Love chess? No further questions. Yafi.
This will never be as beautiful as little evil crows or rapacious arachnids, but at least it can challenge your brain cells.
Yafi is a chess application (called interface or client) which uses Free Internet Chess Server (aka FICS, freechess.org) as a connection point for thousands of chess players all over the world.
If you just want to play a quick game while going to school or work, or you want to meet new people online with the same passion to chess - this application is for you.
It allows you to seek games and accept games sought by other users, match them or accept their challenges, observe and examine games, chat with other users, see a list of server news items and offline messages sent to you and (obviously) play chess and many chess variants like: suicide, atomic, losers, fisher random (chess 960), upside down...
Timeseal and premove, the most important things for fast (lightning and blitz) games, are implemented.
Yafi allows you to chat with other players by using Unicode characters. Keep in mind this is not directly supported by server and not all players will see non-latin characters correctly.
You may login as a guest to play unrated games if you don't provide any credentials.
Application is supported by ads.
Version of Yafi which doesn't contain ads is now available.
You may buy it to support development.
Yafi is in early development stages, so expect frequent updates.
This application doesn't have any built-in chess engine, so you can only play online against other human beings, but also against computer players, which also connect to FICS.
It works very well on both phones and tablets.
Thanks to everybody who reports problems with the application or gives any kind of feedback and especially to Sam D., GS and LeO.
Recent changes:
--- 0.6.27 ---
- menu option on login screen to send feedback or bug report e-mail to developer, please use this when sending crash reports for a quicker fix
- fixed interaction with puzzlebot and endgamebot via console (Robert)
- examine button after game end (LeO)
- not showing rematch when opponent forfeits by disconnection
- fixed switching to newly created game when already on board screen
- sorting games on board screen: newest first
--- 0.6.26 ---
- fixed crash when having 'Help improve Yafi' on and license was cashed in Yafi+ (Robert)
- client-side board flip menu option
- board close button disabled during the game (LeO)
- fixed refresh command when observing more than one game
- fixed not showing messages and news when message box is full
- observing crazyhouse/bughouse games (no play/examine support yet)
--- 0.6.25 ---
- new icon (Y with knight)
- rematch dialog after game end
- possibility to close the boards (automatically stops observing and examining) - this is not fully tested, so please report any crash
- fixed game not showing for adjourned games
- fixed game not showing when using "follow "
- fixed list of players not showing when 1 player is in channel
- disabled buggy check which caused observed games not to refresh sometimes (to be fixed later)
--- 0.6.24 ---
- added game type, opponent and time filters on sought screen (default filter is to show only chess)
- added messages and news screen
- added support for clicking links in conversations, informations screen, messages and news
- added banner to FICS on login screen
- screens are visible on phone landscape orientation when there is keyboard
- board is disabled before first game is played, observed or examined
- other things I don't remember
- probably added some bugs
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