Getting started

In this article I cover

1. What type of computer to use
2. The chess interface to use
3. Chess engines

What type of computer to use?
Any computer less than 10 years old will be more than powerful enough.

I use a 4 year old laptop with the following specs

• Operating System:  Windows XP Home
• RAM:  1GB
• Processor Speed:  1.6 Ghz

The chess interface
Once you have a computer you need to download and install a chess interface.  A chess interface is the program that talks to the chess engine telling it what moves you make and displaying the move that the computer makes.
We are going to use Arena which can be downloaded from http://www.playwitharena.com/directory/download.htm

The chess engine
A chess engine is a program that knows how to play chess.  There are very strong commercial programs like Fritz and Rybka that you can buy.  Those 2 programs can beat the World Champion but there are also hundreds of free programs available that play at standards ranging from beginner to Grandmaster standard.
The Arena interface also comes with several very strong chess engines included.

Summary
By now you should have a computer set up to play chess against.  Start up Arena, load one of the included engines and have a game to check that everything is working correctly.