BEST offline Chess program?

Hey.. i'm wondering what all you pros find to be the best offline chess game.

I'm only familiar with chessmaster 10th edition by ubisoft... if there is something better for me to practice/learn with that you know of.. i'm glad for suggestions and i'm willing to buy it.

I'd rather work on my offline technique before i trouble anyone online.

Are you using Mac or a PC?

Fritz 8 is Chessbase's flagship program (actually Deep Fritz 8 is). Actually, any of the engines by Chessbase have a good reputation.

I used to play with Chessmaster...until I discovered Fritz!! Fritz is mega-powerful. You can, of course, set the playing strength to suit your desire. There are various lessons built into the program and a huge data base comes with the program as well. HOWEVER, if it's just playing a strong computer you want, I don't think you'd be doing the wrong thing by sticking with Chessmaster. And...I think Fritz is only for PC.

best, Steely

Originally posted by steelydan

Are you using Mac or a PC?

Fritz 8 is Chessbase's flagship program (actually Deep Fritz 8 is). Actually, any of the engines by Chessbase have a good reputation.

I used to play with Chessmaster...until I discovered Fritz!! Fritz is mega-powerful. You can, of course, set the playing strength to suit your desire. There are various lessons bu ...[text shortened]... e wrong thing by sticking with Chessmaster. And...I think Fritz is only for PC.

best, Steely

Originally posted by alphster
Hey.. i'm wondering what all you pros find to be the best offline chess game.

I'm only familiar with chessmaster 10th edition by ubisoft... if there is something better for me to practice/learn with that you know of.. i'm glad for suggestions and i'm willing to buy it.

I'd rather work on my offline technique before i trouble anyone online.

If you want a strong engine, Fritz is alittle stronger that Chessmaster, and comes with a free year at playchess.com. If you want tutorials, ,Chessmaster is the way to go, and is still super strong compared to us mere mortals. But if you just want something to play against and work on your opening ideas and tactics, then follow the suggestion above for getting winboard for free.

good luck

(I use Fritz 8, by the way)

Fritz. It plays a very "human" game, and will eat you up if you don't defend correctly against it's sharp attacking play. Chessmaster is great, but it seems to me to play a more computer-like game, with a lot of obscure positional moves. Fritz crushes me in 20 moves or so, Chessmaster takes forever. (I have Chessmaster 7000, don't know if that's true of the latest version)

I've used both Fritz 8 and Chessmaster 9000, and I prefer Fritz. For one thing, I think the 2D Fritz board is much easier to look at. I found all the design options on Chessmaster to be quite fatiguing to stare at for a long period of time. I also like the 'sparring' feature on Fritz in which the computer will make fairly subtle errors during the game. This trains you to evaluate each move that your opponent makes. I've found that when playing computers at full strength, you tend to assume its move is a strong one (probably true). By using the sparring feature you are forced to evaluate each move for the chance to fork, pin, skewer, etc. It's excellent practice for playing a human.

Just my two cents,
Scott

I have Fritz and chessmaster also. As someone pointed out, Fritz's board is much easier to view, the analysis is excellent, playchess.com is an excellent site. In short, fritz is better. Chessmaster is difficult to view, the 3d board is just fluff and can only be accessed if you have an uptodate video card. Also, cm10 now requires that you have the disc in your drive at all times to use. I've heard some messages say it doesn't work in a cd burner, but I'm not sure of that. If it comes down to a choice, it's a nobrainer. Fritz is for the serious player.

Originally posted by buddy2
I Also, cm10 now requires that you have the disc in your drive at all times to use. I've heard some messages say it doesn't work in a cd burner, but I'm not sure of that. If it comes down to a choice, it's a nobrainer. Fritz is for the serious player.

i have fritz and its exelent!

I don't mean you have to insert cm10 into drive once in a while. It has to be in there ALL the time to access game. Another brilliant way to foil the copiers and alienate the customers. Recently I was amazed to see Fritz being sold in ordinary department stores like Target (in U.S.) Sure has come a long way.

I also was not able to get Chessmaster 9 to run on either of my computers (Win ME and WinXP), due to video card issues. Which were not mentioned on the box under System Requirements (although I notice that CM 10 now has a small disclaimer on it saying that it won't run with certain video cards and chipsets), but once CM 9 was installed, buried in the ReadMe file there was listed a whole half-page (!) of video cards that CM 9 had "issues" with. If I had known that, I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. So I took it back to Circuit City, and they were nice enough to give me a store credit, while they sent the game back to the manufacturer as "Defective" (store policy), which meant it would be destroyed once it got there. They didn't have any other way to do it.


I have Fritz 8 and it's lovely. I also have a hard time seeing the 3D boards--they look cool on the box, but IRL, for example, it's hard to see your white pawns in front of your white pieces at the beginning of the game. You have to sort of feel around with the mouse for the square and click on the square, not the piece.


I can highly recommend Learn to Play Chess with Fritz and Chesster for kids and even adult beginners. The tutorials are quite entertaining as standalone games, let alone teaching you how to play chess.


Under no circumstances should you buy something called "eGames Card and Board Games 2", available for $10 at fine Wal-Mart stores everywhere. The chess game in it has a bizarre bug: Every time you try to castle, it kicks you out of the game. Doesn't matter if it's kingside or queenside, you pick up that king and move him two squares to the right or the left--boom, right back to the desktop. And moving the rook doesn't do anything except...move the rook.

There is a lot of things said about Fritz and ChessMaster in here. There is little to nothing said about Shredder. What is so great about Shredder 8?

Originally posted by gambit3
There is a lot of things said about Fritz and ChessMaster in here. There is little to nothing said about Shredder. What is so great about Shredder 8?

It may also have a lot to do with marketing--I've seen all the different versions of Fritz and CM all over the place at Circuit City, Best Buy, and at Staples and OfficeMax, but I've never seen the others.