fritz 9

I have just ordered fritz 9 what do people think of it?

iT'S LIKE ONE BETTER THAN FRITZ 8

Originally posted by mipmcpt
I have just ordered fritz 9 what do people think of it?

good functionality, unintuitive UI. the 'manual', 'help-files' and 'learning material' are pretty much worthless. graphics less than perfect. it's still a lot better than any other comparable software I've tried.

but once you figure out how it works, it's good. it just takes quite a lot of trial and error to get there...

well worth it's price.

Shredder 10 is coming out this month. If you buy it from Chessbase, you get the same interface and a stronger program than Fritz 9. However, Fritz 9 is a top knotch program with a balanced playing style and it is considered the king for analysis.

Originally posted by exigentsky
Shredder 10 is coming out this month. If you buy it from Chessbase, you get the same interface and a stronger program than Fritz 9. However, Fritz 9 is a top knotch program with a balanced playing style and it is considered the king for analysis.

Do you have test results that show that the new version of Shredder is stronger than the new Fritz?

The author claims that it is unequivocally stronger than Fritz 9. I don't have any reason to disbelieve him, after all with Fritz 9, Chessbase has just caught Shredder 9 in playing strength.

Comparatively, which of the following is best? (Sorry for the new tangent, I have heard the Fritz series is quite good by the way)

1. HIARCS
2. Fritz
3. Chessmaster
4. Shredder
5. Rybka

I tried Rybka 1.0, and it seemed very fast, very precise, and very good. (And that was only the free, beta version). Seemed fine for analysis, etc.

I haven't tried Fritz, but I am playing 2 correspondence games with Fritz 8 vs. Chessmaster on a forum (on www.chessgames.com, to be specific). I have seen it give long lines of very good and clear analysis, so I suppose it would be ideal for analysis purposes. Doesn't it also have an astoundingly huge database?

I have Chessmaster, and unfortunately I must disregard my pride and say it is probably the worst of all of these. Then again, it's goal isn't to win tournaments, it's to teach people chess. It has unlimited tactical puzzles, tutorials on nearly any kind of strategy, a 530,000 game database (and I added 10,000 new ones to it), a huge amount of annotated games (including Christiansen's annotations on his match with Chessmaster 9000), and so many levels and styles I can't even count them. I know I won't need another program (or possibly even book!) to learn chess again. But, if I want to analyze, Chessmaster isn't so strong, but it definetely can find the same lines as any other program, it only takes longer.

With Shredder, it's reputation justifies to me that it's a great program, and I want to check out it's endgame analyzer (Icer). I haven't tried it, but I want to.

Finally, HIARCS, I haven't tried it either, but I've heard from *someone* that it evaluates positions with an amazing AI, so, like every other producer claims THEIR machine to be, it is the "best".

Here are my impressions:

1. Shredder 9 - very sound and positional play (tie)
1. Fritz 9 - sound and well-rounded game (tie)
2. Hiarcs - better chess knowledge than all of them, most human-like play, very strong but slower (with more time it probably will come up with the best move out of the four)
3. Chessmaster - excellent for training and fun to play against, wide variety of opponents, not quite as strong as an engine or for analysis

I haven't used Rybka and so, I can't really comment on it. Has anyone else who used it found it to be worth the money? Also, how is its strength compared to, for example, Fritz 9.

I just tried the Rybka beta. Not bad, it seems at the same level of Shredder and Fritz even at that stage. I'm considering getting Rybka 1.2. 😉