Topic: Sigma Chess is a master strength Macintosh chess program for OS X and OS 8 or 9

[Software Santa]

Sigma Chess is a master strength Macintosh chess program for OS X and OS 8 or 9

Sigma Chess 6.2
Free Mac OS X Chess Software

Sigma Chess is a freeware, master strength Macintosh chess program for Mac OS X. The feature set includes: Optional HIARCS engine, UCI Engine support, Databases, PGN/EPD, basic desktop publishing, endgame databases, novice levels, a true perspective 3D board, ExaChess compatibility and much more. Sigma also runs on Classic Mac OS, but this is no longer officially supported.



About Sigma Chess

Welcome to the Sigma Chess home page! If you own a Macintosh and you like chess, you should download Sigma Chess. You can:
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    Play chess against the strong built-in engine: Adjust the playing strength to your own level simply by setting the ELO rating for Sigma Chess, and choose among the many playing modes, levels and styles.

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    Play chess against the World Chess Championship strength HIARCS 13 engine bundled with Sigma Chess: Sigma Chess supports the UCI (Universal Chess Interface) protocol, so you can use other UCI chess engines for Mac OS X. Click here for a list.

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    Analyze and annotate games: Instruct Sigma Chess to annotate games with its analysis, or add your own free text annotations including diagrams and move suffixes. You can even write and print your own chess literature.

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    Maintain & access game collections/databases: The built-in database manager lets you filter and sort large game collections. Additionally you can import PGN game files that you have e.g. downloaded from the internet (see the Selected Chess Links). Sigma Chess can also be used as an engine from within ExaChess.

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    Customize the appearance & behavior of Sigma Chess: You can choose among the various piece sets, board types, types of move notation, colour schemes, the true perspective 3D board etc.


Sigma Chess Lite & Pro

As of version 6.2, Sigma Chess is only released as FREEWARE including the full feature set of the previous Pro version.

The Author

Sigma Chess 6.2 is developed by Ole K. Christensen. If you have any questions or comments please check out the FAQ or send me an e-mail.

Copyright (C) 2010, Ole K. Christensen


Sigma Chess 6.2 Main Features
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    UCI Engine Support
    Sigma Chess 6.2 supports the UCI (Universal Chess Interface) protocol, so you can run other Mac OS X engines in the Sigma Chess GUI. The World Championship strength HIARCS 13 engine is bundled with Sigma Chess. Click here for a list of UCI chess engines for Mac OS X (UCI is not supported on Mac OS 9).

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    Hosting of Engine Matches
    Sigma Chess 6.2 can now host matches between UCI chess engines.

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    MultiPV
    The MultiPV (k-var) option is now available for UCI engines supporting this feature (such as the registered HIARCS 13 engine).

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    Native OS X Compatility
    Sigma Chess 6.2 is a so-called "Carbon" application that runs natively under Mac OS X. Sigma Chess 6.2 also runs on the "Classic" Mac OS version 8.6 or 9.x (but this is no longer officially supported).

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    Strong "multi-instance" Chess Engine
    Sigma Chess 6.2 can analyze multiple positions/games simultaneously by smoothly multitasking between each engine "instance". You can for example instruct Sigma Chess 6.2 to analyze one or more positions in the background, while you play a game in the frontmost game window.

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    Position/Opening Line Database Search
    It is possible to perform database searches on specific board positions and opening lines.

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    Up to 1 Million Games in Collections
    Sigma Chess 6.2 supports collections/databases containing up to 1 million games! (but obviously sorting and filtering is slower and uses a lot more memory for such large collections, so you might find it more practical to limit your collections to e.g. 100.000 games or less).

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    Better PGN/EPD support
    PGN files can now be opened directly without you first having to create a new empty collection.

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    HTML Export
    Sigma Chess 6.2 can generate chess related web pages with embedded chess diagrams, annotation text etc (similar to printing). It uses the same piece set naming convention as in ChessBase, so you can use your favorite ChessBase piece sets instead of the standard Sigma Chess HTML piece set. Click here for an example, which shows how the included "Rules of Chess" collection/book looks when exported.

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    Improved Position Library Support
    Now supports standard position classification glyphs (=, +/- etc). Also, you can now easily build your own position library by importing positions from game collections.

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    Rating History Graph
    A player ELO dialog is included which shows more rating statistics, including an ELO history graph showing the development of the player's ELO rating.

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    Multiple Board Sizes
    Sigma Chess 6.2 supports multiple 2D board sizes.

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    Custom Boards & Color Schemes
    You can now define you own custom color scheme and 2D board via the standard Apple Color Picker

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    Easy and intuitive Clipboard Handling
    Copy/paste entire games/positions between game windows and collections.

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    Many levels and time controls
    Including Monitor mode, Solver mode (limited by time and/or score ) and Fischer clocks.

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    Full support for the ExaChess engine protocol
    The engine can thus be used from within ExaChess along with the other engines supported by ExaChess.


 System Requirements for Sigma Chess 6.2
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    Processor: Any PowerPC or Intel.

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    System Software: Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

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    Display: 800 x 600 resolution or higher with thousands or millions of colours.

http://www.sigmachess.com/