Chessworks

ChessWorks is Michael Ekim's multiplayer-only chess client for the Macintosh, distributed through Info-Mac in 2001 as version 3.0.1 and pitched as a complete rewrite of his earlier ChessWorks 1.x and 2.x releases. The application talks to a built-in tracker so players can find opponents over the internet or a LAN.

Strictly multiplayer

Unlike most Mac chess apps of the era, ChessWorks 3 deliberately ships without an AI opponent: every game requires a human across the network. The bundled tracker advertises waiting players and lets you launch matches directly; a chat engine sits alongside the board for in-game conversation. Multiple games and trackers can be opened at once.

Cross-platform rewrite

Version 3 was the first ChessWorks release to run on Mac OS 8-9, Mac OS X, and Windows from the same codebase. Full PGN compatibility, resizable board and piece graphics, configurable game clocks, SOCKS proxy support, and "lots of customising options" are listed as the headline new features in the BinHex header's changelog.

Sibling Info-Mac uploads

This catalogue node is the umbrella entry for the title; the sibling node chessworks-301-x indexes the dedicated Mac OS X build of the same 3.0.1 release. Two more Info-Mac archives - chessworks-301-68k.hqx and chessworks-301-ppc.hqx - cover the Classic Mac OS 68k and PowerPC binaries respectively.

Provenance

Author Michael (signing as hermit@bigpond.net.au) self-published from www.ekimsw.com/chessworks. Internet Archive's Tucows mirror dates the 3.0.1 upload to November 2001. Macworld covered an earlier free-multiplayer-chess update from the same author. There is no Macintosh Garden page for ChessWorks itself.