Chess Engine Help

Hi all, 

If you are going to answer here please keep your answers simple and in laymans terms. 

I have a new laptop, running windows 8.1 and it does not download pgn files.  I have gone onto the windows store to find a program but it appears to want me to download a chess program. 

Now here I have to admit to getting old, and watching technology pass me by.  

For many years I have debated with myself what use a chess engine would be to me and to be honest I have never really understood what a chess engine is anyway.  

I understand it will help me evaluate positions,  I understand I can play games against it, and perhaps study openings stored on databases. 

I had an old chessmaster program, which I could play against,  I dont think it did much more tho. 

Anyhow, having considered Fritz, and Rybka for years never really understanding what they are,(and therefore what value (for money) I would have gotten from them. I now need to download something so I can get my PGN's and play through my mistakes in my old fashioned pen / paper (ok notes in word accompanied by screenshot style) 

Now I find something that is supposedly free called Stockfish !!! 

1) What is it ?

2) has it replaced the engines like Fritz or is it used with these engines. 

3) If you were in my position what would you download ? 

4) What exactly is a chess engine ?

PGN stands for Portable Game Notation. It is a way to save, open or transfer games between softwares, etc.

Stockfish is the best chess engine in the market, Houdini, COMMODO, or Rybka are also excellent choices.

Fritz is hundreds of ratings below them.

Chess engine is the software that calculates the chess moves, but it needs a Game User Interface where you can add the engine to to play and analyze games. I use Chess Assistant GUI to analyze my tournament games, but Chess Base or Auarium are good too.

I am not sure how good player you are and what is your USCF rating, but probably Houdini 4 Aquarium would be a good start, as it is very easy to use. Chessbase also has free edition.

Thank you Mr Tampa. 

Why is Stockfish free ? 

Also does it come with a GUI or do I need to download something seperately ? 

You need to download GUI seperately. Houdini started out free too. http://stockfishchess.org/about/ explains why it is free. I am sure if it remains on the top they will ask money for downloading it soon...

The simplest GUI, for newbies, is probably Tarrasch: 

http://www.triplehappy.com/

Before I bought Fritz 13 I started out with Arena. It's an excellent GUI but has a moderately steep learning curve.

Later I discovered Lucas Chess. It's fairly simple to use, has a decent amount of helpful YouTube videos to get you started and has a TON of very good tactics puzzles and training aides. It's freeware so look it over, it may suit your needs.

Dont get caught up in the chess engines ratings.  Find one oyu like, and use it.  I use Fritz 13, and it does what i need it to do.  Some engines are rated higher, but with Fritz rated 3000+, how much more do you need?

It all depends... How seriously you want to take chess. If your rating is over 2000 you need I think at least a Rybka, but preferably a Houdini or a Stockfish. Shredder is pretty good as it adopts to you and tries to make you better when you play against it. I had hard time with Fritz, my dad has 2180 rating but he is happy with Fritz, we differ on that...

are you sure? I thought Deep Fritz was around Rybka......ah well i don't use Fritz so i wouldn't know. I'm just over 2000, I use a lot of different engines, Houdini, Stockfish, Komodo is really good to work with endgames, you can get up to Komodo 5 for free (the top one is Komodo 8) Houdini 1.5 for free, and Stockfish 5 for free. Other then that Rybka, Critter,  Fritz, are all decently strong, it all depends what you want.

If you do not want to purchase software I would download ScidvsPC and the stockfish engine.

No, they won't.  In fact, they can't.  Stockfish is open source, so anyone can read and download the source code.  If they tried to start charging for it, a bunch of developers would just copy it and release a bunch of free versions of it anyway.  Goldfish, Trout, Barracuda...it would be everywhere ;)...which would definitely derail Stockfish, but it wouldn't put much money in their pockets.

Yes, Houdini started out free, but there's a difference.  Houdini was never open source.

As pointed out, Tarrasch plus Stockfish makes a very good and free combination.

You still need to tell Stockfish how many threads to use and where the Syzygy tablebases are (if you use them). Like this ...