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excellent product

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I was pleasantly amazed at what a superb product this is. It exceeded my highest expectations. Anthony Dorato

Awesome Chess Engine, But...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Deep Fritz is an incredible chess engine. The big thing it lacks is training and mentoring. I have been out of the game of chess for a while and wanted to work on and sharpen my chess skills. Playing Deep Fritz for me was like going from T-Ball to the Major League overnight! When Deep Fritz recognizes you're not a high level player, it will reduce its level of play though. I did end up getting Chessmaster as well which does have an incredible training and mentoring component to it (IMHO). The difference in engine strength between the two is very noticeable (Fritz being much better) but Chessmaster has much more flexibility in how you can use it to train and learn. My bottom line opinion: If you're an expert, Deep Fritz is your best bet. If you're a beginner even up to an expert, Chessmester may be a better option. Oh, one other thing about Chessmaster: you do indeed have to keep the disk in the drive to use the software - get with the times Ubisoft!

Not for the beginer.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This product is not for the begining chess player. Interface is dificult to use. Find a free chess program and save your money. The manufacturer claims this is a training aid. Bull!

Fritz

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: November 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have not had any running problems with this software and it really plays a good game of chess. It is a little light on instructions. I have found that the supposedly "friendly" mode is just a very advanced player stooping down to allow you to survive a few more moves than necessary. Some of the features are obscure for a hobby player but the overall experience is very educational and I know from playing other humans that it has improved my game.

More headache than pleasure

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: November 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I am not all that happy with this software. I thought I would be clever and save thirty or forty dollars by buying this edition (which is basically the Fritz 8 engine). While I am sure the software's playing strength will be more than enough for me (being approx. a class B player), as other reviewers have commented, it is indeed a non-intuitive GUI that requires too much effort to do even very simple things. I knew this was not going to be as friendly as Chessmaster, but since I work with computers professionally I reasoned I would prefer the superior engine to user-friendly bells and whistles. I am beginning to regret this decision.

Just for a few examples, one would think it would be easy to save and load your own games with the computer. Well, not really. You need to assign your saved games to databases and it's often confusing as to which you are saving or dealing with, a game or a database. Rather than load a game from a Windows-type interface you must open the appropriate database and find right game. The games are not date-time stamped for easy identification so this is more time consuming than you might think. You cannot delete saved games to free up your hard drive.

Just a couple more examples of problems/inconveniences: The talk feature does not work for me. Not important, but annoying. It does not seem to save your time control parameters if you change them from the defaults, so you must redo them every time. If you select Endgame Training, you are given an endgame which often is un-winnable for either side (well, I guess that is practice), and you never know which side you are playing or who's turn it is when you begin.

Most chess players are at least semi-intelligent folks and most are also computer literate....but Deep Fritz Grand Master Deluxe will really test your patience unless you are used to archaic GUI's and fighting the computer to get the results you want. I may wind up just buying another program.

Decent Features, like the "Sparring Mode"

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: October 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Good software for playing and analysis. My own qualm is that I was under the impression Fritz programs included a game graph showing which side had an advantage at which time (and how much of one). I wouldn't have purchased if I'd known this feature was lacking.

If it is there and I am simply missing it, someone please let me know. If not, what's a better (comparable priced) Fritz version?).

Also, didn't come with a manual (much software doesn't seem to these days).

ho hum chess program

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: September 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My favorite feature is the analyze all moves option that I use to go over games that I've lost and want to see where I went wrong or missed something. That's about all I use it for. It is good for analysis.

It's a lousy opponent often making off the wall moves while waiting for you to blunder so it can kill you. So I never just sit down and play chess against Fritz.

I will admit that I haven't played it and stored any games so it could learn my style as I'm not into playing computers and prefer playing a real person on line.

If you want a tool to analyze your games it's good but if you want a
chess game, find a person or look elsewhere. Imho in a game it doesn't
play the kind of game people play.

I didn't even bother to turn the sound on assuming it was just as lame as the previous version. I could be wrong there.

Next time I'm going to try something else.
One more thing, it's a bit difficult to figure out. I had to search for quite a bit to figure out how to turn on the coordinates and this is my
second version of Fritz; not the easiest software to learn for sure.
Michelle Ress

Wow. Shipping!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: August 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Shipping costs made the old eyes water but it still was value for money. I have not played as much as I want to but I found it friendly and usable. It also works on Vista.

Excellent software with minor drawbacks

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: April 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Ok, I agree the interface is not so friendly but who cares ?

Once you find all the tools you need, for less then 20 dollars you have:

1) An opponent to play at ANY level, from almost random-pushed pieces to grandmaster

2) A way to analize your own games. You get your human-readable annotations and you can easily learn from your own mistakes and,
if you are not a grandmaster, you bet Fritz is telling you the truth.
I would have bought this software twice the price just to get this functionality

3) You can use games database or manage your own's.

Higly Reccomended

Incredible Bargain On An Excellent Piece of Software

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 31
Date: November 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

As another reviewer mentioned, this is, indeed, Deep Fritz 8 packaged under a different title. Whether you have a single processor or a dual-processor computer this is a super application.

If you do have a dual-processor machine then you've got a top 10 piece of chess software. Deep Fritz 8 is ranked 10th on both the CEGT site and the SSDF website with ratings of 2793 and 2783, respectively.

And contrary to another reviewer, Fritz 9 is almost twice the price of this product (comparing Amazon prices today). And for the extra dollars you really don't get any more power. Fritz 9 is ranked 11th (CEGT) and 6th (SSDF). Why pay more for essentially the same playing-strength? Not to mention the fact that some users have complained about the bugs in Fritz 9.

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