Go to the home page for ChessBase at http://www.chessbase.com
Once there Click ChessBase Light (free) and download this great chess games database system. After you download this you should register it for free so you can download the free sample database chess.exe a self-extracting zip file which contains over 2000 recent professional tournement games.
Then go to Claude Kaber's home page at http://webplaza.pt.lu/public/ckaber/
Once there click Chess Training and get all the zip files containing ChessBase databases. There are many timed problems in CBLight's training mode.
The next link is for FICS the Free Internet Chess Server (It used to be called the First Internet Chess Server before the name change a couple years ago). This is a Telnet-based server rather than a Java-based server like Yahoo!'s games server so you need a client program to play there. First go to FICS home page at http://www.freechess.org/
Then click Quick Guide.
After that Click Download and choose your operating system.
For Win 95 and above I suggest the client program WinBoard.
For UNIX running X Windows I suggest XBoard, the X Windows version of WinBoard.
These are both freeware client programs.
I like the shareware client program WinICC (Windows Internet Chess Client) best of all as it works the same as WinIGC (Windows Internet Go Client) does for Go. However, this is not a free program and should be registered after the 30-day trial period. You can download WinICC by clicking ftp://chess.onenet.net/chess/Win3/winicc13_32bit.zip
A list of chess servers, both Java and Telnet-based, both free and paid subscription, can be found at Internet Chess Servers which takes a long time to load as the list is so huge! A full description accompanies each server site listing. Don't miss the links at the bottom of the server listings. There are lots of free games in PGN (Portable Games Notation) which CBLight can read in Games PGN
Don't forget to register (it is free) after you install CBLight as then you will get an E-mail with a link for a free download of ChessBase Magazine 64 sample files that include:
