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How To Play Chess?

How to play chess on linux?

  • Linux and Chess: Looking for something with a painfully simple UI that still allows me to enter custom board positions. [check] I'm trapped at home with bronchitis for a few days and want to practice some positions from a book, and have no physical board. I want something that lets me play against the computer, and I have to be able to start the game with the pieces set up however I want, and play either side. That's it. You would think that google would be fine for this, but at home I run Debian Linux (sarge/testing), which frankly I'm way out of practice with...used to using windows all the time, but I don't have my windows machine here. Chess programs and Linux programs are each in their own right notoriously overcomplicated from a UI perspective. I don't need something that creates a database that cross-references the differences between my games. I just want something old-school, like you would expect to see on an Apple II. Except that you would see it on Linux. And it would work on Debian Sarge with no major snags. I don't even care if it will let me play with other people online; I already have redhotpawn for that. I just want to be able to play the computer. Any takers?

  • Answer:

    http://www.gnu.org/software/chess/ is the classic Unix chess AI. http://www.limunltd.com/crafty/ is another, but a bit, er, craftier. Both http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard.html and http://eboard.sourceforge.net are frontends for both gnuchess and Crafty; I assume you'd be able to set up positions and play against the computer with both. eboard is a bit fancier-looking and has a few more features that I don't know much about. They're all apt-getable in Debian.

bingo at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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Hmm. It was all going well until I tried to make the first move, and then got: "xboard: Error: first chess program (crafty) exited unexpectedly" For the record, all I'm trying to do at the moment is set up a position in which white (me) has a king and two bishops, and black (computer) has only a king. I got the error when I tried to make white's first move after I had changed the position. This is the same point at which I was getting the 'illegal move' error with gnuchess.

bingo

dkg: I probably have something configured wrong somewhere. I don't really know what I'm doing, and since I got a job that has me in windows all the time, I've let my marginal linux skills slide. I'll check out apt-show-versions, though. Thanks.

bingo

fwiw, i'm running sarge, and i've got all the same versions as you, bingo (though i don't have phalanx installed at all) for figuring out what's on yer system, i like apt-show-versions, which is an additional perl-based package.

dkg

Thanks. I guess I really am running gnuchess 5.07-2 on sarge. Maybe I should file a bug.

bingo

"apt-cache show" gives you information about the package you currently have installed (if any) and also the newest available package (if it's different). I've sometimes thought it a bit confusing to tell at a glance the difference between "package not installed" and "package installed, no new version". I've found that "dpkg -l gnuchess" is a more convenient way to find out from the command line what version of any particular package you have installed. The status should be listed as 'ii' if it's installed, or something different if it was installed but is now removed. Or something like that.

Lirp

Can someone remind me how to tell what version of a program you have? Apt-cache show gnuchess says v. 5.07-2, but that's not necessarily the version I have installed, right? Lirp, since my last comment, I have actually installed phalanx, and it does not have the problem we've been discussing. It's a slow thinker, though, so it would still be nice though admittedly less urgent, to get one of the other engines working with the setup...

bingo

bingo, it works for me with xboard 4.2.6-2.1 and gnuchess 5.07-1 on sid. I loaded the board position dkg provided and I don't get the illegal move error that you both have mentioned. What version of gnuchess do you have? A program called phalanx also seems to be available in apt as an alternative to gnuchess or crafty. I've never used it, but it might be worth trying out for you at this point.

Lirp

dkg: I loaded your file, and got the same problem as soon as I made my first move as white: 'Error: First chess program (Crafty) exited unexpectedly.' Are you running sid? Maybe you have a newer version of crafty, or xboard, than I do. I think (based on apt-cache show) that I'm using crafty 19.4-1 and xboard 4.2.6-2.1. Drat.

bingo

i set up the board as you suggested and saved the position to a http://lair.fifthhorseman.net/~dkg/chess/bingo-pos. Save that file locally, and then load it with xboard (File->Load Position). it will be White's turn, and you can take a move. When it is black's turn, tell xboard the computer player should play black (Mode->Machine Black). i don't get any errors with this scenario. (when i try the same sequence with gnuchess instead of crafty, gnuchess rejects my valid first moves. bleh. i think gnuchess thinks it's playing with the standard initial board position for some reason.)

dkg

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