Martin Brown wrote:
On Jan 2, 6:17pm, Chess Hack wrote:
I am a long time Chessmaster user, but for some reason my copy of
CM9 freezes up on my computer with TheKing.exe eating up 100% CPU
time! This prompted me to look into Fritz as an alternative since
my level of play is not really novice or beginner, and yet I am not
really a great player either. I don't even know my rating!

The "play rated game" option in Fritz8 will quickly fix that.

Not really. The engine, playing on full strength, will hammer him
into the ground, every time. The ECF (and possibly other rating
organizations) don't issue ratings to people who have scored either 0%
or 100% as the `rating' in question is neither an upper bound nor a
lower bound.

Even if Fritz does spit out a number and call it a rating, it won't
help him compare his strength with any human who hasn't played against
Fritz.

I see that the program is up to version 11 now, but the reviews
seem spotty, claiming little if any real value to upgrading from an
interface standpoint.

No. The latest version still has at least as many bugs as the old
one.

With luck, they might be different bugs! Though the problem there is
that I automatically work around the bugs I know about and it's
annoying to have to adapt to a new set.


If you find you can beat Fritz8 too easily then maybe you will need
a better engine, but that would put you already at the GM or
anti-computer specialist level.

In the unlikely case that he can beat Fritz 8 easily, he's still going
to beat any other engine comfortably. I suppose the current crop of
engines would push him a little harder. ;-)


Dave.

--
David Richerby Carnivorous Painting (TM): it's like
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ a Renaissance masterpiece but it
eats flesh!