Originally posted by tippedkingAll true. There are two chess websites that offer a lot of help with Fritz and related programs.
If you have never used any chess software before then Fritz9 may feel a little intimidating at first. It has a ton of features, most of which are not even mentioned in the tiny manual it comes with.
It is very good though, and worth getting past the initial learning curve.
http://www.chessexchange.com/forum/
http://www.chessbase.com/support/index.asp
You'll find Steve Lopez both places. His T-notes at ChessBase cover every imaginable problem using Fritz and family. You can ask him questions directly at the Chess Exchange, or he'll be one of several experienced users that will chime in when you pose a question in the forums there.
Yeah, there's clearly a hell of a lot to it!
I've had a couple of games, lost all but one which I managed a draw in. I consider this a good sign as i'm assuming that it can adapt to my level. Also liked the way that it plays different openings each time - the last time I had chess on the computer it was very, very predictable in the opening. The opening database is really handy, I shall have to be very careful how I use this though.
I stuck one of my games through it's analysis: not sure how to make use of this yet (I don't think games at my level are solid enough to be analysed like this) but it gave interesting alternatives, so definitely something to look at.
It's very, very sarcastic. I wanted to physically attack the screen at one point.
I stuck one of my games through it's analysis: not sure how to make use of this yet (I don't think games at my level are solid enough to be analysed like this) but it gave interesting alternatives, so definitely something to look at.I find the most useful analysis is the blunder check, I give it a few seconds for each move, and set the threshold quite high (eg, 100). So it'll only annotate if I blunder 1 pawn or more. As you get better you can lower the threshold.
I also save the evaluation so that you can see the evaluation graph afterwards. The less erratic this graph is the happier I am.
Re: Fritz 9. I haven't seen much to recommend it over Fritz 8. The videos included are teases to buy the full versions. The 3d stuff is just so much fluff. The new positional comment isn't helpful. Maybe the best thing about it is the updated and more extensive database. Again, all that Turk business comes down to the screen at the beginning of the program. No, I wouldn't recommend it over 8, for the money. However, I do consider Fritz the best program in general. It's just that this update should be 8.2 or something. Superficial differences between 8 and 9 only.
I have Fritz 8.0, and it has far too much functionality for me to use to justify forking out for its successor - what I would like to know is if there is a simple way to C+V completed set piece games in pgn into the new Fritz: as it stands, I have to finish faery-chess games, then faff about manually in the text file before it can give me a Full Analysis and a Blunder Check.