The best chess games on PC

The best chess game was played between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky in 1851, but the best chess videogames are something else entirely. The rules of chess are simple, but it's one of the most demanding tests of foresight, tactics, and mental endurance there is. Because there multiple reasons to play software chess—roughly split between causal fun, studying, and competition—there are many different kinds of programs and games out there.

This guide will introduce you to the software chess world, with advice for players who just want to play casually online or offline, as well as those who want to seriously study opening moves and analyze historical matches.

The best free online chess games

Lichess is my preferred online chess game. It's free and supports plenty of match styles, including multi-day correspondence. The best thing about it is that you can play anonymously without creating any kind of account, though I find that means I'm more likely to encounter players who resign or request a draw immediately—you never know who you might be paired with. For practice, you can also play against the Stockfish engine (more on what that is in the sections below).

Chess is a good commercial free alternative. You have to put up with a few ads, and it'll bug you to pay for an optional premium subscription, but as a way to quickly start playing chess online at any skill level, it's one of your best bets. It runs in your browser with a simple, clean board design, and has a ton of players so I've never had a hard time finding a match with someone of a similar skill level (which is to say, not very much skill).

The best chess videogame

Chess Ultra is a gorgeous chess game for those who just want to play chess without dealing with the complicated software in the sections below. It includes VR support, an AI opponent with several difficulty levels, as well as local and online multiplayer, Twitch integration, and the option to export matches. It also includes basic tutorials for newcomers. For anyone who simply wants to play chess, this is your game—simple and beautiful, like chess itself. It's a good deal, too: just $13 on Steam, and $9.09 right now during the Halloween sale.

For a free-to-play alternative, try Simply Chess. It's not nearly as slick as Chess Ultra, and it crashed on me pretty quickly, but hey, it's free. It supports online play with a separate account, and comes with a good computer opponent via the Stockfish engine (see the section below for an explanation on that).

The best chess engines and GUIs

If you want to play against a powerful, customizable computer opponent for the purpose of studying chess, you'll want a chess engine, such as the free and open source Stockfish engine or its derivatives. Komodo is also highly ranked, though you'll have to pay a subscription for the latest version (Komodo 9 is free), and Houdini costs €40 for the standard edition.

These engines are primarily for training—you can play against them, analyze chess positions, and pit them against each other—so they're for people who seriously want to study the game. If you're not sure a chess engine is something you want to tinker with, don't buy anything—free engines are extremely powerful.

An engine alone won't do much for you, though, as they don't include any kind of graphical user interface, just a console. To play against a chess engine or use it to analyze boards, it must be paired with a chess GUI, but there are lots of free ones. Most come with many engines installed already, so you can get started with one download.

Lucas Chess: Simple and easy to understand for beginners, Lucas Chess is a good place to start. It includes a bunch of engines and training tools, and the UI isn't too confusing, even if you're unfamiliar with the more complicated functions of chess engines.

Arena Chess GUI: Arena Chess is more daunting for newcomers than Lucas Chess, but it includes a great deal of features, as well as support for 19 languages and a Linux verison.

WinBoard: It isn't the prettiest GUI, but WinBoard and Xboard are feature rich and include support for chess variants, too.

SCID: Like the other GUIs on this list, SCID can be used to play against an engine, but it's most useful as a fast way to organize and analyze databases of chess games. You'll want to pair it with MillionBase, a massive database of chess games in PGN format (scroll to 'Data Downlods' here) or other chess game databases. If you like the SCID interface, you can also try SCID vs PC as a GUI for playing chess.

Commercial chess software

You can play and learn a lot about chess without spending a dime, and that's where I recommend starting, but pro packages come with lots of bells and whistles if you have the cash. Much of what you're paying for is their completeness, and the quality of their training tools.

Fun chess-related games

For something a little different, below are some entertaining chess and chess-adjacent games.

Which Types Of Computer Games Do You Like Best?

Games are great but only when they run as smoothly as possible,That is a total myth as PC games are very vital for aging minds, just like a battery re-charge your brain needs to be charged more frequently with growing age. So take charge of the deteriorating mind and feed it with some computer games for it to remain active and agile.

Not only this computer games keeps your mind engaged at the comfort of your home and you can play them at any given time that makes them very convenient and are also efficient in exercising your brain. Online computer games offer a wide range of brain games depending upon your age, gender and educational qualification. These parameters make it easier for the user to choose a specific game or say games, which will aid as a good brain-train activity. Word bubbles for example promote word-finding skills and quicken the mind to remember and recall faster. The Monster garden game is specially designed to improve spatial memory and the difficulty level in these games are gradually upgraded as you progress positively. This is nothing to do with your computer, but is all down to the speed at which your game is receiving data from the Internet. If your Internet connection is slow, it will take longer to get the information for the game from the server and will consequently jolt as it updates slowly. This is only fixed by making your Internet connection faster.

The Top 5 Most Anticipated PC Games 2013

It's 2013, are you ready for all the upcoming gaming fun? We have a whole lot of awesome new video game originals and sequels coming out this year. Lets take a look at some of the coolest PC games that are expected to arrive for PC gamers.

Crysis 3

Unarguably the most exciting game that we are all waiting to get out hands on this year. Crysis 3 will take you to a futuristic city of New York. Taking control of the Prophet, you will have to take him on a "revenge mission" .

Watch Dogs

I can't wait for this game. Watch Dogs is an open world action-adventure game made by one of the best developers, Ubisoft. This game is said to bring next-gen gaming to PC. It was nominated as the best game seen at E3 and Ubisoft also planning to make a movie based on this game.

Dead Space 3

Everyone's favorite horror-filled, action sci-fi shooter comes back to PC with a new look. Multiplayer mode of Dead Space 3 is reported to be awesomer than ever before.

Grand Theft Auto 5

Who wouldn't want to have this game. GTA 5 will turn the year 2013 upside down. According to the reports, players will have a chance to control 3 different characters in this game, while taking a tour back Los Santos from GTA San Andreas. Sadly, there's still no confirmation of a PC version for this game. But, all the previous GTA titles arrived for PC, so Rockstar games will definitely make a PC version for GTA 5 as well.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist

The stealth game of the year 2013. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist made a big fuss earlier in 2012 at E3. After showing us few gameplay videos, Ubisoft made sure that this game is going to rock our worlds. Blacklist will follow the storyline of Splinter Cell: Conviction. But, with a different and an improved gameplay style.

PC Games let us more with the spirit of freedom

 In the great bastion that is the video game industry, there was one company that still catered to the few, the proud, the hardcore PC gamer.John Carmack, id figurehead, sent a Tweet to calm the anger, saying, "Everyone, make sure you have latest Nvidia/Ati drivers to play Rage!" That was little consolation to gamers who insist they have the latest drivers installed in their souped-up PC rigs.



At least, that's what its mission statement might say. But it appears the company's latest release, Rage, is not up to snuff. All over id's forums and game websites around the Web, gamers are complaining about graphical problems with the game on their PC.

Curiously, it does not appear to be an issue with those playing the console version of Rage. Could it be that id is now slipping into the convention of catering to the console audience? It is, after all, a much more lucrative market these days.That company is called id Software, the maker of such cult classics as Doom and Quake. Even in a world where gaming is being overtaken by consoles, iPhones, and casual titles, id remains faithful to its hardcore audience.



This isn't just a story about a computer game that failed to live up to expectations. It is symbolic of the massive shift that the video game industry has undertaken in the last several years. If a company like id has more satisfied console gamers than PC gamers, that tells quite a story.

Microsoft Games Can Make You Feeling Great

Games For Windows is a functional system, but there just isn’t enough support from other developers, and it’s a distant third to services like Steam (4.5 stars) and Impulse (3.5 stars). Games For Windows currently offers fewer than 200 full games, the majority of which published by Microsoft. There are many great games from last year, but the selection isn’t nearly as great as Steam’s.You can learn most of what you need to know about Microsoft’s PC game service from the fact that its website’s URL is on xbox.com. Games For Windows was built to be the Windows equivalent to Xbox Live, with integration between the two services for Gamertags and achievements.

More New Than Old

With a few exceptions, Games For Windows is strictly for new games. A few games from the original Xbox era like Fable and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas are available in the marketplace, but besides that there isn’t any classic game appeal.


Games For Windows puts less emphasis on sales and bundle deals than Steam or Impulse.Newer games, like Fable III and Bulletstorm, can cost $30 to $50, while older titles like Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Assassin’s Creed are only $10 to $20.

Integration with Xbox Live

There also isn’t any actual cross-platform gameplay, so you’re still dealing with fellow Games for Windows players in multiplayer and not the thousands of gamers on Xbox Live, even if you’re playing a port from the Xbox 360.Online content integrates with Xbox Live, so achievements and information is shared between the services. Unfortunately, that’s it for usefulness outside of buying and organizing games. There isn’t any friends list, so you can’t quickly keep track of who’s playing what.



Compared to the wealth of games and features in Xbox Live, Microsoft’s Games for Windows Marketplace is a disappointment. It feels like little more than a vestigial market, something Microsoft tried and then forgot about. If you want to download PC games, stick to Impulse or Steam, our Editors’ Choice online PC gaming marketplace.

Battlefield 3: Give you the most realistic experience to stimulate

How does it hold up on a non-top of the line PC?

First, I should note that I’m not running at the recommended settings for Battlefield 3. More like somewhere between the minimum and recommended settings with a AMD Athlon X2 250 cpu, 4GBs of memory, Radeon 5750 gpu with 1GB of memory and the 64-bit version of Windows 7. While I now have the intense desire to upgrade my PC, the Battlefield 3 beta is flat-out the best looking PC game I’ve played. The game started with the maxed out 1600×1200 resolution and ran at around 30 fps except for when the action got heavy. I dropped my resolution down to 1400×950 and the frame rate was much smoother. Not bad for a 5000 series Radeon. I just wish there was a quicker way to get to the game options to fiddle around with the settings.

Breath deep and remember, it’s a beta

Once I was able to connect to a server and jump on to the Operation Metro map, the first thing I noticed was that there is a giant hole in the ground around the ‘A’ objective on the first part of the Rush map.  Fortunately, an opponent fell through the game world near me and I got a cheap and easy kill. There are also many parts of the map where you kind of jiggle in and out of the map while laying prone as if the game engine can’t decide it wants to drop you all the way down and force you to commit suicide. Getting trapped in the map like this is really troubling when your squad starts to spawn on you and they all get trapped too.

This is a beta so bugs like this are to be expected but the area where you can fall through the environment is so large that I wonder how it made it this far. Not that big of a deal for now, but DICE games do have a history of coming out buggy, so this makes me wonder if we’ll see similar things with all the other map when the game releases next month. DICE developers say that the beta isn’t representative of the final product, so there’s obviously still a good bit of polishing to do.

Operation Metro doesn’t quite feel like Battlefield.

I would have preferred playing the Caspian Border map, as it represents the kind of maps I am accustomed to from playing Battlefield 2. But I missed out on the limited time that DICE allowed people on to password-protected servers running the 64-player map . Operation Metro is a different animal with no vehicles to speak of, but it serves its purpose well in changing up the formula. The infantry-only map affords plenty of hiding spots for the defenders to camp and pick off targets while offensive players will want to make sure they stay in cover and keep their eyes on that row of hedges across the way. The most interesting moments in the map open up after the first two Rush objectives are taken, and the fight moves into the Parisian subway tunnels. That first stretch from the outside into the hole leading into the subway squeezes the action into a more confined and intense space where it becomes a game of picking opponents off with sniper rifles or laying down heavy suppression fire with the rocket launchers or machine guns.