Chess has been a passion for me. I used to play Chess in my younger days and used to love it. I still remember the excitement in the air when the international chess championships were held then, especially when Anatoly Karpov and Gary Kasparov used to play each other. These two Russians were adversaries not only on the game but off it too. And then there was this tournament where Gary Kasparov played against Deep Blue (a 32-node IBM RS/6000 SP high-performance computer) ... and lost in a re-match. Now a days I am a big fan of grandmaster Viswanathan Anand - the current world chess champion.
Linux especially Ubuntu and others which have GNOME 2.20 desktop come bundled with a Chess game called glChess. glChess is a 2D/3D chess game, where games can be played between a combination of human and computer players. glChess detects known third party chess engines for computer players. The game was originally developed by Robert Ancell, now the game is included in gnome-games. The 3D view can be enabled provided you have installed the propritery graphics drivers (ATI / Nvidia) as it makes use of OpenGL. You may also have to install the OpenGL python and GtkGLExt python bindings.
Fig: A glChess game in progress - 2D view
Fig: 3D view of the game glChessI have found it quite tough to beat the computer the numerous times I played the game. Did I mention that while I am an avid chess enthusiast, I am a mediocre player at the best? Any way, you should try playing it some time if only to exercise your grey cells. It is also a great way to kill time.
But if your favorite Linux distribution doesn't yet have this chess game installed, then you can also try your hand with an online chess game where you play chess against Shredder - the chess game bot. There are three modes of play namely easy, medium and hard and you can choose the level depending upon your skill in playing the game.
Fig: Play this chess game onlineRead more!
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