Play Chess On Your Mac

Since OS X 10.2 Apple has included a Chess game by default on your Mac. The current version allows you to play against the computer with varying difficultly levels, play against another person, and even play online. You can change the look of the 3D board, hear moves and even speak to make a move. You can also save and resume games.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Did you know that a chess game comes with your Mac and it has for a long time. You can find it in the Applications folder, it's right there, or just launch it with Spotlight by using Command space and typing chess. It's a pretty versatile app. It asks you to sign in with iCloud, I'll tell you why later, but for now you can just cancel and skip that. 
So, you can start a new game and there are several different modes in this chess game. You can do different variations on chess and you can also play human versus human. So you don't need a chess board with you. If you've got your MacBook with you, you can play with the person sitting next you. You can also do human versus computer and reverse the situation there. You can even have a computer versus computer game where they play each other. 
Now, once you start you can set the number of seconds that the computer thinks per move. The more time you give the computer to think the tougher it's going to be. So you start. Now you just move the pieces as normal. Just drag and drop. Then the computer will make its move and even call it out for you. So you've got this little microphone here and you can even show the moves there so you can see all the different moves. 
There are a whole bunch of other options as well. So, for instance, you can go into Chess Preferences here and you can set the board to be something different like a metallic board. You can even change it during the game and the pieces as well. Lots of fun options there. You can turn off the speaking moves right there. Even change the voice that the moves are spoken in. 
You can change the intelligence of the computer right in the middle of the game if you wish. You can even speak your own moves and it will understand you. You don't even have to click anything or hold a key down. It's always listening. I'm going to create a pause hear so it starts listening and speak a move. Pawn E2 to E4. Pawn C7 to C6.
There is a bunch of other options as well. For instance you can take back the last move. You can have it show a Hint. You can have it reshow the last move if you missed it. Check this out. You can save a game. So in the middle of a game you can save it and then open that game later on to resume it. So you can have multiple games going at the same time or pause to continue the game another day. 
Now I mentioned that you can also do multi player and that's what that iCloud sign in was before. If I do New and I choose Game Center Match there, then I hit Start and it allows me to connect with people I'm connected to using Game Center. If you're not familiar with Game Center it  is a whole other subject.  But it is a nice thing to be able to do. 
The one last thing I want to show you is that notice that this is a 3D view of a chess board. So you can click and hold any corner of the board and then drag to change the view. You can rotate it all the way around and you can kind of drag it up and down just to get a slightly different view of the board if you want.

Comments: 3 Responses to “Play Chess On Your Mac”

Ray Whitehead

8 years ago

Gary,

Is there an iPhone equavalent of iMac's chess?

Gary Rosenzweig

Ray: There is no Apple-produced app, no. But a quick search of the iOS App Store comes up with dozens of Chess apps.

Mark

Nice one Gary I have no idea it was there thank you

Comments Closed.

Play Chess On Your Mac

Comments: 3 Responses to “Play Chess On Your Mac”

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