User playing against Crafty |
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| Developer(s) | The PyChess Project |
| Initial release | 13 September 2006 |
| Development status | Active |
| Written in | Python (PyGTK) |
| Operating system | Unix-like |
| Available in | Multilingual (51 languages) |
| Type | Chess game |
| License | GNU General Public License 3 |
| Website | pychess.org |
PyChess is a Free software chess game developed for Linux. It allows users to play offline or on the online, through the free chess community FICS. PyChess also incooperates a chess engine which in contrast to most other AIs for chess is written in the Python language, focusing more on fun of play than raw strength. For more advanced users, PyChess allows for virtually any other external chess engine to be used with it.[1]
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Development on PyChess was started by Thomas Dybdahl Ahle in 2006, and the first public release was sent out later that year.[2] The release contained the bare minimum of features to play a game of chess, and was backed only by the Gnu Chess engine.
In the end of 2006, PyChess was close to become a part of Gnome Games, which were holding a usage survey of aspiring new games to include in the suite.[3] Being nearly just started at the time, it lost to the more established GlChess, which managed to fix its hardware accelerating dependency before the end of the trial.[3][4] GlChess is still developed as a part of Gnome today. Afterwards there were talks of the two programs merging, but the developers discovered were targeting different user segments, with PyChess heading for the more advanced users.[5]
In 2009 PyChess won Les Trophées du Libre in Paris in the category of hobby computing.[6]
PyChess has grown steadily since then, with an increasing year-over-year development activity, and is today worth more than $500,000 if estimated purely in man-hours.[7] It is today among the seven largest chess clients for the online chess community FICS,[8] which is the only non-web-based online chess community available for Linux.
The current PyChess logo was contributed by Karola Kreńskiego in 2007.[9] Karolas original design was very cartoonish, but was modified into a slightly calmer expression.[10]
According to the PyChess website:
The goal of PyChess is to provide an advanced chess client for Linux, and do that with a nice and efficient user interface in line with the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines. The client should be fun and exciting to those new to chess - who just want to play a short games to procrastinate their work - as well as those who want to utilize their computer for further enhancing their play.[11]
The PyChess project puts heavy emphasis on simplicity, trying to avoid the complicated user interfaces of XBoard and BabasChess. This implies adding new features slowly, so they can be integrated in the overall usage scheme, and make things “just work”. At the same time the project strives to contain most of the features known from major Windows chess clients such as Chessbase and Aquarium.