To easily play against a chess engine or use it to analyze boards, you'll want to pair it with a chess GUI. (I consult the rankings from .)Īn engine alone won't do much for you, as they don't include any kind of graphical user interface, just a console. If you're not sure a chess engine is something you want to tinker with, don't buy anything-free engines are extremely powerful. These engines are primarily for training-you can play against them, analyze chess positions, and pit them against each other-so they're for people who seriously want to study the game. Komodo is also highly ranked, though you'll have to pay a subscription for the latest version (Komodo 9 is free), and Houdini costs €40 for the standard edition. I recommend the free and open source Stockfish engine or its derivatives. If you want to play against a powerful, customizable computer opponent for the purpose of studying chess, you'll want a chess engine.
It supports online play with a separate account, and comes with a good computer opponent via the Stockfish engine (see the section below for an explanation on that). It's not nearly as slick as Chess Ultra, and it crashed on me pretty quickly, but hey, it's free.
For a free-to-play alternative, try Simply Chess.
