ChessFriend-Fire

Use ChessFriend-Fire to create a chess database and analyze all your games. ChessFriend-Fire is open source and runs on any platform.

Installation

1. Download the files from the latest ChessFriend-Fire release. On a Windows machine, you can use the tool 7zip to unzip the release_win.tar.gz archive.

2. Change into the directory where you have unzipped your files.

   1. On a Windows machine, double-click on the file:

   chessfriendfire.bat
   

   2. On macOS and Linux, run the following in terminal:

   $ ./node_modules/nw/bin/nw ./src/

   3. On Linux, if the command above does not work, you might need to compile the required packages yourself. Download the recent version of nwjs and copy all the content of the ChessFriend-Fire release folder into the nwjs directory. You can then build the app with the following commands (tested with Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS):

   $ rm -rf ./node_modules # removes existing modules
   $ rm package-lock.json
   $ npm install # builds modules again
   $ npm start

3. When you run ChessFriend-Fire for the first time, you might want to click on the Database button and choose to import the ChessFriend-Fire database, which you can download and unzip from the ChessFriend-Fire Database release. The database contains over 1 Million recent grandmaster games in a special pgn-format which can be imported much faster than a normal pgn file.

Features

• Load and save PGN files
• Browse chess games, including variations
• Label games with custom tags
• Enter moves, variations, and comments
• Pin multiple games as tabs
• Setup board, copy/paste FEN
• Search in database for positions, players or tags
• Autosave and redo/undo history
• Analyze using UCI chess engines
• Integrated Stockfish engine

Keyboard shortcuts

Command	Function
←	Previous move
→	Next move
↑, ↓	Select move in the "Select variation" window. Confirm your choice with ←

Icon

ChessFriend-Fire's icon shows a modified version of the coat of arms of Aachen-Brand, the district in which the chess club Schachfreunde Brand 1981 e.V., birthplace of the idea for this project, is located. The name ChessFriend-Fire is a silly pun that exploits the multiple meanings of the word Brand, which has the meaning of blaze or fire in German. Nevertheless, if you want to help to improve the code, you are kindly invited to do so wherever you live.