Chess Problems has hundreds of problems in six difficulty classes from novice to fiendish [java]
posted on Feb 16, 2008 - View this thread

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, "International Chess" was the only widely known chess variant in the West. It had its problems. People tried to solve them. Of course, they could just play xiangqi instead. There's also janggi, Makruk, and the granddaddy of them all, chaturanga. Perhaps the most refined game in the family, however, is Japanese Chess--shogi.
posted on Feb 15, 2008 - View this thread

For nearly two decades, fifty computers have been running day and night on an extremely complex problem. Today, scientists from the University of Alberta announced the result of all that work - they have solved the game of checkers. Chinook, the computer program they developed, can never be beaten - try for yourself. While checkers is the most complicated game to be solved so far, it is not the only one. You can play a perfect game of tic-tac-toe, of course, but also connect four, and a 6x6 board of the game othello. Chess players are already thinking ahead to when their game is solved, with Advanced Chess being Gary Kasparov's answer. The hardest game to completely solve might be Go, which may not be solved until 2100.
posted on Jul 19, 2007 - View this thread

Ajax your chess experience up with 64squar.es.
posted on Jul 12, 2007 - View this thread

A Field Guide to Chess Tactics. Chess tactics explained in plain English, with hundreds of examples. A great site for beginning to mid-level players. Includes a large library of positional problems, organized thematically, with the solutions explained and discussed. For example, learn about knight forks, then quiz yourself on the same topic.
posted on Jun 19, 2007 - View this thread

Chess has a long, if somewhat shrouded, history, with beautiful chess pieces found dating from the 5th century. It has spawned hundreds of fascinating stories, and many interesting names for moves. For the last five decades, the history of chess and computers have been intertwined in many ways. Chess continues to adapt to a new age, with controversies around computer-assisted cheating, attempts to sex-up chess books, thousands of variants, and an amazing online database that can search through recorded games for the last 200 years.
posted on Dec 4, 2006 - View this thread

ChessRogue = Chess + Rogue. (Open source, versions available for Linux and Windows.)

This console-based game takes the pieces of chess and puts them into a Roguelike environment. You start out with a weakened King who can only move and capture horizontally and vertically, in a randomized board full of multi-directional Pawns. As you capture more pieces, the king slowly gains additional powers, like diagonal capture and movement, Knight jumping, and eventually even Rook movement, among others. The opposition gets tougher too, until eventually the entire selection of pieces is out to get you.
Originally created for a three-day programming challenge on rec.games.roguelike.development, it's surprisingly cool, and works rather better than you might expect. It's useful as a break between Nethack fatalities.
posted on Aug 2, 2005 - View this thread

Thinking Machine 4 explores the invisible, elusive nature of thought. Play chess against a transparent intelligence, its evolving thought process visible on the board before you.

From Martin Wattenberg (with Marek Walczak); they have been noted here before.
posted on Oct 27, 2004 - View this thread

If you're bored with the kind of chess grandpappy taught you, know there are well over 1,000 other ways to do it. Play chess on a Moebius strip, with hexagons, or like Monopoly. Or play Chaturanga, chess's earliest ancestor. And if you don't have the time to, say, build your own 3-D Star Trek chessboard, there are also variations playable with a standard chess set.
posted on Apr 7, 2004 - View this thread

Perhaps it says something about the intellectual sophistication of ancient cultures that some of the most entertaining games in existence are thousands of years old: backgammon, Go, mancala... The now-ubiquitous chess is a relative newcomer, dating back merely 1400 years. One wonders whether Boggle or Monopoly will withstand the test of time so well.
posted on Feb 18, 2004 - View this thread

Fancy 3D Chess, pinball or crosswords? It's all just more of that Friday Flash Fun!
posted on Mar 21, 2003 - View this thread

Go is better than Chess. (This discussion started in MetaTalk through topic drift, and it really belongs here.)
posted on May 9, 2001 - View this thread