Hi,

Could someone recommend a chess program for linux which is playable for a beginner? I'm not looking for something which can beat a grand master but something that has difficulties which go down to a beginner level. Even better if it makes human like mistakes.

Hopefully someone's looked into this and knows about it.

xboard should be installed by default. This I believe is a front-end to gnuchess (although I could be mistaken on that!)

There are two that come with many distributions, Xboard and eboard (if you're using KDE, they're fond in the Games, Board Games menu).

Now, neither of these are "kind" (they ain't gonna make mistakes and let you win) but you can play either black or white, you can run at least Xboard in self-play (which is interesting to watch) and, with a good book at hand, well, there you go. Thing is, chess is chess and that's all there is to it -- tough game no matter what.

Hope this helps some.

Not exactly what I was looking for - Rugby is also a hard game but you don't start by playing the All Blacks. I have tried these front ends with a number of back ends - crafty, gnuchess, phalanx etc. All of these however are created with a view to being the most successful possible in the chess program leagues (with a slight exception with phalanx), which is to say that they are completely unplayable as a beginner.

Perhaps the emphasis in Linux is creating a world beating chess program rather than a good game of chess - it's a shame if that's the case.

Just in case anyone else is looking, phalanx can be difficulty adjusted down to a suitably idiotic mode for beginners like me. You can play it with xboard using a command like:

xboard -fcp "phalanx -e 100"

where 100 is the most idiotic for beginners (including human style mistakes) and 0 is phalanx at full strength which is described as being suitable for intermediate players on the website.

If you use eboard, you can access FICS, the Free Internet Chess Server, where you can play against real people. Everybody is rated and you can pick who you play against.

Minor note: If you do get an account there, just make sure to pick an account name you like, because they won't let you change it or have two accounts. (grumble, grumble...)

What is the command to play on FICS with eboard?