Best Chess Software for Casual Players

I don't understand why people spend good money for chess programs like Fritz and so forth when there are good chess gui's available for free--SCID vs PC for example. If you need databases there are plenty available on the internet also for free. People must have lots of money to throw around even in this day and age of recession, depression and obsession.   

Free database tend to be low quality/incomplete. Or even worse, full of internet games and other garbage. If you're a serious player needing to prepare for an opponent before a game at a tournament by looking up their games to see what they play, you don't want to have data missing, or data you can't trust.

I agree theres some decent freely available stuff that's satisfactory but it's just nowhere near the calibre of something like chessbase. 

I'd agree that for playing engines you can probably get by - Fritz is far weaker than the best freely available engines out there. 

Completely agree. I have used SCID (for about 10 years) which handles large (~5,000,000 games) databases efficiently (such databases are available for free on internet - sometimes already in SCID format). It has all the features I need (variations tree, searching for all games with a specific position, looking for opening novelties, generating reports about a player) as well as much more which others may find useful. It is definitely the most complete and feature-rich free chess database which can compete ChessBase or ChessAssistant.

As an engine I use Stockfish 3 which is the strongest free engine available (actually weaker than houdini 3 but not that much - on my level the difference is neglectable). It supports multiple cores which improves performance a lot.

What is important - both SCID and Stockfish also run on Linux (all commercial programmes have only Windows versions). This way I have a chess player toolkit completely for free.

The only reason I am considering buying Fritz 13 is its Let's check function which can vastly improve analysis speed when other users have already analysed the same position. I think this is the coolest feature of latest Fritz - you can run Fritz on a weaker hardware and instantly get deep analysis as if you had a 12-core beast

do any of the analysis softwares actually tell you why a move is bad or do they all just provide you with the best move.

when i analyze with chess.coms analysis computer it gives a list of game moves and recommends alternative moves when it spots blunders,inacurracies and mistakes.

i want to avoid that kind of analysis as most of the time i dont understand why its recommending a move.

id like a program that tells me why moves are good or bad and can assess a position

Not really, that's why people still take coaching etc

You can obviously try out different moves yourself and the engine will give you what it thinks is the best response, so sometimes you can pick up tactical ideas very quickly, but you'll be very limited in terms of verbal explanations etc. 

It will also assess any position, but again, why it assesses it as it does is up to you to figure out, the assessment would be White is +0.60 and so on

I understand that there are stronger engines available that are actually free for download (Houdini 1.5,  Stockfish 3,  Critter 1.6a,  etc.),  but I would never call Fritz "weak".  At 15 ply,  I don't think I'll ever beat it in this life.

I think that JamesColeman answered the question well in post 61. I access the same databases from both programs.

ChessBase came with BigDatabase 2011 (~5 million games), and for more money I could have gotten the megadatabase (same games, 67,000 annotated). Fritz comes with a smaller version (1.5 million games).

ChessBase allows me to do far more with the databases. Even the functions that are possible in the Fritz GUI are easier in the database program. Likewise, I can play against the engine within the database program, but it is awkward.

As for telling you why a move is good or bad: the program can highlight threatened squares, but for the most part you need human help for explanations. If you look at enough varaiations long enough, you will be able to work out a lot, but there is no substitute for a good coach or a library of chess books.

Machines cannot tell you what they do not understand.

 Question:  Is SCID and Arena the same thing as in GUIs that you can installed engines.

SCID is a database. Arena has database functions, but SCID is reputedly much better. I have no experience with SCID. I've used Arena mainly for installing many engines (~64 different ones) and running engine tournaments. I also use it for playing against weaker engines (closer to my strength). Even though I've never read Harry Potter, I enjoyed playing chess against Hagrid in Arena.

While ChessBase is de facto standard for a games database, SCID offers very similar functionality for free. The newest versions handle CB formats so this is possible to buy only the megadatabase itself (not the whole software) which may be a cheaper solution.

To: Ziryab  

Thanks for the clarification SCID and Arena. I really do not need a  database. I usually play aganist engine in fritz on hanidap mode and dasher. Maybe I will starting using arena as well.

Thanks.

I cannot imagine life without database software. To each his own. 

I think the dasher program is good for the causal player. I think the idea of pre-program human opponents (engines) with the different rating and styles. You can also set the time control to a variety of settings

Thanks for the info on software lads. Ive decided to try scid and stockfish and spend the money on a diamond membership here. if you could help me with the qs below id be all set

Ive downloaded Scid Vs Pc

Ive looked at Stockfish 3 but it says that it doesnt have a GUI. It says you must supply your own.

Can someone help with how I set stockfish up and also give me some tips as to how to use scid and stockfish so i can get the most out of them

thanks lads

All versions of Stockfish, Houdini, Critter etc don't have a gui. They are console applications, which communicate with a chess GUI via the UCI interface.

Free programs supporting the UCI interface are SCID (vs PC), Arena, ChessX, plus a few more.

I tried using Arena but all the help files are online and I couldn't access them because they're in some suckass obscure format (chm) which my OS (W7) can open anyplace else except via the Arena chess interface, and the files are not visible at the Arena website. I'm not the only patzer who discovered this annoying little detail either when I tried looking for a solution at several chess sites. 

Other than that for free it looks like a swell program if you don't wanna or can't shell out $50 or so for Fritz 13 which is well worth the dough.

Houdini, Rybka, Komodo, Firebird, Stockfish, Critter and more great engines are available as freeware (the free versions are obviously not the latest and greatest but that's irrelevant unless you're a chess professional and you have a PC with quad-core processor and 64-bit OS)   

http://chessengines.blogspot.com/2013/01/jsr-swiss-tournament-best-chess-engines.html                 http://www.zfchess.com/engines.html

can i run stockfish 3 in scid vs pc

I just found a program called "Lucas Chess", on the surface this appear better than dasher. This program has program pesonaliities like dasher and engines. The Lucas Chess", may even be better than arena.

@analyzethispgn: yes, you can use stockfish 3 in scid vs pc  - it accepts all UCI engines (most of engines support UCI protocol, the most notable exceptions being Fritz and Chessmaster - but they have their own GUI)

thats great. thanks for posting dzikus