There are a wide variety of chess related programs available for Palm handhelds, including several that will allow you to play against your Palm handheld or another player. A little research revealed that there are two programs that stand head and shoulders above the rest, Chess Genius 1.3 and PocketChess Deluxe 2.0. I spent the last several weeks putting each of these programs through their paces in an attempt to identify which one can be crowned "The King of Chess Applications for the Palm OS."

Before we go any further, I need to let you know I'm no Gary Kasperov. I'm not a competitive chess player. I have never been a ranked player, and I routinely lose to computerized chess programs. I'm writing this for the average person who simply enjoys playing chess. Hopefully, the more advanced players will find this informative as well.

Background
PocketChess was the first chess program for the Palm OS. Version 1.0 was freeware and was only 28K in size. For several years, PocketChess was the only chess program for the Palm OS. Then, in early 2000, Chess Genius made its debut. Chess Genius was a shareware program that boasted significantly more features and much stronger play than PocketChess. Richard Lang is the author of Chess Genius and is well renowned in programming circles for producing chess games with extremely strong play.

The author of PocketChess was already working on a new version when Chess Genius came out. Initially, the author of PocketChess worked to make the program play stronger, but Richard Lang had over a decade head start. PocketChess could already outplay the majority of chess players, so PocketChess instead focused on new features and the overall appearance. The end result is a choice between two very good programs.

Chess Genius 1.3
In its default view, pictured in Figure A, Chess Genius (at http://www.chessgenius.com) packs a lot of information on the screen.

FIGURE A

Here's the Chess Genius default view.

Of course there's a chessboard, but you also get a set of timers at the top of the screen for each player, an overall game timer at the bottom of the screen, and a column that tracks and reports each move made on the right side. This is a lot to absorb at first, but after playing for a short time, it all works very nicely together. All these features make the board pretty small, so you had better have good eyes, especially if you're playing on a Palm m100 or Palm m105. There's also a toggle in the lower right hand corner that'll cause the board to expand and take up most of the screen, as shown in Figure B.