When a site has a name like “Computer Chess Online” it seems only fair that it should offer the chance to play chess against a computer online! To do less would seem to be to let the visitors down…
(A note to the impatient: The page that the free computer chess game is on is listed in the navigation at the top of the page and also with a link at the bottom of this page.)
Free Computer Chess Game for Visitors
Although we live in the computer age many people have never played chess against a computer. I guess there are as many reasons for this as there are people in this situation. As I enjoy computer chess I thought it was only fair to offer other people the chance to indulge themselves in a game I enjoy.
Installing Flash CHESS 3
Now don’t laugh, but it took me a few days just to get the page working. The people from flashchess made a great program but my complete ignorance about how to install it on a website stood in my path quite some time. Eventually I found a way to install chess program and get it to work within WordPress and overall I am happy with the results, with the exception of the fact that the page takes a while to load, but this is unavoidable as the computer engine has to load the game to work (about 2megs total).
It was my original goal to make a variety of chess computers available, but I contacted a number of publishers and precisely none of them came back to me. This left me in a position where the only chess engine I could hope to put on the page was one that was freely distributed. Flash chess 3 is thankfully a pretty advanced program considering its size and the fact that it has been written in Flash rather than more conventional programming language.
If any computer chess programmers are out there reading this and you have a non-experimental chess engine that can run within a webpage please feel free to contact me. It would be really great to offer people a greater variety of chess software and let them see what really is available.
Installing Chess Programs is Fun! (Honest)
Anyone that is familiar with my other websites will know already that I am a big fan of computers and technology, science fiction, chess and online games in general. Writing this website is therefore a labour of love, even when I can’t get annoying flash chess programs to install and run properly on it!
I hope over the coming months to show people some of the things that are really great about the game of chess in general, and computer chess in particular. For now though, I hope you enjoy your time here and this opportunity to play free online chess against a computer.