Bought Fritz 9
My Fritz 8 was having some corruption problems and my one year subscription to playchess.com was ending so I decided to get an early Christmas present of Fritz 9. (Fritz 9 comes with a one year subscription to playchess.)
I am pleased I did it because I want to analyse games again however I don't think it has much functionality improvements over Fritz 8. I understand the engine is better in taking account pawn structure and understanding attacking positions but that is not a feature that is easily noticed/
One thing it has is some talking features where it says some funny things in varied accents as you play it which I find fun. After time it may become annoying ....
As to the training that's included it seems besides the basic course to be the first 10 minutes of a number of their training DVD. More of a marketing push than something of value. There is however a basics of Chess tutorial that some would find of value.
The booklet that came with it I found helpful and reasonably good documentation on the working of Fritz. There seems to be a merge game feature this version where two games can be merged as one . I think this sounds interesting to explore once I have some time to devote to it.
I wish the database that came with in contained more classic games. Less than a dozen Morphy Games. With over a million game in the Database, I would hope that there would be every Morphy game would be there. I suppose that would take away some of the sales of their CB9 product.
As part of my studies, I have decided to annotate the games in Reti's Masters of the Chessboard. The ones which aren't in Fritz, I have found I can grab the Pgn off the database on www.chessbase.com and import it.
I plan to return soon to Ct-art as I have been slacking on my daily tactical training.......
I am pleased I did it because I want to analyse games again however I don't think it has much functionality improvements over Fritz 8. I understand the engine is better in taking account pawn structure and understanding attacking positions but that is not a feature that is easily noticed/
One thing it has is some talking features where it says some funny things in varied accents as you play it which I find fun. After time it may become annoying ....
As to the training that's included it seems besides the basic course to be the first 10 minutes of a number of their training DVD. More of a marketing push than something of value. There is however a basics of Chess tutorial that some would find of value.
The booklet that came with it I found helpful and reasonably good documentation on the working of Fritz. There seems to be a merge game feature this version where two games can be merged as one . I think this sounds interesting to explore once I have some time to devote to it.
I wish the database that came with in contained more classic games. Less than a dozen Morphy Games. With over a million game in the Database, I would hope that there would be every Morphy game would be there. I suppose that would take away some of the sales of their CB9 product.
As part of my studies, I have decided to annotate the games in Reti's Masters of the Chessboard. The ones which aren't in Fritz, I have found I can grab the Pgn off the database on www.chessbase.com and import it.
I plan to return soon to Ct-art as I have been slacking on my daily tactical training.......
posted by takchess @ 6:54 AM
5 Comments:
At 3:42 PM,
Edwin 'dutchdefence' Meyer said…
What kind of video card do you have? I've read it requires a GeForce 5 to run?
At 3:43 PM,
Edwin 'dutchdefence' Meyer said…
And how's the Turk?
At 6:33 PM,
King of the Spill said…
I'm glad you did a review. I am not surprised that it hasn't much over Ver. 8, as they never made the friendliness of interfaces. The talking stuff his in Fritz 8 Deluxe, as well as some marketing push type Kasparov video.
One maddening bug that I wondered if they fixed in 9 is the diagram printing bug, i.e. if I print a game with multiple diagrams, all of them print like the first diagram.
At 6:35 AM,
takchess said…
Hi,
DD, I'm glad you mentioned the info about the card as I am unable to run the Turk and don't see anything on my system that even allows me to do it. Perhaps it has determined I do not have a card that can support this upon install. The only reference I have to the Turk is that his picture is on the opening screen. My graphics card is not of gamer quality so this must be it.
King I will try to test it and will let you know.
Do you play on playchess if so send me an email at Tak03064@aol.com.
It would be fun to play and analyze afterward.
Jim
At 6:08 AM,
Blue Devil Knight said…
Thanks for the review. I will hold off on spending more money!!! I got a copy of Fritz 6 this weekend (I didn't have any chess software, and bought it at Best Buy (it was $10)). I notice no difference between Fritz 6 and my home-version, Fritz 8. If I were better, perhaps I'd notice.
I just got back from New Hampshire: I went to see UNH football destroy Colgate. It was a thing of beauty. This Friday night, they play Eastern Washington in the second round: it will be on ESPN! (For those of you from states with good college football, yes I know UNH is just a little ol' division I-AA team, but when I was there they were awful so it is nice to see them in first place!).
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