Raptor is a Great FICS Desktop Client for Mac

Free Internet Chess Server (FICS), which can be found at www.freechess.org, is a great way to play chess online for free. Besides being free, another great thing about FICS is the presence of a huge community, so that you’ll always have someone within your playing level to start a game with. It is also highly moderated by system and human moderators so that trolls and cheaters are quickly identified and acted upon accordingly.

I used to connect to FICS via Winboard or BabasChess on my Windows machine. But now that I’m on a Mac (specifically on an Intel, Mac OS X Lion 10.7, Macbook Pro 13″ Early 2011), these two programs don’t just seem to work. Good thing I stumbled upon a comment from one user in the FICS group in Facebook about Raptor Chess.

Raptor-Chess

So when I did install it, it was actually like BabasChess for Mac. So thanks to the developers of this program, now I can enjoy playing at FICS natively on my Mac.

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saad khaja March 5, 2012 Reply

how can I contact Raptor.
chess board screen does not open

Palinurus October 9, 2012 Reply

Jin is well worth the download too! I highly recommend it. Unlike Raptor it allows for a full screen view – very immersive.

meteorrock January 14, 2013 Reply

Yeah there needs to be a way for you to play offline with chess engines.

How do you do that? Can you implement that feature for us?

Daniel April 17, 2016 Reply

Raptor is great for advanced users.
If you’re on Mac and haven’t ever tried playing on FICS, or maybe you’re not playing too often, there’s an alternative – http://lightfics.brrm.ru/ . LightFICS is very simple to use and it doesn’t need Java on Mac.

deuts April 20, 2016 Reply

Thanks Daniel! Will definitely give LightFICS a try soon!

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