**I am a chess player, and speak from that perspective**

The chess game ubuntu provides is really good, but is missing certain features to make it more useful to someone wanting to learn how to play.

One example would be an actual back button. This really helps teach how to identify good moves, and to show how to guess at what your opponent does.

The other benefit of a back button is that when the sensitivity of the mouse messes you up, it can easily be corrected.

The back button currently used only allows for review of moves, rather than the option to make a different move.

Most other examples I can think of could have legal issues, like adding the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings as a way of reviewing all the different openings.

If you want to enable 3D Chess View in the Gnome Chess app, you need to install Python OpenGL and GTKGLext support. However, the dialog that shows if you haven't installed the required packages isn't newbie-friendly:

You are unable to play in 3D mode due to the following problems:
No Python OpenGL support
No Python GTKGLExt support

Please contact your system administrator to resolve these problems, until then you will be able to play chess in 2D mode.

I think if you have compiz-fusion installed then the 3D chess games should be installed by default. I have compiz-fusion on both my desktop and notebook computers but the in the chess game when I choose 3D chess I have to install couple more python packages. I know it's not a hard thing to do but for new users it wold be nice as a default when they have the compiz-fusion working on their system.