Hi all,
I am looking to purchase a good chess program and see a lot more options out there. I am looking for all around best software to analyze games, has a strong engine, and will have “room” to grow. I used to use Fritz years ago and since them a lot more programs have sprouted up. Any info or direction will be greatly appreciated.
note: I do have i7 CPU M40 @ 2.88Ghz, 8 GB of ram on windows 7 pro machine.
Depends on what your looking to do.
Any high level engine using the Chessbase “Fritz” interface is user friendly, and does a lot.
Chessmaster isn’t the best engine, but Chessmaster (any recent version), has a lot going for it. Very user freindly, and has lots of great tutorials, mostly aimed at the under 1500 USCF crowd.
Houdini 2.0 Aquarium Pro (multi-cpu) is one of the current top engines. Aquarium is an interface really designed for people that want engines to study positions very deep. So its not really designed so user freindly, but it does a lot of stuff. -I’ve never used it, but I’ve heard enough about it, to know that its more of a geeky interface and not one for a casual player wanting to just play a high level chess engine. Not sure if you Aquarium allows you to dial down the strength of engines to something a mere mortal can beat.
Version 1.x of Houdini can still be downloaded for free, and will run under either the Fritz or Aquarium interface (just install the chess engine). I use it under the ChessBase interface.
I love the Aquarium interface, but I don’t use it that frequently. It’s suited for serious human-guided research, but the ChessBase interface is probably better if one is more interested in learning something for oneself (instead of having the engine give its opinion about the Platonic truth of the position).
Was thinking about Fritz13 or something similar in level. I’m looking for something around 1500-2000 range software and if I can add other engines of higher caliber that may be a good choice to go with. I do not want software that I need to spend hours learning a new programing language to use 
. I am surprise to see chessmaster on that list… that software used to be geared to young kids and such.
Fritz 13 & chessmaster are frightfully strong. Aquarium is not at all hard to use, but the Fritz/ChessBase interface is even easier.
Even a patzer like me can tell from analysis that in most positions, Houdini > the pirated Rybka > Fritz > Chessmaster. But all these problems are so ridiculously strong that for most of us, ease of interface should trump absolute playing strength as the deciding factor.
Thanks for the info… I have been playing the “xbox 360” Chess master 
. I’ll look online for the other software.
Chessmaster for some reason, does not play nice with other chess engines. All the engines I’ve tried, Chessmaster just hangs up after it runs out whichever opening book line its following.
Chessmaster does have a section for kids, so thats not a problem. But it still has plenty of tutorials for adults and kids over 10.
The best thing going for Chessmaster is its numerous “personalities”, which are far better than any of the other chess programs as far as dialing down its strength to various USCF equivalents. The only thing about CM personalities is that the lower the strength of the personality, the more often it will make a deliberate blunder. Even at 1600, it might make a move that a 1200 USCF would even consider a blunder. I’d say around 1800 to 1900, Chessmaster starts to play more human like. Or at least, the “mistakes” become a lot more subtle. If very hard for me to win against a personality in the 1900 range.
The downside of Chessmaster is that it will up its strength when it hits the endgame. Fritz gives a much more consistent level of challenge throughout the entire game.
And if one wants to fly with Houdini 1.5, Stockfish, or even Crafty or any open source as your engine, you could instead download Arena at playwitharena.com as a GUI front end, and thus have no cash outlay at all. (Or Winboard/XBoard, but I became preferential to Arena over Winboard, personally.)
I’ve just installed Arena version 3 on my netbook (and Stockfish and Houdini 1.5 - it also comes with a plethora of other engines already installed, including Rybka 2.2.) Arena may be a little daunting to someone not used to chess software, but I have to say I find it very easy to install and understand. Version 3 seems nicer than version 2. The biggest learning curve is that you have install any additional engines you’ve downloaded - it’s easy enough, though. Arena also lets one connect to Internet Chess Servers (but I use BabasChess to access FICS and am very pleased with it.) Another cool thing about Arena is that you can match the different engines against each other (or themselves) and even run automated tournaments between them. I like doing that if I’m too tired to play.
I also use Fritz 12 and ChessBase both on my laptop. I like Fritz for both its analysis annotator and the friend-mode where the engine keeps adjusting it’s strength based on your win-loss record with it. The only thing I dislike about the ChessBase family is that CB seems to be heading down the road of annual updates and having to keep up with the Joneses (i.e. you will end up paying when you buy a new system because the year-old version is no longer installable on the new platform once a new version is released.) Plus the latest ChessBase now also uses the Ribbon concept for menus, which I absolutely detest. I fear that I’m stuck with F12 and CB '09 Light Premium now… But, for all those negatives, the only reason I didn’t put them on my netbook is not wanting to pay for another license. And Arena is comfy on my netbook.
I have Frtiz13 and Chessbase 10 (with a database from 2009)… While I keep up with Fritz versions, it’s just too much money for me to keep up Chessbase program and database updates.
I got used to the Fritz interface through the years, I find it very easy. And I can attach Houdini 1.5 (free) to it for a variation of engines. Though, Fritz is quite strong enough for me!
I don’t know. I was playing Fritz “assasin” personality, and I can usually win if I spot an early or middlegame tactic. Once it gets to the endgame, it basically seems to ramp up its skill level considerably.
-One thing on assasin level is that its opening moves are really good at mimicing the type of moves a lower to mid range player would do: decent moves that you know just seem a bit odd (and definately not “book” moves"), but as you play the game, ends up giving an some sort of odd position that you’d find in say a 10min game with a couple of players in the 1200 to 1800 range.
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