User Reviews (11 - 21 of 23)

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Fritz 8 is nice.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 16
Date: January 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I guess Fritz 8 is stronger than chessmaster 8000 (GOOD). I have almost the whole family of chessmaster xxxx (from 2000 to 8000). Fritz 8 human interface is not very friendly or intuitive, maybe I spent too much time with the chessmaster series. I could not find the self-play mode in Fritz. The analysis of Fritz is very professional, it even uses the international symbols to grade the position. However I'd like to see another mode to give numeric values at each position like chessmaster, the symbol =/+ , +/=, etc. are not specific enough (at least to a detail player like me.) The user manual is hard to follow.
OK, 4 1/2 stars.

Best chess software period!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 16
Date: March 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have played chess all my life and am a fairly strong non-professional. Every feature of Fritz (Engine, UI, online games, database) is excellent! I cannot say enough!

THE BEST CHESS PROGRAM

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: July 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Fritz is, no doubt, one of the strongest chess program in the market. This program is plened for the tournament player on one who is more than a newcomer in chess. But, that dosen't mean that a beginer can play wit it, you can decrese the strength of the program, to makeit more weaker, and a perfect partner for the amateur.
But the real force of this program is at his higer level, the one who evaluates your strngth and give you a rating. In this level, there are no help, it's you against this monster.
The lever are very good, in some you can be helped for the machine, who give you an advice, and in some cases tell you the move you make is a blunder and explainit, given the oportuniti to takeit back. But at the end hé's gona crush you.
I played chess for about 20 years now and this is the best program i ever seen.
The opening book is huge, the force at higer levels excelent.
As I tell you before, this is not for beginers, because to play with it, you have to know the elemts of the game (how the pices move, one or two openings, and principles like the center, the doble atack, etc.).
If you don't know how to play chess, don't expect to last very long, fritz is gona crush you, and, belive me, sometimes is very frustaiting to loose in that way.
I allready lose some games that way, and it feel bad to be outplayed in that way.
But you can decrese the strenght of the program and even you can analice your game with the help of fritz. You can put the moves of your last game and saw the evaluation fritz is doing in a given position. Fritz is gona give you some variations and plans of a given position and you can study your own games whit the help of a realy strong player. Is almost if you have your one teacher in your house.
In all, this is the best program available, and you can do too many things with it. It can help you to increse your strength and prepare for future tournamets.
Enjoy.

Excellent online interface

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: November 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I am a rookie chess player. I bought this game primarily to get the one-year membership at playchess.com. Boy was I disappointed! The serial number printed on my CD case was invalid! It took WEEKS of pestering the people at playchess.com before I got an answer. The answer was that I needed to deal with Amazon.com to get it fixed. So I have a replacement on the way. I just hope it does not have the same misprint problem.

This is the best online interface of all that I have tried. None of the others come close to the flexibility. You can change the board size, color, go to 3d, move windows, filter chat, and a lot more. I really enjoy the ability to change the layout to match my taste.

I bought Chessmaster before I bought Fritz. With Chessmaster I was disappointed to see that zero people were online. I checked several times, on several days. Unless I am doing something wrong, UBI (Chessmaster) online is a ghost town. Chessmaster I think has a slightly better interface and some nice tutorials, but if you want to play online, then Fritz is the way to go!

Many Features combined with easy gameplay!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 24
Date: June 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I don't know why someone would complain about bugs in this game because I have yet to find one! My guess is that the person complaing about them is using a pirated version of the software and thus his problems were created.

Anyhow, the game is definitly loaded with features (most of which are already explained by other reviews) but the one thing I wanted to emphasize is that this game actually helped better my game play tremendously!

Good for playing and analysing, nothing else

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 19 / 31
Date: January 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you want to buy a strong chess program to play against and get some analysis then Fritz 8 is the thing.

However if you want a traing program which gives you awsome training options (Fritz 8 does have these options but they are CRAP) and great game analysing with a lot of comments and explanations (Fritz 8 only tells you the obvious things) then go for Chessmaster 9000.

Fritz 8 for playing against and analysing with not so good comments.

Chessmaster 9000 for anything else. Chessmaster is much better.

Full of bugs

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 17
Date: February 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The above reviewer who noted that Fritz 8 was full of bugs sure wasn't kidding. The chess play is all right, but if you want to do something simple like saving a game or a position, well, forget it. I've just spent two hours trying to save a few positions, and I've been directed all over the place, but I still haven't been able to save just 3 games. In the future I'll have to replay each game each time to get to an established position. The directions are unclear, incomplete, or just don't work. A simple process such as saving and retreiving games should be, well, simple and user-friendly. Either my copy is defective or you have to be a grandmaster in software to figure out how the $%@*^%* thing works.

Required

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Most know this program well, that being said if you wish to improve your chess and need an outstanding sparring partner and access to online play this is the program to own. It is the rolls royce of chess programs.

Great chess, great service!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: November 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I, like the reviewer before me, had a problem with my serial number. I called the publisher of this product, Viva Media, and they gave me a new serial number. They were very helpful, and the new number worked right away. I play online all of the time.

I don't think I could say anything else about the game that hasn't been said in another review. It is by far the best chess program I have ever used. I can't wait for a Fritz 9!

Worst User Interface Ever Designed!!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 15 / 29
Date: October 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This program has a lot of features, however, it's pretty close to impossible to figure out how to get the features to work. I've never in my life seen a program with such a non-discoverable, non-intuitive, obscure interface. What is truly amazing about this program, is you can read the manual and still not figure out how to use the features! I've just spent 2 hours (including studying the manual) trying to figure out how to load a PGN file of some games that I've played to use the analysis features of the program and I still have no clue how to do it. Unbelievable. I've used several other chess programs and never had to even open the manual. I've used 100's of windows programs and this is clearly the worst interface I've ever seen.

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