Takchess Chess Improvement

A Novice chessplayer works to get better at chess using an improvement program based upon the methods of Michael de la Maza and the teachings of Dan Heisman

Sunday, November 20, 2005

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.......

5 Comments:

  • At 3:42 PM, Blogger 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, Blogger Edwin 'dutchdefence' Meyer said…

    And how's the Turk?

     
  • At 6:33 PM, Blogger 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, Blogger 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, Blogger 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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