Fritz 9

Anybody in the market for Fritz 9? I noticed it's coming out at the end of October and wondered who was thinking about buying it and why. I now have Fritz 8 and like it a lot. I also have Chessmaster, but Chessmaster looks like a toy in comparison. I don't want to buy 9 unless it gives me something appreciably better, tho.

I like the chessmaster10000 video lectures. Fritz 9, check the chessbase site but i heard its 80 points stronger and they have 3 hours worth of lectures on there?

I may think of picking this up as my first engine since Chessmaster 4000.

Something to plug games into and get analysis at least.

I have Fritz9 pre-ordered. I am a bit confused by the whole thing because the ChessBase site says it is released and wholesalechess.com still says it isn't (and that is where I pre-ordered it).

Anyway, I also have Fritz8, but gave that to my father in law in anticipation of this release. It is supposed to be more 'positionally aware' than previous versions and is supposed to be able to explain why a given position is stronger than another one.

I have no idea how good it will be at this, but it was worth finding out to me.

Fritz9 is also supposed to have better graphics on its 3d boards. I know a lot of people don't care about 3d boards, but I like to use them since spending too much time on the 2d boards hurts my board vision. The 3d board in Fritz8 might as well not be there as far as I am concerned. It looks good enough, but it isn't playable. The 3d boards in Fritz9 are supposed to be much better.

If you play online on their PlayChess.com network then there are some features in Fritz9 to make that more fun, especially when kibitzing (like automatically following a player, watching up to 8 games simultaneously, etc).

We shall see I guess. ChessMaster 10 gets a lot of bad press because its engine can be unstable, the online play is really bad, and its analysis has no way to elegantly show multiple lines. I do like its 3d board though, and its engine is certainly stronger than me so it is a good opponent.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2686

At the bottom of that page is the main updates for Fritz 9 compared to 8. For me the most intresting feature is probably the more human play, since the way fritz sometimes picks moves seems to be totally stupid, ie not captuing towards the center because it believes dxc4 gives it a 0.02 edge over bxc4 in the next 6 moves.

Hiarcs 10 is due out in December. I'm holding out for my true love.

For everybody's information, Fritz 9 is now on sale at chesscafe.com, the USCF vendor. A month later than German release. So if you really want it...

i preordered fritz 9 the other day.
at the moment i have chessmaster.
to be honest i don't really like playing against it and i haven't found a convenient way to use it for analysing (finished!) games, which is what i really want to do.
i have found the lessons (academy) totally brilliant though.

i haven't used fritz before but people tell me it's much more easy to use for analsing games, and the results of the analysis are much easier to understand. ie, you can see clearly where you blundered or where you missed a great opportunity.

i understand the new fritz also comes with some lessons, which i am quite excited about. it's so much easier than trying to study from books as you can see the variations being played out in front of your eyes.

edit: p.s. only 20 pounds from amazon.co.uk

Murrow, I think you'll like Fritz for annotating, expecially compared with CM. The best thing about CM is the lessons, as you said. Now, I guess Fritz realized this and is now including lessons on the dvd, as well as a pretty big database. Good deal in my opinion.

For anyone curious, I ran a quick little 20 game tournament between Fritz 8 and Fritz 9. The result was, unless I goofed the math, 12-8 in Fritz 9's favor. They each used their own openings table and had access to 5 piece EGTB.

Originally posted by tippedking
For anyone curious, I ran a quick little 20 game tournament between Fritz 8 and Fritz 9. The result was, unless I goofed the math, 12-8 in Fritz 9's favor. They each used their own openings table and had access to 5 piece EGTB.

At this point the playing strength of Fritz 9 is not as important as the other stuff: database, analysis, access to playchess, organizational features. Fritz 8 at its highest level can beat me 100% so it would be overkill and i don't want to be overkilled.

Permanent brain was on, but the time controls were very short. I think it was 4 minutes / 2 seconds. I will probably do some slower games this weekend to see if it differs at all. I just wanted them to go at it and see some quick results so the first head2head was blitz. I was going to post the PGN but the message length here doesn't permit it.

The new 'position analyzer' is a new window that just summarizes the current position for whichever side is supposed to move. It says stuff like, "Black is behind in development", "Black's pieces cannot move", "White has a slight advantage", "White has a decisive advantage".

I haven't played with the database yet, but I have Chessbase9 and the database from MasterChess so having a repository of games to draw from isn't anything new for me, but it would be a major selling feature for someone who didn't already have something like that.

In watching the games as they played out there were several times when Fritz9 was 'behind' and then came back to win. Fritz8 only won if it was ahead after the book opening and didn't lose the advantage.

Oh, the 3d graphics are much better than before. They don't necessarily 'look' much better, but they do work better. The new 'pieces have physics' option doesn't work on my machine. Whenever I turn it on all I see are the shadows. I need to email support about that and see what they have to say.

Originally posted by tippedking
Permanent brain was on, but the time controls were very short. I think it was 4 minutes / 2 seconds. I will probably do some slower games this weekend to see if it differs at all. I just wanted them to go at it and see some quick results so the first head2head was blitz. I was going to post the PGN but the message length here doesn't permit it.

...[text shortened]... on all I see are the shadows. I need to email support about that and see what they have to say.

unless he's using two computers