Wikipedia
ChessV (short for Chess Variants) is a free computer program designed to play a large number of chess variants. ChessV is an open-source, universal chess variant program with a graphical user-interface, sophisticated AI, support for opening books and other features of traditional chess programs. The developer of this program, Gregory Strong, has been adding more variants with each release of ChessV. Over 50 chess variants are supported. ChessV is designed to be able to play any game that is reasonably similar to Chess. ChessV is one of only a few such programs that exist. The source code of this program is freely available for download as well as the executable program.
As of ChessV 0.93, it is possible to customize the variants it supports. Of all chess variants supported, two of the most-played variants are probably Fischer Random Chess and Grand Chess.
ChessV is capable of playing:
- 2 variants on 6×6 squares
- 17 variants on 8×8 squares
- 15 variants on 10×8 squares
(including 10 Capablanca Chess variants)
- 15 variants on 10×10 squares
- 3 variants on 12×8 squares
Some of the provided variants can be customized in their details. It is also possible to create custom variants with ChessV 0.93. While the board sizes have to be 6×6, 8×8, 10×8, 10×10 or 12×8 and the pieces in a custom variant have to be chosen from a limited list, this allows ChessV to play hundreds or thousands of variants of each game it directly supports.