Chess

Chess Mac OS X comes with only one game, but its a beauty (Figure 10-2). Chess is a traditional chess game played on a gorgeously rendered board with a set of realistic 3-D pieces
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Chess10.6. ChessMac OS X comes with only one game, but its a beauty (Figure 10-2). Chess is atraditional chess game played on a gorgeously rendered board with a set of realistic 3-Dpieces. You can rotate the board in space, as described in Figure 10-2.The program is actually a 20-year-old Unix-based chess program, GNU Chess, thatApple packaged up in a new wrapper.10.6.1. Playing a Game of ChessWhen you launch Chess, youre presented with a fresh, new game thats set up in Humanvs. Computer mode—meaning that you (the Human, with the light-colored pieces) get toplay against the Computer (your Mac, on the dark side). Drag the chess piece of yourchoice into position on the board, and the game is afoot.If you choose Game New Game, however, youre offered a pop-up menu withchoices like Human vs. Computer, Human vs. Human, and so on. If you switch the pop-up menu to Computer vs. Human, you and your Mac trade places; the Mac takes thewhite side of the board and opens the game with the first move, and you play the blackside.Tip: The same New Game dialog box also offers a pop-up menu called Variant, whichoffers three other chess-like games: Crazyhouse, Suicide, and Losers. The Chess helpscreens (choose Help Chess Help, click Starting a new chess game) explain thesevariations. Figure 10-2. You dont have to be terribly exact about grabbing the chess pieces when its time to make your move. Just click anywhere within a pieces current square to drag it into a new position on the board (shown here in its Marble incarnation). And how did this chess board get rotated like this? Because you can grab a corner of the board and rotate it in3-Dspace. Cool!On some night when the video store is closed and youre desperate for entertainment, youmight also want to try the Computer vs. Computer option, which pits your Mac againstitself. Pour yourself a beer, open a bag of chips, and settle in to watch until someone—either the Mac or the Mac—gains victory.10.6.2. Chess PrefsChoose Chess Preferences to find some useful controls like these: • Style. Apple has gone nuts with the computer-generated materials options in this program. (Is it a coincidence that Steve Jobs is also the CEO of Pixar, the computer animation company?) In any case, you can choose all kinds of wacky materials for the look of your game board—Wood, Metal, Marble, or Grass (?)—and for your playing pieces (Wood, Metal, Marble, or Fur). • Computer Plays. Use this slider to determine how frustrated you want to get when trying to win at Chess. The farther you drag the slider toward the Stronger side, the more calculations the computer runs before making its next move—and, thus, the harder it gets for you to outthink it. At the Faster setting, Chess wont spend more than 5 seconds ruminating over possible moves. Drag the slider all the way to the right, however, and the program may analyzeeach move for as long as 10 fun-filled hours. This hardest setting, of course, makes it all but impossible to win a game (which may stretch on for a week or more anyway). Choosing the Faster setting makes it only mildly impossible. • Speech. The two checkboxes here let you play Chess using the Macs built-in voice-recognition features, telling your chess pieces where to go instead of dragging them, and listening to the Mac tell you which moves its making. Section 15.5.1.2 has the details.Tip: If your Chess-playing skills are less than optimal, the Moves menu will become yourfast friend. The three commands tucked away there undo your last move (great forrecovering from a blunder), suggest a move when you dont have a clue what to do next,and display your opponents previous move (in case you failed to notice what thecomputer just did).10.6.3. Studying Your GamesYou can choose Game Save Game to save any game in progress, so you can resumeit later.To analyze the moves making up a game, use the Game Log command, which displaysthe history of your game, move by move. A typical move would be recorded as Nb8—c6, meaning the knight on the b8 square moved to the c6 square. Equipped with a Chesslist document, you could recreate an entire game, move by move.Tip: If you open this window before you begin a new game, you can see the game log fillin the moves as they happen.