bucklehead
♡ 41 ( +1 | -1 ) The best free all-in-oneHas got to be WinBoard at www.tim-mann.org/xboard.html . Comes with a free (though fairly weak) chess engine you can use for analysis, though you can set it up to use whatever engine you want. You can even use this as your interface on a bunch of live chess online sites. But at a basic level, as a PGN viewer and basic annotator, you can't go wrong.
premium_steve
♡ 43 ( +1 | -1 ) winboardi can't get this to work.... i downloaded both xboard and winboard, but when i click on the winboard.exe file, i receive the following message in a grey box (always bad ;)) -- "16 bit windows subsystem the system file is not suitable for running msdos and microsoft windows applications."
nothing ever works for me. no matter which interfaces and databases i try downloading, legal & illegal, i never get anything working. i'm just so stupid. AARGHHH! *bangs on keyboard*
bucklehead
♡ 158 ( +1 | -1 ) There are lots of choicesCan't speak to the WinBoard difficulty--it works perfectly for me. I seem to remember there being several WinBoard forums somewhere, if you wanted to work at it.
Otherwise, there are a million free PGN viewers out there, and I'm sure at least one will work for you:
*Chessopolis lets you download an old freeware program called CDB which is actually pretty good: chessopolis.com/cdb-1_5.exe *There is a "lite" version of ChessBase at www.chessbase.com/download/cblight/index.asp *ChessPad ( www.wmlsoftware.com/chesspad.html ) is fairly no-frills but does have the nice feature of letting you export a diagram as a bitmap. Or maybe I'm the only one who thinks that's nice. *SCID ( scid.sourceforge.net/ ) is a full-fledged database program, but can also be used as a simple PGN reader. It's got lots of features but I find it really difficult to use. *I just ran into Jose ( jose-chess.sourceforge.net/ ) today, and it looks OK. Its thing is that it offers a 3D board, but not a fantastic one.
Chessopolis has links to a bunch of others that I have no experience with: chessopolis.com/software.htm . At a minimum, this is a page of great links.
autumnbreeze
♡ 32 ( +1 | -1 ) I use Chess Catavailable from
www.pgn.freeservers.com/chesscat.html
Have u found one which you like onlygb? Chessmaster 9000 etc lets you import PGN games also. :)
onlygb
♡ 6 ( +1 | -1 ) Chess Cat is what I neededBig thanks autumbreeze. Chess Cat is exactly what I was looking for.
bucklehead
♡ 31 ( +1 | -1 ) I must say......that I am very impressed with ChessCat--it's no-nonsense, easy to use, and offers a strong list of features for a free program. I think I may have to make this my front-line tool for annotating my own games. Thanks for the tip, autumbreeze !
wulebgr
♡ 10 ( +1 | -1 ) Winboard is great, butit is now superceded by Arena: www.playwitharena.co.uk/
baseline
♡ 13 ( +1 | -1 ) look at this onethe chess assistant lite version ,free and if you download crafty with it an analysis engine and chess playing program.
sspiroff
♡ 23 ( +1 | -1 ) Screen saver?Are there any free PGN screen savers? I googled around a bit, but could only find shareware programs - which, I certainly don't mind paying for if they're well written, but if there are any free ones, I'd prefer that.
theprez98
♡ 34 ( +1 | -1 ) ChessPadI forgot to post the url for ChessPad:
www.wmlsoftware.com/
Free, and easy to use. Also, compatible with Crafty and similar chess engines.
I've used a number of PGN viewers over the years and found this to be the easiest to use. Also allows you to save variations, alternate lines, etc.
gambiter
♡ 5 ( +1 | -1 ) chesscatIm impressed with chesscat. Its easy to use and simple.