Personally I use SCID with the ICOfY database, Houdini 3 (only £30) and Gaviota 5 man tablebases.
Best Chess Software for Casual Players
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If I had to rank the free software I would say:
1. babachess -- great GUI for (FICS)
2. arena--great for FICS and playing aganist chess engines
3. Lucas-- only for playing aganist chess engines and training.
4. Dasher-- only for playing aganist chess engines
JamesColeman wrote:
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.
really?? i thought i heard that second league chess games dont even get published officially.
anyway were is the advantage of getting the chessbase opening encyclopedia compared to getting their database or any database for that mater??
Jun 30, 2013
0
#86
I've been usinlg Chess king with Houdini. Its good software but it does cost money.
I like lucas chess. free allrounder tool . worthy many bucks
Just quoting