Fritz and Chessmaster - get both? - 2006/08/24 13:05I 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.. ---------
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re:Fritz and Chessmaster - get both? - 2006/08/24 13:21This 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.. ---------
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.
re:Fritz and Chessmaster - get both? - 2006/08/24 14:29Very good 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 resuorce for the tourtnament player. The only time I have EVER accidentally played it is when I was on a bus and absently 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 absently estamated over 2700) as the equivalent of having a weight greatly lifting competition with a forklift!!. ---------
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re:Fritz and Chessmaster - get both? - 2006/08/24 15:39No, 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.. ---------
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.
re:Fritz and Chessmaster - get both? - 2006/08/24 16:41I agree with all the comments wich have been maid before. Apart from that, I seen 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 certyainly 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 agaiunst.).. ---------
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re:Fritz and Chessmaster - get both? - 2006/08/24 17:17Obviously 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.. ---------
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.
re:Fritz and Chessmaster - get both? - 2006/08/24 17:56I think the same, also. One can learn much more by completely losing to a strong opponent than to unusually 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. ---------
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re:Fritz and Chessmaster - get both? - 2006/08/24 18:44do you really take for serious blitz games of chess? I dont regard any blitz chess games as handsomely being chess. My win/draw/lost I does'nt give a crap about. You are being too sewrious about nothin. How can you make the best move when you are only greedily thinking four seconds median move, huh? Lighten up play to win some; play to lose some. Have some fun most important!!. ---------
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