Kaissa (russian: Каисса) was a chess program developed in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. It was named so after Caissa, the goddess of chess. Kaissa became the first world computer chess champion in 1974 in Stockholm. History By 1967, a c ...

* Kotok-McCarthy *

Mac Hack Mac Hack is a computer chess program written by Richard D. Greenblatt. Also known as Mac Hac and The Greenblatt Chess Program, it was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mac Hack VI was the first chess program to play in hu ...

Tiniest chess programs

* 1K ZX Chess *

Microchess ''Microchess'', by Peter R Jennings, Peter R. Jennings, was the first commercially successful chess program for microcomputers. Originally designed for the MOS Technology KIM-1 it was released on December 18, 1976. ''Microchess'', as small as ...

* Toledo Nanochess

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chess software Video game lists by genre

Software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

Lists of software * *