Open Source C Chess Games

"Shane's Chess Information Database" is a huge chess toolkit with extensive database, analysis and chess-playing features. Scid vs. PC is a usability and bug-fix fork of Scid. It has many interface fixes and improvements, and is fully compatible with Scid's .si4 databases. New features include a rewritten Gamelist, Computer Tournament, and FICS, Tree, Book and Graph improvements.

GCompris is a high quality educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10. Some of the activities are game oriented, but nonetheless still educational.

Scidb is an open-source chess database application for Windows, Unix/Linux. It is a new development inspired by Scid.

Winboard 4.5 32-bit is a free Windows accessible Chess program that works automatically with the JAWS or the free NVDA screen reader. It is for the blind, low sighted or those who can not use a mouse. It provides vocal announcements of position changes and other selectable board conditions. Blind players also use a separate "tactile chess board". Winboard 4.5 has full keyboard access to move pieces and run menu items. Partial sighted players use high contrast mode and adjust board, piece, most font sizes and colors. Available languages are English, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Russian. Games may be viewed, modified or saved in standard PGN format. Two Chess engines supply play and grand master strength move analysis. Connect to the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) and play humans. Modify verbosity in screen reader configurations and in the Winboard "Sound" dialog under the "General" menu. Find all documentation in the "doc" folder under the Winboard directory of your C drive.

ChessDB is a free open-source chess database for Windows, Linux, Mac OSX and most UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems. ChessDB is based on code from Scid http://scid.sourceforge.net/ - a project for which there have been no updates for several years. In

Popeye is a chess problem solving and testing software with strong support for fairy chess and heterodox genres. For more information cf. topic "Popeye (chess)" on http://en.wikipedia.org/

Faile is a free chess program which plays a fairly strong game of chess (Expert strength or better). One of the main goals of Faile is to provide a full featured chess program with source code which is tidy, well documented, and easy to understand.

Gambit is a cross-platform chess game. There are binaries for Windows users. Users of Unix-like operating systems can check the web site for build instructions (it should be easy to follow).

Sjeng is a strong, GPL'ed chessprogram that plays bughouse and crazyhouse (drop-chess). It also supports standard chess and is compatible with any program supporting the XBoard/WinBoard protocol.

FreeICS is a server which allows multiple users to play chess against each other. This project is stable and in production at a number of sites. There are several sub-projects which enhance the utility of the server, starting with a tournament manager.

A console/text based chess program with XBoard/CECP and UCI API, available on all major platforms. You may need a graphical chess interface to use it. Please refer to README.md in the files section for installation instructions. The last stable release is 2.1.9 and has been released on 19/08/2025. Belofte 0.2.0 till 0.9.20 (c/c++): Xboard 1 & 2 (CECP) - Linux/Unix/(Windows) Belofte 2.1.1 and up (c++11) : UCI and Xboard 2 - Linux/Windows/Mac/Android/... For access to code, please clone the git repository. Compiles and Runs on 32/64 bit on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android (ARM/x86) and Raspberry. Released under GNU v2 license. (means free to copy, free to modify, free to use, ...) Works fine with Arena/Cutechess/BanksiaGui/Winboard/Xboard/...

Thief is a free chess client to play on chess servers like FICS: http://www.freechess.org It supports regular chess and all variants played. It is the best client for playing Bughouse, a special team-chess game (for more info see http://www.bughouse.

This project is a POSIX-compliant driver for the dgt board from dgtprojects. It is intented at acting as a layer between chess engines and the dgt board.

Cross-Platform 3D Chess A 3D chess game made using OpenGL and C++ Objectives: -High Quality Graphics -Proper Chess Rules -Availability of Unofficial Chess Rules -Reading Generic Chess Files -Proper A.I. for user vs. computer modes -Good GUI -Network Current Status: Chess rules exist

SAN Kit was made public in 1993 by Stephen Edwards, the inventor of PGN Chess notation. The original code is in C, and with few comments quite cryptic. In addition, the original author's style was quite quixotic, making it even more difficult to read. This code is now reformatted to modern standards, adds support for NAG codes and comments, and has a "non-CLI" mode for inclusion in chess playing programs. The code has gone through extensive analysis using the llvm/clang compiler and reports no issues at this time. To use the code as a "framework" you would undefined "CLI". In addition, a small C++ program is included that takes as input a file of one or more PGN records, and outputs pure pristine PGN records as output. In addition to flagging errors at the move level, the program provides three boards around the move. NOTE: plan on budgeting a fair amount of time to read, re-read, and experiment with the documentation and cryptic uncommented code. You are on your own

CBoard (Curses/Console Board) is an Ncurses frontend to chess engines supporting the XBoard protocol. Supports reading and writing PGN including roster tags, RAV, FEN, NAG and comments, lots of configuration options, UTF-8, different board sizes depending on the terminal and more.

MooseChess is a very strong chess AI.

SOSS - a chess pairing program. Features: enter result using bar codes, lots of configurable print outs, calculation of team competitions, administration of fees etc, adm. of leaders, multiple competitions in one event, html print outs.

Slibo is a chess interface and a chess engine for KDE.

TChess is an extended chess played on a Torus (donut) It includes a computer player (KI) with 3 strength levels and multiplayer support. -- Please post your questions in the Help-Forum!

Thief is a free chess client to play on chess servers like FICS: http://www.uschessnetwork.com It supports regular chess and all variants played. It is the best client for playing Bughouse, a special team-chess game

An open source chess engine in C, released under the GPL. Compatible with the XBoard and UCI interface protocols to link to a GUI or other chess arbiter.

icsdrone acts as an interface between an ICS (Internet Chess Server) and a chess engine supporting the XBoard/WinBoard protocol. Unlike XBoard/WinBoard it does not use a graphical interface so it is suitable for use on embedded systems. icsdrone was originally developed for FICS (the Free Internet Chess Server) by Henrik Gram but currently ICC (the Internet Chess Club) works as well. Some features - "Daemon mode" (run in background). - Auto reconnection in case of network problems. - Builtin support for using timeseal. - An ICS proxy. When instructed via the "proxy" option, icsdrone acts as a proxy for the ICS it is connected to. This is similar to using xboard with zippy but now the "GUI" (xboard/winboard) can be closed without terminating the engine.

miniMardi - Messy chess program. This is a "oh no not another simple chess program" chess program.

OliveChess is a simple chess engine compatible with modern chess interfaces such as ChessBase products, Arena and XBoard/Winboard. The engine supports UCI and XBoard protocols. Note: in order to use it as an xboard engine you may need Polyglot tool to be installed first