looking for a chess notation buffer translator thing

December 24, 2007 6:02 PM

I'm looking for a chess program into which I can simply type algebraic notation, and then be able to watch the game one move at a time on the board. For macs.

The idea is to have something I can use as a companion to chess books that tend to list whole games by notation. I want to be able to see the games without having to set them up on an actual board. And it has to be able to work in OSX.

Note that I also don't want to have to go through and move the pieces.

posted by bingo to sports, hobbies, & recreation (7 comments total)

Why is typing moves easier than moving pieces? In any case, chesslab has a simple Java-based viewer that lets you search for positions in a database. If you don't want to move the pieces you can also load existing game scores (via the oddly placed "Load Game" link below the board).
posted by futility closet at 7:56 PM on December 24, 2007

First I asked the question, what was this notation you are talking about.

"chess game notatation" in google calls it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Game_Notation

"chess notation" in google has:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_chess_notation

adding together ...

"algebraic chess notation osx" nothing useful (I even got a link back here)

"portable chess notataion osx" is more promising:
http://www.worldchesslinks.net/e0003.html
posted by so_ at 8:02 PM on December 24, 2007

I'm not sure if you want to type the moves in one by one and watch them happen one by one, or to type in the whole game, save it, and then review the game. If it is the latter, then you should look at Portable Game Notation, which is a file type that is basically is algebraic notation. Then, you just need a chess program that opens PGN files (which is a lot of them).
posted by ssg at 8:38 PM on December 24, 2007

ssg, can you recommend any for OSX?
posted by danb at 9:15 AM on December 25, 2007

Sorry, I can't recommend anything particular for OSX. Jin would probably work and is pretty popular with OSX users who play online, but I haven't used it myself.
posted by ssg at 10:10 AM on December 25, 2007

You can apparently install Scid using Fink.

This may be worth a read, once you fix the weird white-on-white colour scheme.

Exachess may be worth a look, though I've never used it, so am not really endorsing it per se.
posted by pompomtom at 8:10 PM on December 26, 2007

I've been a big fan of Winboard for viewing games or exploring variations.
You can enter moves algebraically or drag pieces with a mouse. Then if you get to a place in the book where you don't understand, you can have it think up its best move.

Winboard is Windows-only, but I think Xboard is identical, except it's unix-based. It runs on MacOS X, but needs an X11 server.
posted by MtDewd at 12:27 PM on January 1, 2008