Chess Program Released for Linux and Mac

lrnzcpmn writes "Today, the world champion chess program Schredder released a version for Mac and Linux. This is important because it is the first time a major software player in the chess world has released a version of its chess engine for Linux and the general public. You can download a demo version on shredderchess.com."

Zappa engine

[whovian]

Zappa [wikipedia.org] has beaten Shredder in competition, but not during speed chess. Five days later, Zappa was named the 2005 World Computer Chess Champion.

Download earlier Zappa engines from here [uiuc.edu]

In other news:

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Overnight the number of games for OSX doubled! First photoshop now this!

Re:In other news:

[generic-man]

Tragically, Mac OS X actually has a chess program: Chess.app [drunkenblog.com], which comes bundled with the OS.

(You even get "that puzzle game with the Apple logo" as a Dashboard widget in 10.4, the first time it's been bundled with Mac OS since OS X came out.)

Re:In other news:

[generic-man]

Windows users aspire to rid the world of land mines, while OSX users are obsessed with regicide.

(TWAJS)

Re:In other news:

[couch_potato]

I wonder what this says about their respective users...

Um... absolutely nothing?

what?!

[XO]

You mean GNUChess isn't considered the cream of the crop?!

Re:what?!

[Kawahee]

You'll find that many GNU***** apps still have a long way to go before being #1.

FYI: not free

[vistic]

It's not free... can download a 30-day restricted version to try out.

Re:FYI: not free

[vistic]

Well I hate software that dies after 30 days... so it stopped me from downloading it. Thought it might be useful info for other people too, so they don't waste time like I did.

Re:FYI: not free

[Dot.Com.CEO]

It doesn't "die". You have to buy it.

Re:FYI: not free

[vistic]

If you don't have the spare cash to spend on a chess game... then it IS, for all intents and purposes, as good as dead.

Linux? No need!

[alan_dershowitz]

For Linux? If I wanted to play with a program with 119,060,324 possible variations within six steps, I'd just go configure Sendmail.

Test arena for linux

[gmuslera]

Now if Linux is too hard for a Chess Grand Mater, we are in trouble.

Re:Test arena for linux

[Donniedarkness]

Now if Linux is too hard for a Chess Grand Mater, we are in trouble.

Does such a species exist? Very few chess players know how to mate...I'd be surprised if there were any masters.

Anyways, I don't see why people even bother with chess programs for the computer. It's a completely different experience than playing REAL chess (at least at the tournament level). Computers tend to play very... illogically at times, as odd as that may sound.

A few years ago, when I was rated 1200 (USCF), I had played so m

Am I the first to say Baduk?

[Fen14]

Or...Go. Go Go Go Go Go. Gotta mention it in a chess article as a /. meme.

Re:Am I the first to say Baduk?

[hunterx11]

Somehow I imagine the sort of Korean who reads /. is more likely to play Starcraft than Go. In fact, more of them play Janggi than Baduk anyway, but Westerners always hear more about Go; maybe the Hanja are too scary.

Grammar Nazi Ahoy

[TychoCelchuuu]

I hate to be a grammar Nazi (who am I kidding; I love it), but you guys used the wrong "its." The apostrophe is woefully out of place.

Re:Grammar Nazi Ahoy

[KWTm]

I hate to be a grammar Nazi ( who am I kidding ; I love it),

I don't know -- whom are you kidding?

Crafty, Rebel, Fruit, Ruffian

[alito]

First major player!?
Crafty's been available for linux for over a decade. It has always been a major player and still wins the occassional tournament (including CCT6). It's free and source is available to boot.
get from ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt [uab.edu]

Rebel's been available for linux for a couple of years

Fruit came second in the latest WCCC (above shredder). It was GPL (decided to go commercial after that result), but the GPL version from a couple of weeks before the tournament can be gotten from http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/ [wbec-ridderkerk.nl] (download section)

And as mentioned in a prior comment, version 1.1 of Zappa (version 2 is current WCCC champion) is available free for linux.

Ruffian is another very strong (top 10) engine, also available for linux.

(btw, it's Shredder, not Schredder)

First link is empty

[idonthack]

First link (ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt [uab.edu]) is entirely empty.
---
PS - This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.
Generated by SlashdotRndSig [snop.com] via GreaseMonkey [mozdev.org]

Re:First link is empty

[alito]

hmm, so it is. It's still pointed everywhere as the main source of crafty, so i don't know if this is a permanent void. You can email Robert Hyatt, or you can just download it from one of the distributions (gentoo, at least, carries it).

Re:Spelling lesson

[oirtemed]

ummm...while your efforts are noble the confusion comes from the fact that for most words 's denotes possesion. It's better to explain it as a special case than to try to explain ' as denoting a replacement, as its use is not always that way.