WELCOME

Welcome to Sigma Chess version 5.0, a very strong chess program for the Macintosh with an intuitive graphical user interface and many features. We feel confident that Sigma Chess will provide many hours of fun and intellectual challenge. This manual contains all the instructions needed to install and use Sigma Chess. It is assumed that you are familiar with the basics of Macintosh.
 

Features

Sigma Chess has knowledge of a variety of endgames. Apart from basic endgame knowledge such as the rule of the square and opposite coloured bishops, the program has a complete built-in database of the KPK endgame (King and Pawn versus King). Furthermore, Sigma Chess includes complete external endgame databases for a number of 3 and 4 piece endings, such as KQKR, KRKN and KBNK.

Sigma Chess supports transposition tables up to a size of 160 Mb. Transposition tables are used for storing chess positions during the search to avoid re-searching positions. This can have a dramatic effect on the speed of the search, particularly in the endgame.

Sigma Chess supports game annotations, i.e. textual move comments including the standard move suffixes (!, ?, !! e.t.c). The built-in annotation editor lets you annotate games yourself, and the new improved printing facilities lets you print games complete with annotation text, diagrams and move suffixes, using figurine notation (optional) and either long or short algebraic notation.

Sigma Chess also supports game collections, which can contain thousands of games, such as the games of tournaments, matches e.t.c. The built-in collection browser and the database search facilities lets you scan through and select the games that are of interest.

Sigma Chess has a built-in position library editor, where you can edit or create new opening libraries. Note, however, that this feature is disabled in the Lite version.

Sigma Chess is compatible with the PGN (Portable Game Notation) format, which is a cross platform standard for the representation of chess games and positions using ASCII text files. This, for instance, gives you access to thousands of games on the Internet, which are available in the PGN format. In particular, you can import multi-game PGN files into game collections. Additionaly, you can export any part of a collection to the PGN format.

Sigma Chess can be used as an engine from within the powerful chess database ExaChess. Simply make an alias to the Sigma Chess application and move that alias to the ExaChess "ExaChess Tools/Engines" folder.

If you are upgrading from version 4, you will be pleased with all the new features and improvements in this new version 5.0 which include:

• New strong PowerPC native chess engine.
• Completely rewritten user interface with support for multiple game windows.
• Multitasking engine: Sigma Chess can analyze multiple games simultaneously.
• ExaChess compatibility.
• Improved database features, including sorting and filtering.
• New more compact database format (3-4 times smaller than the version 4 format!)
• Improved PGN support and much improved import/export speed.
• Easy copy/paste of games and positions.
• Fischer clocks and monitor mode.
• Select the ELO rating of the chess engine.
• Use the built-in ELO calculator to obtain your new rating.
• Various user interface enhancements such as popup-menus, balloon help and more keyboard shortcuts.
• The 3D board now uses "thousands of colors".

System Requirements

Processor
Any PowerPC.

System Software
Mac OS 7.5 or higher. Native compatibility with Mac OS X will come in a later version.

Monitor
640 x 480 resolution or higher with at least 256 colors or grays. However, thousands of colors are required in order to use the 3D board. A resolution of 800 x 600 or higher is recommended.

Memory
Sigma Chess needs a minimum of 3 Mb memory, but 5 - 10 Mb or more is recommended in order to take full advantage of the transposition tables and the 3D Board.