Buying my first chess engine - recommendations?

Hello Chess.com community :)

I will soon be purchasing a new computer and moving to a location which has a chess club. As such, I am soon to buy a chess engine that it may assist me in some of the following tasks:

(1). the spotting of missed tactical opportunities in my games,

(2). the analysis of some of the opening schemas I choose (in building a very primitive opening repertoire), and

(3). serving as an opponent of various, adjustable strengths.

I have never purchased nor used a chess engine, so I apologize if my questions or concerns are silly or elementary. Do any of you have any recommendations for a good chess engine for a first-time user? Also, if any of them require any specific hardware, I would need to know, as I am not particularly computer-savvy so much as hardware is concerned.

Thank you all in advance!

Before purchasing an engine, I'd download and then play around and experiment and test several of the free engines available. 

Many of these free engines are just as strong, if not stronger, than some of the commercial engines. 

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/top-10-free-chess-engine-recommendations

Before buying anything, I'd suggest:

https://en.chessbase.com/pages/download (dig around in the reader, you are able to analyze games but not play against an engine)

http://www.playwitharena.com/ (I don't use this as much now as I found it clunky with choppy performance but many on this site do well with it-it always crashed when I tried to analyze my Chess960 games)

Download some chess engines here:
http://stockfishchess.org/

http://www.rybkachess.com/index.php?auswahl=Demo+version

Though there is nothing wrong with purchasing something like Houdini or the Fritz interfaces from Chessbase for example.

First you need more than an engine, just like in a car.  So the rest of the "car" is called a GUI or graphic user interface.  Lots of folks swear by free ones that can be downloaded easily; Arena and Scid vs. PC seem to be the ones most recommended.  Then you'd have to download an engine and put the 2 together; popular free engines include Houdini and Shredder (and about a gazillion more; do a forum search for : "best free engine")

Some folks are lazy and or computer incompetent (like me) and prefer commercial programs where the 2 are already combined.  Three that I own and are among the most popular are Fritz, HIARCS, and Chess King.  Fritz is very popular, can be easily upgraded to other engines, has lots of tutorials available, is quite powerful and has a steep learning curve.  HIARCS was originally designed for the MAC and was ported over to the Windows environment.  It's engine is considered to be very human like, and it comes with databases that even I can use.  You can play against the engine from about 100 common openings at whatever strength you choose. Helpful.  Chess King only comes with one engine but it's Houdini so it works fine, but some folks want to be able to switch engines in and out and that's not available.  Does have a large database however and all kinds of training software built in.  Little crude around the edges but fun to use.  There you go.  Don't worry about hardware.  Unless you're a master doing deep preparation any modern Windows computer will do just fine.  Have fun deciding; I obviously couldn't. 

Just get SCIDvsPC and Lucas Chess.  Both free and will host any engine.  Install Stockfish in SCIDvsPC and you will have database and analysis features equivalent or superior to any commercial products.  Lucas Chess comes with a crap-ton of various strength engines and lots of training/analysis features.

There is literally no sense in buying any software for these purposes.  If you want to spend money on software, spend it on something like Chess Position Trainer 5.  That's a program that doesn't have anything close to a free equivalent/superior and is extremely useful.

As Pawpatrol suggests, Lucas Chess is an excellent free chess program. It features a plethora of tactics exercises. Has a number of chess engines installed as well. Though I would download and install the latest version of Stockfish to augment the installed ones. Use the money you would have spent on Houdini or Komodo and buy a subscription here at Chess.com. Use the Tactics Trainer religiously as well as the tactics puzzles in Lucas Chess. Do the Chess Mentor exercises here and you'll learn a lot. Good luck man.

If you use a Mac and want least fuss (i.e. will pay for a commercial product rather than figuring out Stockfish et al) I recommend Hiarcs.

I'll let the Windows users make recommendations for that environment.

P.S. If you're joining a club, perhaps hold up on purchasing anything until you do: it's likely people there have preferences (or prejudices ). Using something other people you know use and can answer questions about or give you an introduction may be valuable to you than having (say) the strongest engine or the least expensive. Your money and time: your call!

Wow, thank you all for the responses! I'll definitely survey the lot listed in your link, MrEdCollins, before shopping. I also thank you folks for the concise explanations: again, I'm not terribly computer-literate, so I wanted to make sure I didn't need one of these (http://tinyurl.com/computerbig) before purchasing an engine. 

When downloading a free engine from the web, what abt the opening book? without the opening book wouldn't the engine give inferior moves in the opening?

The Freeware engines are just fine.

But I think you are talking about chess programs.

The best Chess software is probably Fritz 14 (Deep Fritz is more expensive and probably you don't need it at your level).

But there are also Freeware Softwares like Lucas Chess.

For Openings you can purchase Databases, but even there nowadays are Websites like chess365.com which are essentially decent databases. (And Free)

The good thing about Fritz 14 Software is that it "explains" some of the background of the moves, I don't think any available freeware does that.

Lucas Chess for example also has a lot of tactical Trainings, Fritz 14 has some Grandmaster Videos afaik.

Chess.com has a lot of ressources as well (as Premium Member). (Chess Mentor, Tactics Trainer, Playing Key positions against the Computer, a Database)

(1) and (3) can be done with free engines, though you might spend some time to install it, so it's "free" money-wise, not time-wise.

Depending on how deep (2) needs to be done, there are probably ways to do it with free engines/GUIs also. I cannot tell for sure though.

Unless you are a titled player in disguise, or running the soft on an antediluvian beast, most free engines up there will be a good enough approximation of "best play". I would suggest trying the freebies before buying something, if only to see what exactly you want from the software that is not in the free ones.

Well, the best chess engine is free (Stockfish).

Dear friends,

I have been trying both Lucas and Scid Vs Pc programs. I'm not clear about one thing though - What is the percentage number associated with the moves?

What does this number indicate?

That is the evaluation of the position in a hundredth of a pawn. i.e. if 50 it means white (or the one moving) is according to the computer evaluation half a pawn worth in front.

If you are referring to the percentage numbers in "Tree" window, they show how often white won the game after playing this move and how much draws there were. This is calculated from the currently loaded database - works like the opening explorer on chess.com

Note that this does not definitely tell how good or bad a move is because large databases contain games of weaker players who win/lose much more games because of blunders. Those games can bias statistics a lot.

Two things:

1) It is a commercial product with a free month of full usage.  After a month you can continue to use it indefinitely with a few advanced features deactivated (these are listed on the webpage).  In other words, it is perfectly usable for no cost at all, indefinitely.  And free for a month with all advanced features.

2) CPT 4 and above are commercial, but CPT 3 is completely free.  He took it off of his website for download, but I have it on mine if you are interested in it: http://gorgonian.weebly.com/pgn.html

Also, I bought CPT5 and don't regret it for a second.  One of the few commercial chess products I feel is worth paying for (until something free comes along to replicate its features, but nothing is close as of now).

I have bought chessmaster 8000? Not sure about the model, and chessking 2 with Houdini. The later is only like 39.99 on Amazon or their website. Here's the answer to your questions based on those 2.

1. Chessking with Houdini is almost instantaneous when spotting tactical errors or opportunities. It shows them from any position in the game and assigns a numerical pawn value score. Excellent for personal analysis.

Chessmaster 8000 makes you analyze the whole game at once, then scroll through moves... Not very user friendly and also doesn't show as much detail (it was made in the earlier days of commercially available chess computers.)

2. Chessking has a database and shows what percentage of the games use which opening move and what the success rate of each move is... Very user friendly. However searching the database for a certain position is slightly more difficult than Chessmaster (which isn't as detailed in the opening moves database)

3. Both have adjustable opponent strength, but Chessmaster is much more fun in that respect. It has over 100 characters with increasing strength and differing styles, while chessking simply has a sliding ratings bar.

If a kid will be using the program, I'd recommend Chessmaster (also has video lessons on openings, middle, and endgames, and a kids section with some silly things too). If you just want to buckle down and study more text based style learning, I'd recommend chessking.

Any modern chess engine is fine.

Do you really think analysis at 3300 level will help you more than analysis at the 3200 level ?

The weak spot in using an engine for analysis in view of improvement is the human, not the engine's defaults.

Free shredder classic 4