THIEF - A free client for playing chess on the internet
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Welcome to Thief!
Thief is a free chess client written by Zon Jan to play on chess servers like the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS). Thief can be customized and supports regular chess and all variants like bughouse, crazyhouse, Losers, Suicide, Kriegspiel and others. It is the the preferred client of Bughouse Players. Bughouse is a special team-chess game (for more information on Bughouse see http://www.bughouse.net).

Thief works in Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP/Vista/7 and also in WINE.

The latest release is Thief 1.25 from May 10, 2011.

New features and changes added to Thief include:
  • New Layout for "Window -> Try Window layout": "Observe eight games"
  • no more disconnections because of illegal characters sent to timeseal (proper ASCII filter)
  • minimize to tray
  • easier multiple command option for partner communication buttons
  • password prompt option for registered accounts (if password is not saved in the profile)
  • Bughouse Clocks can show which teams are up/down on time ("Preferences -> Game Configuration -> Clock Display -> Colored Bughouse Clocks"), colors are configurable in "Preferences -> Game Configuration -> Board Appearance"
  • Fully configurable Silence Mode ("Preferences -> Customize Silence Command")
  • Optional time display in console and/or log files: "Preferences -> Telnet Console Options" (Show time in Console/Show time in Console log)
  • Bugfixes
  • Win NT/2000/XP/Vista/7 conformity: Folder BUGSTUFF and all folders/files requiring write access are now located in subfolder THIEF of user document folder.
See the changelog for a complete list. You can find the sourceforge project page here.