So far, pretty much the same options as Chess Genius, right? Well, here is where PocketChess Deluxe begins to make some distinctions. In addition to the options of playing against the computer, playing another human, or watching the Palm handheld play itself, PocketChess Deluxe gives you the option to play another Palm handheld owner via the infrared port. This option already makes me long for a wireless standard to be adopted (e.g., Bluetooth) so the two Palm handhelds won't have to have their infrared ports aimed at each other. Sounds like a great way to pass the time in boring meetings, eh?

Display options
I have already mentioned that you can expand the board to fill the screen. You can reverse the colors to see the game from your opponent's point of view, although this is easier to do in Chess Genius. You can also choose between five different color schemes.

You also have other options available, such as the style of the pieces and the colors of the squares, depending upon which scheme you choose. This really lets you customize the board in a way that appeals to you personally. If you find a combination that you really like, you can save it with a name of your choice. Finally, you can choose between five different animation speeds.

Strength of play
The options related to strength of play are somewhat more limited than what's available in Chess Genius. Basically, it's determined by the amount of time you give the computer to think about its next move. You may set this option to anything between one second and 59 hours, but the defaults are between one second and 30 seconds. The longer you give the computer to think, the harder it will play.

PocketChess Deluxe goes one step farther, with a play option called blindfold. When you enable blindfold, you can choose to make some or all pieces anonymous, invisible, or colorless. When a piece is anonymous, it's represented by a "?", when it's invisible, it isn't represented at all, and when it's colorless, you can't tell whether it's your piece or your opponent's. This gives you a lot of options for creating some very challenging games.

Tools
The two main tools that PocketChess Deluxe gives you are the hint feature and a list of pieces taken. You can customize the hint feature to give you stronger or weaker hints depending on how long you let the computer think about the hint. You can set this to be between one and 30 seconds or select a custom value of even longer. The list of pieces taken is a nice feature that I found missing on Chess Genius.

There's another tool that comes with PocketChess Deluxe that's not on the Palm handheld itself. PocketChess Deluxe includes a Windows Companion. By default, every game you play is stored in a database on the Palm handheld. When you HotSync, your games are downloaded to your PC. The Windows Companion provides a tool for reviewing and organizing your games using your PC. You can't play chess on your PC using this tool, but you can step through games and organize them into categories.