The Olga Chess Viewer is an excellent chess viewer that allows you to view PGN games on Chessgames. Among its many powerful features are a beautiful and configurable board diagram, the ability to create and play through variations, and an interface to the incredibly strong Stockfish™ chess engine.

One way is to press the auto-play button (the one that looks like a "+"). That will step you through the game move by move, automatically. However, if you would like more control, press the next-move button (the largest button that looks like ">") and you will move forward one move at a time.

HOT TIP: You can also press the → (right-arrow) and ← (left-arrow) to move through the game without using your mouse. Furthermore, the 'i' key will invert the board, the up-arrow will take you to the start of the game, and the down-arrow will take you to the end. The spacebar will turn the "autoplay" feature on and off.

HOT TIP: You can control the speed of the autoplay ("+") function by pressing the numbers 1-9. 1 is one second, 2 is two seconds, etc. If you press 0 it will play the game as fast as it can.

Press the special key 'i', or open up Settings (see below) and press the "Invert Board" button.

When you click the "SETTINGS" link in the lower right, you'll see a window that looks something like this:

• "Light Squares" and "Dark Squares" allow you to set the color of the light and dark squares. (The same functionality can also be achieved on your Preference Page if you are a registered member.)
• "Invert Board" will invert the board so that Black is on the bottom.
• "Labels" will turn on/off the labels of the ranks (1-8) and files (a-h) on the edges of the board.
• "Shrink" and "Grow" will make the board smaller or bigger relative to the size of your screen.
• "Copy FEN" will copy the FEN code (a string representing the position of the game) to your clipboard. From there you can paste it into other applications, or use it in a post to illustrate a position. (For more information see our FEN Made Easy page.)

HOT TIP: If you change the board colors, or the board size with Shrink/Grow, or turn the labels on/off, Chessgames will remember your preference and apply it to other games you view.

You are free to move the pieces via drag-and-drop on the board at any time. If you do this, you'll explore a variation of the game, and a window will appear that accrues the moves you make. This window looks something like this:

While the analysis window is present, you are in "analysis mode." While in this mode, the buttons will restrict you to the variation: for example, the "<<" button will take you to the start of your analysis, while ">>" will take you to the end. To dismiss your analysis and get back to the game as it was played, click the small [X] next to the word "ANALYSIS" and the window will vanish.

HOT TIP: If you can't figure out what might have happened if a move or sequence of moves took place, make an analysis window and then use the "ENGINE" option to get a computer opinion on the position in question.

Clicking the "ENGINE" notes in the lower right will open the analysis of the current position in a new window. Usually, it will tell you to wait 6 seconds and then automatically show you the results. However, if analysis of the position already exists in our database of that particular position, you'll get the results instantly.

HOT TIP: Chessgames provides its premium members will full access to a powerful dedicated chess server, so that you can request analyses as long as 1 hour, analyze entire games, and more. For more information, see our Premium Help: Stockfish.

As a new software product, there are inevitably glitches and room for improvement. Please visit our Olga support forum and we'll attend to the issue as soon as possible.

Olga Chess Viewer was created and developed by Christopher Dean with design assistance from Daniel Freeman. It makes great use of the public domain chesssboard.js and chess.js JavaScript libraries which have helped further internet chess immeasurably. The computer analysis feature is made possible by the Stockfish Engine project.

Olga Chess Viewer is copyright © 2017, Chessgames Services LLC