Mac OS X Tiger/Meet the Applications/Chess

Fig. 1 - A game of chess.

Chess originated in ancient India, and it took the world by the storm. It's now one of the most popular games in the world, and comes with every copy of Mac OS X. The Apple version is the strategy game you know and love digitized and played on a beautifully-rendered 3D board. You can even rotate the board in 3D space by grabbing the edge and dragging! Standard Chess rules apply.

When you open Chess, it automatically starts a new Human vs. Computer Game. This means that you, the Human, will play as white against your Mac, which will play as black. Drag a piece from its position to where you want it to move, and the game begins!

If you want a game set up differently, choose Game > New Game. A sheet appears and offers to create a Human vs. Computer (you as white, your Mac as black), Computer vs. Human (your Mac as white, you as black), Human vs. Human (you and a friend can play against each other), or Computer vs. Computer (for when you are really, really bored) game.

The dialog box also lets you choose a “Variant” if you wish, a mixed-up version of chess that follows a different set of rules. These variants are:

Suicide - To win, you must lose every single one of your pieces, however, you are forced to take a piece if possible. The king is no more important than any other piece. Also, castling is not allowed.
Losers - To win, you must either take the king or every other piece besides the king. No castling allowed.
Crazyhouse - If you take one of your opponent's pieces, you receive the same piece in your color. For example, if you are white and you take the black queen, you receive a white queen (even if you already have one on the board). The white queen appears next to the board and can be dropped into any square at any time during the game.

TRICK: The Move menu is your friend! Utilizing the choices it offers lets you take back stupid moves, see your opponent’s last move if you weren’t paying attention, and even receive a hint from the computer for your next move.

Chess Preferences (Chess > Chess Preferences) has a few options for your adjusting your game. Most important is the Computer Difficulty slider, which lets you choose how good the computer is at defeating you. The stronger the computer is, the longer it deliberates each move. At the maximum setting, it may think for hours before making a decision.

The Chess Preferences window also offers options to adjust the look of your game board and pieces, and has controls for enabling speech in Chess (see Chapter 11).