Best Chess Applications for the Mac

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Avatar of RadioMitch

Well I finally made the switch to a MacBook Pro and am looking for some good chess apps. I downloaded the trial for Shredder Classic and really like it, but am not ready to shell out the cash for it. 

I'm looking for thoughts on best paid apps and if there are any good free apps to try until I take the plunge and throw down my hard earned money for one.

The app should offer the ability to play the computer and load pgns.

Avatar of Ousland

SCID for mac, freeware and all you need:

http://cachivaches.chauca.net/scid/

Avatar of RadioMitch
Ousland wrote:

SCID for mac, freeware and all you need:

http://cachivaches.chauca.net/scid/


I'll check it out and let you know what I think. Thanks

Avatar of elzoido238

I have the free version of Sigma Chess with the HIARCS 12 chess engine.  Sigma Chess (HIARCS) claims to be the strongest chess engine available on the macintosh platform.  It is great if you're just looking to play against a computer, and it does load pgns.  Sigma Chess Pro is $20 and you get a lot more features with it.

Avatar of Ousland

on mac robolito and stockfish are stronger than hiarcs 12. And both are free!

Avatar of Ousland

I have compiled for mac the last version of stockfish wich is rybka level

http://www.chess.com/download/view/stockfish-17-compiled-for-mac-os-x

In the oficial website http://www.stockfishchess.com/ there are no mac os compilations

In the website you can read this:

The Stockfish Story

Stockfish is based on Glaurung, which is written by Tord Romstad. The Stockfish branch was started by Marco Costalba during a period in which Tord was not doing computer chess. Tord later rejoined the team, together with Joona Kiiski. Since then, Stockfish has become the best open-source chess engine. Its strength is comparable to the commercial Rybka chess engine.

Avatar of DeepGreene

...and I am now using the Stockfish engine Ousland kindly uploaded in ExaChess 4 ("Chess Database and Toolkit for the Macintosh"), which, in the spirit of this thread, I should say I ♥ very much.

Avatar of Ousland

I´m happy to know you like it DeepGreene :). Why don´t you have a try to scid wich recently was released in a cocoa version for mac (thanks again to Israel Chacua)? I think scid is much better than Exachess (but I have not use Exachess for long)

http://www.mail-archive.com/scid-users@lists.sourceforge.net/msg04474.html

http://cachivaches.chauca.net/scid/files/Scid-4_DEV_Cocoa_2010_03_30.dmg

Avatar of SWASTIKCHAUDHARY

https://lichess.org/

Best one

 

Avatar of andrewroller666

I would like to report a flaw in the iMac chess game.  My king was put in check by the enemy queen.  I tried to move my bishop to block the check.  iMac would not let me move my bishop to block the queen's check.  However, iMac did let me move my pawn to block the queen's check.  

This happened early in the game.  Most pieces were still in their original positions.  So, this was a very straightforward check.  I am sad that the iMac's chess game has proven to be unreliable.