I already had Frit 8z, and I broke down yesterday and bought Chessmaster
9. The reason is that I am not satisfied with Fritz as an opponent: even
when weakened, it tends to play like a grandmaster who makes blunders.
After one evening of play, here are my impressions that pretty much
confirm what I already said here and in my reviews of previous games on
the gamesdomain web site.

Fritz is a much better engine for analysis. For me its most useful
feature is the infinite analysis mode where I can go through a game I
just played on ICC and find the mistakes for both sides. Off-line
analysis is OK, but generally I am too lazy to go through the games
after they are fuly analyzed.

I don't understand why Chessmaster does not include this feature. it is
there, but it erases all the following moves, so if you want to analyze
a game interactively with Chessmaster, you have to print out the moves
then use the analysis feature as you play through the moves. This is the
ONE big defect of Chessmaster (two patches seem to have fixed the
original bugs). At one point last night I even went from Chessmaster to
Fritz so I could understand the best move in a position that I lost.

Although Fritz does have some features for learning, Chessmaster runs
away with the trophy for its features like tutorials for various levels
of players, tests for measuring your strength (according to the one game
to test my rating, I am a candidate master...), and Josh Waitzkin's
tutorials consisting of analyzed games with speech comments (really well
done, but if English is not your mother tongue, he speaks faster than I
do, and I am notorious as a fast speaker - but he does get a lot of
information through in a short time).

For playing against the computer, there are a variety of human-like
opponents with a variety of ratings. One thing is not clear to me: are
the ratings the same for fast and slow games? My blitz rating on ICC is
400 points lower than my slow rating, so if I play blitz against a
chessmaster opponent, do I need to take on a lower-rated player? or do
the computer opponents also take a rating hit when playing blitz?


I did not examine the openings practice in chessmaster for very long,
but the opening lines still seem very short (the blackmar-Diemer Gambit
has only the first five or so moves. There are options to program
openings, but I did not have time to examine them. As you probably know,
you can program Fritz to play any opening that you want, with as many
variations as you want, with any probablity that you want by creating
openings books, so perhaps Fritz is also better for practising openings.

Overall the Fritz interface is more complex than that of Chessmaster,
and its database capabilities (a subset of Chessbase) are superior.

My purpose here is not to lay out all the features of both programs,
whcih can be found in reviews and advertisements. Here is the bottom
line.

If you want to analyze games, Fritz8 is by far the best program, and if
you need to do it interactively, Chessmaster will not do.

If you don't care about analysis and all you want is a human-like
computer opponent, or if you want a good learning program and tutorials,
then get chessmaster 9. If you want the best of both worlds, then
consider getting both programs as i did.

I don't have the other chess programs, but those from Chessbase like
Junior are probably similar to Fritz with a different engine.

Henri

Very well put! Personally, I don't see why anybody would want to play a
chess program. I use my Fritz for the database and analysis features only.
Fritz is an absolutely fantastic resource for the tournament player. The
only time I have EVER played it is when I was on a bus and played a game or
two on my notebook pc to make the time go by faster. I look at playing a
strong program (Fritz 8 with 256 MB, on a 2 Gig with 5 piece TB estamated
over 2700) as the equivalent of having a weight lifting competition with a
forklift!!


"henri Arsenault" wrote in message
...
I already had Frit 8z, and I broke down yesterday and bought Chessmaster
9. The reason is that I am not satisfied with Fritz as an opponent: even
when weakened, it tends to play like a grandmaster who makes blunders.
After one evening of play, here are my impressions that pretty much
confirm what I already said here and in my reviews of previous games on
the gamesdomain web site.

Fritz is a much better engine for analysis. For me its most useful
feature is the infinite analysis mode where I can go through a game I
just played on ICC and find the mistakes for both sides. Off-line
analysis is OK, but generally I am too lazy to go through the games
after they are fuly analyzed.

I don't understand why Chessmaster does not include this feature. it is
there, but it erases all the following moves, so if you want to analyze
a game interactively with Chessmaster, you have to print out the moves
then use the analysis feature as you play through the moves. This is the
ONE big defect of Chessmaster (two patches seem to have fixed the
original bugs). At one point last night I even went from Chessmaster to
Fritz so I could understand the best move in a position that I lost.

Although Fritz does have some features for learning, Chessmaster runs
away with the trophy for its features like tutorials for various levels
of players, tests for measuring your strength (according to the one game
to test my rating, I am a candidate master...), and Josh Waitzkin's
tutorials consisting of analyzed games with speech comments (really well
done, but if English is not your mother tongue, he speaks faster than I
do, and I am notorious as a fast speaker - but he does get a lot of
information through in a short time).

For playing against the computer, there are a variety of human-like
opponents with a variety of ratings. One thing is not clear to me: are
the ratings the same for fast and slow games? My blitz rating on ICC is
400 points lower than my slow rating, so if I play blitz against a
chessmaster opponent, do I need to take on a lower-rated player? or do
the computer opponents also take a rating hit when playing blitz?


I did not examine the openings practice in chessmaster for very long,
but the opening lines still seem very short (the blackmar-Diemer Gambit
has only the first five or so moves. There are options to program
openings, but I did not have time to examine them. As you probably know,
you can program Fritz to play any opening that you want, with as many
variations as you want, with any probablity that you want by creating
openings books, so perhaps Fritz is also better for practising openings.

Overall the Fritz interface is more complex than that of Chessmaster,
and its database capabilities (a subset of Chessbase) are superior.

My purpose here is not to lay out all the features of both programs,
whcih can be found in reviews and advertisements. Here is the bottom
line.

If you want to analyze games, Fritz8 is by far the best program, and if
you need to do it interactively, Chessmaster will not do.

If you don't care about analysis and all you want is a human-like
computer opponent, or if you want a good learning program and tutorials,
then get chessmaster 9. If you want the best of both worlds, then
consider getting both programs as i did.

I don't have the other chess programs, but those from Chessbase like
Junior are probably similar to Fritz with a different engine.

Henri

"Dr. Robert Faurisson"

snip

What's that? Started treating bishop and rook haemorrhoids?


--
CeeBee


Uxbridge: "By God, sir, I've lost my leg!"
Wellington: "By God, sir, so you have!"


Google CeeBee @ www.geocities.com/ceebee_2

In article ,
"Dr. Robert Faurisson"
wrote:

Very well put! Personally, I don't see why anybody would want to play a
chess program. I use my Fritz for the database and analysis features only.
Fritz is an absolutely fantastic resource for the tournament player. The
only time I have EVER played it is when I was on a bus and played a game or
two on my notebook pc to make the time go by faster. I look at playing a
strong program (Fritz 8 with 256 MB, on a 2 Gig with 5 piece TB estamated
over 2700) as the equivalent of having a weight lifting competition with a
forklift!!

Obviously I'm not going to play a computer chess game at its highest
setting. I play blitz games on the ICC, but I can,t often get into a
longer game because I may have to quit at any time. So I DO have a need
for human-like opponents against which I can play or practice.

The tutorials of CM9000 should not be underestimated. There is a lot
there, as I discovered last night, and for players of every strength.
The series on psychological chess by Joah Waitzkin (there are 2 other
series by Josh), although not suitable for beginners, is very good and I
like the video style of presentation with pieces moving about the board
with oral comments as the game goes on. The Pandolfini and Stilman
series, although mostly but not only geared to beginners, are also fine
tutorials.

Although I have not yet had time to look at all of them, I would say
that the tutorials constitute a full chess course. I can,t think of
anything better for a beginner who wants to learn about chess.

Still I don't disagree with you, and for my needs, if I could afford
only ONE program, I would take Fritz because of its analysis. The
full-game analysis of Chessmaster, tht I tried for one of my games, is
of limited use andIMHO inferior to that of Fritz.

Still, CM9000 is worth getting if one is a beginner, or needs a computer
opponent, or wants a game with excellent tutorial features.

Henri

do you really take for serious blitz games of chess? I don't regard any blitz
chess games as being chess. My win/draw/lost I don't give a crap about. You are
being too serious about nothing. How can you make the best move when you're
only thinking 4 seconds average move, huh? Lighten up play to win some; play to
lose some.
Have some fun most important!!

Obviously I'm not going to play a computer chess game at its highest
setting. I play blitz games on the ICC, but I can,t often get into a
longer game because I may have to quit at any time. So I DO have a
need for human-like opponents against which I can play or practice.


Would you think setting a computer program - at any time control - to its
highest strength provides you with a less valuable training than with
setting it to a lower strength?

I think first of all a teacher has to be a _good_ teacher, but if a _good_
teacher is not available the strongest opponent available is the best
alternative.

I think the same, also. One can learn much more by losing to a strong
opponent than to winning to a weak one. In the second case you can think you
have played very well and probably this is not the case, but the opponent
was too weak to utilize this mistakes. On the other hand I personally don't
like very much to be crushed by Fritz again and again but this is my human
arrogance.
mafergut

I agree with all the comments that have been made before. Apart from that, I
saw Chessmaster 9000 in store a few days ago for just 12,50 Euro (in The
Netherlands). That's easily affordable as a second chess program next to
Fritz 8, and in my opinion certainly worth the money. I use both programs. I
use CM to learn about chess (great tutorials), and use Fritz for the great
online games you can play for free on playchess.com (CM uses ubi.com for
online games, but there's nobody on the server to play against most of the
time, while with Fritz and playchess.com you always have about a thousand
people or so online to play against.).

Marcel



"henri Arsenault" schreef in bericht
...
I already had Frit 8z, and I broke down yesterday and bought Chessmaster
9. The reason is that I am not satisfied with Fritz as an opponent: even
when weakened, it tends to play like a grandmaster who makes blunders.
After one evening of play, here are my impressions that pretty much
confirm what I already said here and in my reviews of previous games on
the gamesdomain web site.

Fritz is a much better engine for analysis. For me its most useful
feature is the infinite analysis mode where I can go through a game I
just played on ICC and find the mistakes for both sides. Off-line
analysis is OK, but generally I am too lazy to go through the games
after they are fuly analyzed.

I don't understand why Chessmaster does not include this feature. it is
there, but it erases all the following moves, so if you want to analyze
a game interactively with Chessmaster, you have to print out the moves
then use the analysis feature as you play through the moves. This is the
ONE big defect of Chessmaster (two patches seem to have fixed the
original bugs). At one point last night I even went from Chessmaster to
Fritz so I could understand the best move in a position that I lost.

Although Fritz does have some features for learning, Chessmaster runs
away with the trophy for its features like tutorials for various levels
of players, tests for measuring your strength (according to the one game
to test my rating, I am a candidate master...), and Josh Waitzkin's
tutorials consisting of analyzed games with speech comments (really well
done, but if English is not your mother tongue, he speaks faster than I
do, and I am notorious as a fast speaker - but he does get a lot of
information through in a short time).

For playing against the computer, there are a variety of human-like
opponents with a variety of ratings. One thing is not clear to me: are
the ratings the same for fast and slow games? My blitz rating on ICC is
400 points lower than my slow rating, so if I play blitz against a
chessmaster opponent, do I need to take on a lower-rated player? or do
the computer opponents also take a rating hit when playing blitz?


I did not examine the openings practice in chessmaster for very long,
but the opening lines still seem very short (the blackmar-Diemer Gambit
has only the first five or so moves. There are options to program
openings, but I did not have time to examine them. As you probably know,
you can program Fritz to play any opening that you want, with as many
variations as you want, with any probablity that you want by creating
openings books, so perhaps Fritz is also better for practising openings.

Overall the Fritz interface is more complex than that of Chessmaster,
and its database capabilities (a subset of Chessbase) are superior.

My purpose here is not to lay out all the features of both programs,
whcih can be found in reviews and advertisements. Here is the bottom
line.

If you want to analyze games, Fritz8 is by far the best program, and if
you need to do it interactively, Chessmaster will not do.

If you don't care about analysis and all you want is a human-like
computer opponent, or if you want a good learning program and tutorials,
then get chessmaster 9. If you want the best of both worlds, then
consider getting both programs as i did.

I don't have the other chess programs, but those from Chessbase like
Junior are probably similar to Fritz with a different engine.

Henri

In article ,
CeeBee wrote:

Would you think setting a computer program - at any time control - to its
highest strength provides you with a less valuable training than with
setting it to a lower strength?

No, from analyzing my games with Fritz, it is clear that my main
weakness is the failure to exploit mistakes by my opponent. I am not
going to learn to do that by playing against a grandmaster...

Now if I were a master-strength player, it could be a different story,
but like all mid-level players, I lose games through tactics, not
through lack of knowledge.

Henri

In article ,
(Fn39k) wrote:

do you really take for serious blitz games of chess? I don't regard any blitz
chess games as being chess. My win/draw/lost I don't give a crap about. You
are
being too serious about nothing. How can you make the best move when you're
only thinking 4 seconds average move, huh? Lighten up play to win some; play
to
lose some.
Have some fun most important!!

This has been discussed in detail a couple of weeks ago. There is some
disagreement about whether or not playing blitz (with the caveat of
analyzing one's games afterwards) can improve one's games or not.
Spotting tactical opportunities in 4 seconds is a skill that is
necessary even for long games, unless one opts for the inefficient
method of checking every possible moves, a precedure that no grandmaster
does.

I agree tht having fun is what really counts, which is why I play blitz
a lot.

Henri