against the computer

I played against the computer of this site at the"hard" level and I won having black, whereas I am not good at chess. Do you know any other free online where the computer is more difficult to beat? I want also beautiful graphics like the ones of the computer game of this site.

I'm not sure of any other websites that you can play on but chessmaster 10th edition is a great computer game you can buy for only about 5-10 bucks.  Also you can play from basicly beat um with you eys closed to truly grandmaster.

If you can beat the computer here on the hard level, I'd say you're probably better than "not good at chess." :)

I did a quick search of some online chess programs and found the Little Chess Partner by Lokasoft (also used on the Chessgames.com site) and one on the Shredderchess.com site. All of these online programs seem to top out at about a 2000 rating, probably because they have to use the server's processing resources, and because they have to work through the Java interface.

If you need something stronger than that, I guess you'll have to get a downloadable program. There's no shortage of commercial and free programs that can play at the grandmaster level.

i'm not trying to "one-up" EscherehcsE but I'm just saying for your informaion that the chess master goes up to almost 3000.  I hope this helps you make your dicision!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_program

Ι downloaded the free one with the highest Elo, which is Rybka, but the graphics are awful. Have you played any of the free ones? Has any of them beautiful graphics like your site's? Or does Rybka have a choice for other graphics?

Rybka is just an engine, there are no graphics associated with an engine. The engine must be run within a graphical user interface (GUI). (Well, you can run an engine within a DOS command line interface, but you wouldn't want to do that.) Which GUI did you download, and why do you think it's ugly? And what do you consider to be beautiful? Does it have to be 3D? (I personally don't use 3D settings.)

And you don't need to use only Rybka, there are plenty of other strong engines.

It works fine but I want 3-D.

If you must have 3-D, then that eliminates most free programs. The only decent free one that comes to mind is Jose. One irritation about Jose is that it will resign in losing positions, and I don't know of a way to change that setting.

http://jose-chess.sourceforge.net/

Other than Jose, you'll probably have to get a commercial program like Fritz or Chesssmaster 10 or 11. (Chessmaster 11 is also called Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition.) There might be other commercial programs that handle 3-D boards.

I have downloaded Arena and it seems that I can play Rybka through it. Strangly there is only one type of king, queen etc and does not have 3-d. Or it has?

Arena is a very nice and free GUI, but it doesn't have 3-D capability. You can choose from about 15 or so different piece designs (all are 2-D). You can install and use hundreds of different engines in Arena, both UCI and Winboard protocols (a few are even stronger than Rybka).

Any free GUI with 3-d pieces?

Yes, the aforementioned Jose. I'm not aware of any others.

Well, there is also the free Fritz 5.32, but the 3-D modeling in Fritz 5.32 is very crude, and I don't think you'd like it.

By 3-D I meant the squares to remain squares, i.e. the graphics of chess.com of a particular pieces option at "play against the computer". How can I play with your graphics a stronger computer?

I'm afraid that you're probably out of luck. There is the commercial Delfi GUI for 20 euros, but I don't think the Delfi fonts look as nice as the Chess.com computer piece fonts. (The Delfi author refers to these fonts as a "2.5D chessboard"). Short of creating the fonts yourself, I'd say you'll have to accept playing against normal 2-D or 3-D font designs.

http://www.msbsoftware.it/delfi/

There are several more regular 3-D chess programs at the link below, but I haven't tried them out. The site is in French; if you need English, you'll have to use a language translator. The 3-D programs might not be acceptable to you, since some of the programs have deficiencies such as no opening book, weak play, etc.

http://eric.terrien.pagesperso-orange.fr/page6/page7/page7.html

 One thing is that yes as I said earlyer the Chessmaster 10th Edition is really good (good as in both quality and level selection) Chessmaster 10th also has 3-D options.  But be warned even though it has it (3-D) you have to play enough games, win enough games, and other reasons to "unlock" these sets.  I havent checked in on the Chessmaster 11th ed. but its said to be fairly good and pretty hard to beat.  Fritz on the other hand i've heared only plays at a grand master level and there is not way to shange this.  Also if you do notation then Fritz might really halp you becouse what you do is you enter the game, it takes about 5-20 minutes to analyze the game obviously if it was a blowout on either side then it might not help as much like if you lose you rook for nothing it will say something like "don't do that you will lose your rook!"  were as if you did a semi good move but there was a better one it will sonetimes go into depth and display on your screen about 10 long sentances about how you could do this and then this and then this or you could have done this and fork these two peices and so on.  Overall I'd chose Chessmaster 10th ed. for actual playing a quick game, Chessmaster 11th ed. if you are pretty good at chess (I mean like 800 Rateing or more),  and Fritz if you notate your game and want some help on it without haveing to go to an actual chess club.  (but if you don't notate games then Fritz is basicly useless unless your like rated 1300).  again you can get any of these on amazon or ebay for no more then 10 bucks.  I hope this helps you. :)   

I got the impression that the OP didn't want to spend any money, and he also wants a "2.5D" board design, so I doubt that he's interested in Chessmaster. But I agree that Chessmaster is a good value for the money.

I remember the unlocking of the sets as I played games in Chessmaster. It's been a while, and I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but I don't remember having to unlock very many sets, and it didn't seem to be that hard to do it. However, you can avoid the unlocking issue altogether...You can add one line to your user initialization file to automatically unlock everything. It's mentioned in the Chessmaster forums. (Just search for "chess sets unlock", and you'll find the information.

I'm under the impression that Chessmaster 11 is only slightly stronger than Chessmaster 10. And although I don't have any recent versions of Fritz, I'm fairly certain that you can set the strength of Fritz to around 1200 or so in the handicap mode. (And there's also the friend mode.)

hey EscherehcsE I know that the OP dosn't want to spend money on it but still as you said its very good for the money.  Also as i said in my last comment (the one that you quoted me on) I said I hadn't used the Fritz before but I just got what I said from a chess club friend.  If i'm wrong than sorry but I just wanted to put out there what I did know.  Also I didn't find anything about a 2.5-D set question so if you could tell me where you got that from that would be great!

Hi ClockBurner. In some earlier posts, luckisK described what he was looking for. (3-D looking pieces, but on a 2-D board, similar to one of the piece choices in the Chess.com "play the computer". You have to sort of "read between the lines" in Post #13.) The author of the Delfi program refers to this as a 2.5D design, and since I liked the name, I decided to use it to describe what luckisK was looking for. The bad news for him is that this 2.5D look isn't very popular with chess program authors.