ChessV

Playable chess variants

ChessV (shortening for Chess Variants) is an open source freeware-chess-pogram to play many chess variants. It also allows its users to play Birds Chess, which is truly similar to Gothic Chess, a modern US-patented chess variant which has become one of the most popular ones within few years. Furhermore this program (which is often upgraded, version 0.71 is described here) is capable of playing:

two variants on 6 x 6 squares
ten variants on 8 x 8 squares
four main variants on 10 x 8 squares, futher more popular Capablanca sub variants like Birds Chess
three variants on 10 x 10 squares
six variants of historical variants of the todays most popular kind of chess (played since about 1700)
a strange but (relatively) popular Cylindrical Chess
more options are available

Playing strength

At the Computer Gothic Chess® World Championship 2004, which indeed represents a rather great challenge for chess progammers, ChessV finished, despite some weak poins, especially in the endgame and recognizing unforced draws, with a remarkable third place after 14 rounds.

ChessV could be comapired to Zillions of Games, a commercial and very impressive Universal Board Game engine.

Engine Features

gregstrong.com (infomation about and download of the ChessV open source software)
brainking.com (a chess variants server to play against other human beings)