Since you asked about endgame play, I know that Chessmaster uses endgame tablebases. Fritz doesn't, and I've heard it will lose to Chessmaster should it somehow make it to the end game. Rybka I'm not sure about when it comes to endgame play.
For someone of my meager ability, CM is just right for me. I plan on upgrading to Fritz once I deem myself worthy of its greatness 🙂
Rybka is considered the best as it has beaten the others in competition but I don't know if it's more expensive and what features it has. Fritz is excellent, very popular and with a lot of useful features including a years membership to playchess.com. Personally I found chessmaster more user friendly when I was starting out a couple of years ago and it had more fun features for kids.
Originally posted by UndeadNightOrcFritz doesn't use EGTBs? That's news to me. I guess I'll have to unload my EGTBs in my Fritz program. 😉 Just to be clear, Fritz IS CAPABLE OF USING EGTBs - I don't know where you got that idea.
Since you asked about endgame play, I know that Chessmaster uses endgame tablebases. Fritz doesn't, and I've heard it will lose to Chessmaster should it somehow make it to the end game.
One postal opponent I beat last year when he was a long time1800 started using Fritz so when he beat me and another 2000+ rated player last week he was over 2100. Over 300 points in less than a year…wow! 4 out of 6 opponents in an IECG e-mail tmt. were using Fritz. On another site one of the top players says he recently bought Rybka (just to study its style in case he met anybody using it you understand) so it may be the future.🙂
Originally posted by UndeadNightOrcThis is nonsense. While it is true that Chessmaster comes packaged with EGTBs (three and four piece) and uses them, good luck adding the five piece, and the available six piece.
Since you asked about endgame play, I know that Chessmaster uses endgame tablebases. Fritz doesn't, and I've heard it will lose to Chessmaster should it somehow make it to the end game. Rybka I'm not sure about when it comes to endgame play.
For someone of my meager ability, CM is just right for me. I plan on upgrading to Fritz once I deem myself worthy of its greatness 🙂
Fritz also comes with all three and four piece, and adding five and six piece is a snap.
You are close to having it backwards.
Originally posted by WulebgrI don't own it but Zap! Chess does sound like a very strong/interesting engine. I believe the author (Antony Cossie) made a free upgrade available (via the Chessbase site) which made a significant improvement to its strength.
Zap! Chess is kicking butt in the engine room at playchess.
The downside appears to be that its strength does require rather good hardware (e.g. a quad). I guess some on Playchess have such high spec hardware. I don't think Zap is so good at blitz on slow hardware (relatively speaking, of course).
Originally posted by likeforestIn F9, Tools | Options | choose the tablebase tab. Specify the correct path.
how can you configure fritz so it will use EGTBs? i am currently running F9. EGTBs would be great!
By default this will be Program Files\ChessBase\tablebases, but you can put them where you wish. As long as the specified path is to a folder with tablebases, Fritz will use them.
Originally posted by Raven69Yes. In at least one version there was an EGTB bug that caused these to be disabled by default (maybe v2.1 or 2.2 ?! don't quote me on this). But I believe this is now fixed (2.3.1). I guess the rybka web site will have the details.
Is Rybka capable of using EGTBs?