I feel as if I'm about to ask a horribly noob question, so if you're taken back by my noobness, I beg of you to please be sympathetic.  I'm looking for a mac based computer program that can analyze my games and tell me a long in depth analysis of moves, give me variations, etc.

I've been using an online site called chesslab.com which does just that.  Its a great learning tool.  It will tell me where to move.  And if I move another piece instead, it will tell me what blacks response will be. However it's limited, always busy, and I need to have internet access to run it. 

 I also downloaded Sigma Chess 6.1 Lite, which sucks (or maybe I'm not using it right).  It falls for things like mortimers trap, which makes me question the validity of the program as an analyzer.  There were other times when I noticed its analysis to be completely flawed.

So is there any program out there like that?  Can Chessmaster, Rybka, and those types of programs do that?  I just wanted to know before I bought it and realized thats not what I wanted.

don't know lol

why not use our new Computer Analysis tool for games you play here? :) it does just that!

I strongly recommend the free graphical user interface BabasChess along with a strong chess engine such as Toga II 1.4B5c or Rybka 2.2c2 (both rated over 2800 ELO).

BabasChess will allow you to analyze your games using the engine of your choice, and will give you evaluations based on critical positions (i.e. blunders, dubious moves). You can also play out in-game lines and variations, then see how the engine evaluates each individual position.

all those programs are for windows.  they don't work for macs.

Not Chess.com, if you can access the site, then the Computer Analysis tool will work just fine!

Sigma does well. You can use the software for free but I would suggest you pay for the extra features. The cost is low compared to Fritz. Once you have Sigma you can add UCI engines for greater strength. Fruit or one of its derivatives (Gambit Fruit or Toga) are good free engines that have Mac versions. The strongest Mac engine is HIARCS 12 but that will cost you some money.

I use Chess Assistant to analyze my games. It's not free but definitely worth the money!

macdonald,

I think you can find out everything you want to know re: Rybka/Mac here:

http://rybkaforum.net/

 I'd like to help more but I'd be guessing...

Also, you can download Chessbase Light for free from their website. It's not a playing program per say but you can analyze your games and it's pretty good.

someone say ChessBase...?

You  can download Winboard and Deep Rybka from this site. Just click on Resources/Downloads and do a search for Rybka. Here's the link:

http://www.chess.com/download/view/portable-winboardx--rybka-22---updated-setup

This will set up both programs on your machine and install Rybka as one of your chess engines, it comes with a couple of other free engines as well. You can then add other engines if you wish.

What about analyzing a Vote Chess game?