Watching other people play is almost as exciting as playing yourself. Chess players call someone who watches a game a kibitzer.

 

The program offers different ways to follow games as they are being played.

 

By double clicking on an element in the games list the game is loaded into the board window.

 

The easiest way to watch a game is to click "Kibitz Blitz", which loads the game being played by the strongest players into the board window.

 

 

This means you can easily watch the games being played by the strongest players at any time.

 

 

You can drag the window separators left and right of the board window to enlarge the board to whatever size you prefer.

 

You can use the chat window to send messages to other kibitzers.

 

There are differences in the buttons available in the board window when you play your own games.

 

The button "Receiving Moves" toggles the reception of moves from the game on and off.

 

 

This is useful if you want to analyse a position with a chess engine.

 

The button "Engine" turns on a chess engine that runs in parallel to the game and gives a running analysis of the current position on the board.

 

The following picture shows the analysis results of the chess engine Fritz 14.

 

 

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Multiboards

It is possible to watch several games at the same time in multiboards. This makes it possible to kibitz several interesting games at the same time, for instance critical games in a tournament.

 

This is how to do it:

 

Open the games list by clicking on the Games tab.

 

Select the games you want to watch by clicking on games in the list while holding down the Control key.

 

Click on the button "Watch Games" to load the games as multiboards.

 

 

Clicking on the boards navigates from one board to the next. This is necessary, because you can only view the game notation of one game at a time.