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Press release edited by Applelinks senior editor Kirk Hiner

Aqueous Software LLC has announce the release of Gambit 1.0, a Mac OS X application for chess play and analysis. It allows games to be played against the chess engine Crafty, which can use an opening book and endgame tablebases, and also "learns" as it plays. Gambit also allows completed chess games to be recorded, replayed, annotated and analyzed. The level of play can be adjusted, the board appearance can be customized, and the style of chess pieces can be selected.

Is there room in the world for another chess application? There is for a better one. Gambit's user interface is uncluttered and intuitive. A single List window displays PGN (Portable Game Notation) file hierarchy and the games each contains, and organizes and provides structure to game collections. Games can be examined (displayed) in Game windows, of which any number can be open. Gambit uses and is 100% compatible with the PGN format standard. Support for game annotation includes standard punctuation and evaluation glyphs, variations (and sub-variations) and text comments. Not only does Gambit read, display and save all of the standard PGN tag-value pairs, it retains non-standard pairs when a game with any is modified and re-saved.

Gambit is written in Cocoa and requires Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther) or later. Currently, Gambit 1.0 is localized in English only. For complete details and to download Gambit 1.0 please go to www.aqueoussoftware.com.

Gambit is shareware. The trial form may be used for free for up to thirty (30) days. An individual license can be purchased for $20, and a family license for $30. Crafty is open-source freeware developed by Dr. Robert Hyatt at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.