A Great Game and you can't beat the price

Ever since I first started using Palm Pilots, back around 96 or so, I've had a copy of PocketChess, a derivative of GnuChess, riding on my Palm pilot. PocketChess is a decent chess game, not very spectacular, and most enjoyably, free. However, the AI was fairly limited for the opening game (I suspect there were too many choices for it to make) and higher levels of competance the "thinking.." indicator would go on for five minutes at a stretch between moves.

Olaf Richter must have recognized the limitations of PocketChess, as he has developed a far superior replacement, OPENCHESS, for distribution at SOURCEFORGE. Like its predecessor, OpenChess is free (although you can donate to support the project, like other Sourceforge projects). Unlike its predecessor, it thinks quickly, has great AI, and boasts tons of features of no little value to the chess enthusiast.



One of my favorites is GAME RECORDING. This is the ability to save a game out as Memo file on the Palm so you can see where you went wrong. Here is a sample game played on the train tonight:

[Event "Game4w"]
[Date "2006.05.16"]
[White "Computer"]
[Black "Player"]
[Result "0-1"]
1. Nf3 d5
2. c4 e6
3. g3 dxc4
4. Qa4+ Bd7
5. Qxc4 c5
6. Ne5 Nc6
7. Nxd7 Qxd7
8. Bg2 Nf6
9. d3 Be7
10. O-O Nd4
11. Nc3 Rd8
12. a4 Nd5
13. f4 Nxc3
14. bxc3 Nxe2+
15. Kh1 Qxd3
16. Bd2 Qxc4
17. Rfe1 Rxd2
18. Rxe2 Qxe2
19. Ra3 Qxg2# 0-1

Don't be TOO impressed, it was on the lowest form of AI.. sometimes I just like an idle diversion. At higher levels OC can be quite challenging. OC also has a sort of "learniing mode" which is referred to as "Opening Book Training"... essentially this is a series of famous openings by chess masters that you can teach Open Chess and in turn, have it "hint" to you to help you learn better play.

Here are two of them on the web already, ready for import:

Opening School of SK Kaltenkirchen (comments are in German)

ECO.pdb: Encyclopedia of Chess Openings (ECO) Opening Book with ECO codes and English opening names

I've got the second one loaded on my Palm.

OpenChess can be found HERE. I run it on a Palm Zire 72 with no difficulty whatsoever. It should work on the Treo and other lower end palms easily, as it features both color and a monochrome support.