Alpha Chess - play, customize, and learn Chess

Website - Freeware

reviewed by StevenBurn, Jan 2006

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Review from Steven Burn at Ur I.T. Mate

I first started playing chess back in middle school, progressing from the "novice" level, upto "expert", and along with my brother, eventually becoming school champions. Quite a wonderful time.

 

Over time, I started playing less and less, namely because I had other things to do. However, when I got into coding, I decided to write a chess game and to be honest, after seeing and playing Alpha Chess, am now ashamed of my attempt.

 

Alpha Chess is an extremely unique and wonderful adaptation of the age old game of chess. Not only does it allow you to play against your family, friends and whomever else you happen to have around you, it also allows you to play over a network or if you wish, even over the internet!.

 

This is not it's best quality however, it's best quality, without question, is that you can play against the computer. Unlike most others, the computer does not make silly moves that AI's usually make - it actually thinks about it's moves prior to their taking place.

 

I've been playing this game now for almost 2 weeks on and off, and have only ever beaten the computer once, and that was at the novice level! (I've tied with it a few times, but thats nothing to brag about).

 

Once you've played it a while, it seems to (lord knows how) know how you play, and can utilize that against you. To be honest, after only being able to beat it once thus far, I find myself afraid to play it in the intermediate or expert levels.

 

Along with the afformentioned, the author of this game has taken the extra step of additionally allowing you to customize how the game looks, from changing the colors, to changing the style of the pieces themselves.

 

Perhaps the only thing missing from this game is the ability to come back to a game at a later date (an absolute must when the computer goes down), otherwise this is truly a terrific game for those of us that love playing chess, and I have to say, it's given me back the "bug" that I used to have back in my younger days.

 

It should be noted, this game automatically checks for a newer version when loaded, however, this can be disabled in the programs preferences.

 

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Quote from the author's site

Required operating system : Windows 98,NT,ME,2000,XP,2003.

Necessary disk space : 2.51 Mb

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