Chess King Diamond 2018 with Houdini 6

Except for the basic exercises, everything is locked out. And there is an annoying voice while doing the other exercises. Do yourself a favor and sign up at the Chess.com website instead.

Chess King Diamond 2018 is an excellent modern chess software program that continues the line of Chess King software that has been on the market for the past several years. Like its predecessors, it is loaded with features that will help any chess player, regardless of skill level, play a better game of chess.Chess King Diamond 2018 is intended to teach users how to play better chess through training and analysis. It’s equipped with the Houdini 6 chess engine – still one of the strongest chess engines on the market. It is specifically designed for Windows-based PCs with multi-core processors (up to 8 cores.) It works very well within the Windows 10 environment, showing no compatibility issues with the latest updates to Microsoft’ operating system. There is also a version that works in the MAC OSX 10.13 High Sierra operating environment.Even though Chess King Diamond’s Houdini 6 chess engine has a top “super grandmaster” Elo rating of 3397 (CCRL 40/40 list, February 2019), the program does allow players to adjust its difficulty level anywhere from Elo 800 (Beginner) to Elo 3200 (Grandmaster.) Players can play in “Fun Mode,” where they can seek hints and take back moves, or in “Rated Mode,” where the program estimates a player’s Elo rating after every game. The user interface is attractive and easy to use, but is perhaps becoming a little dated in its appearance as compared with some other, newer chess programs I’ve used recently.Not only does Chess King Diamond 2018 allow players to play Classical Chess; it also provides a host of chess puzzles that teach chess tactics. The puzzles range in difficulty from beginner to grandmaster. There are also hundreds of “Quest Games,” where players can play against a handicapped Houdini 6 engine. (It’s a lot of fun taking on Houdini when it plays with only a King, Bishop, and eight pawns against my complete chess army… and it still wins).Since I started using the Chess King line of software four years ago, learning and playing chess has been a very enjoyable pastime for me. Chess King Diamond 2018 gives me hours of challenging fun, while at the same time helping me improve my game. Highly recommended.