I'm a big fan of correspondence chess, and like to stay "on book" in my openings. After trying various shareware and torrent-ware programs, I finally gave up and decided to write my own utility with the primary focus being ease of use.
No installation is required; simply unzip to any folder and run the exe. (If you decide to use this utility, you'll want to make a shortcut.) Everything that would normally require references or components is instead handled in native VB6 classes. Specifically, my XP Library (older version linked in signature) plus a StatusBar class to handle the progress bar.
With this utility you can walk through all openings in the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings (ECO) with a clean, simple GUI.
All the rules of chess are enforced, and you can play an actual game to completion. Checkmate, stalemate, threefold repetition and the fifty-move rule are all supported. There is no computer AI at all, and this program probably isn't written efficiently enough to be a good candidate for one. Though anyone is welcome to try.
Chess Openings.zip is the distributable application, which is 100% freeware. Source.zip contains the complete source code.
Last edited by Ellis Dee; Dec 31st, 2010 at 10:57 AM.
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