At wholesale chess today only–$40
I got a shrinkwrapped copy on ebay for around 15 bucks a couple months ago. It seems like the price of this software is almost random.
I’ve seen it at Target for $20. The box has a different design than the one you see on most webstores. But Fritz is Fritz. lol
Still, considering how little they’ll sell Fritz 12, its quite amazing they want so much for the Deep version.
Not that it matters, there are free engines like Stockfish and Houdini that are better or as good as Deep Rybka. Depending who does the testing, and the exact paramaters, all 3 are about equal.
I agree. I opted not to buy Fritz 12 initially because the price was so steep. However I found it at a local software store for 17.82… I love the program, but could have payed upwards of 60 to 75 at some retail chess stores… It doesn’t seem fair that some stores are being sold the program wholesale at 40 and others are getting it obviously …cheaper!! Maq
My impression has been that the higher-priced package is the official one put out by ChessBase, while the other is . . . I don’t know, some kind of bootleg. Hark ye back hither.
I bought a Frits 11 at Target a few weeks ago for $9.99 to give as a ladder prize… Haven’t seen 12 there yet.
Original ChessBase branded Fritz 12 is valuable because it comes with 1-year premium membership on playchess.com which is Euro 49.90 if purchased separately.
So getting it for $40.00 is a very good deal.
My understanding is that other packages that are sold in target, overstock, etc. is just software itself.
I really see no reason to pay any kind of money for Fritz engine, considering you can get Hoidini (the strongest engine those days) as a free download and make it work with free Arena or Windboard GUI.
I agree with you. I won’t be getting the next upgrade to Fritz to get the Playchess subscription. They must be seeing a fall off in sales because with 12 they gave a premium membership. The only place I plan to pay is at chess.com. Between fics/Babas, Chess Planet and the ICCF server there is more than enough chess available.
Ditto for me. I play exclusively on FICS, and as a casual player at that.
I’d gladly pay $20 for Fritz 12 mass market version at Target, and gladly skip paying $60 for the “full version”, thereby saving $40 which mostly goes to subsidize the playchess server.
I’m sure there a quite a few American chess players that use playchess.com, but looking at the map, its almost always been most heavily frequented by European players, which undoutably have a different time schedule than us Yanks. Ya, chess servers are a 24 hour/365 day thing, but timing is everything, and the most players tend to log on during the weekends (at any time really), but on weekdays, mostly from 7pm to Midnight local time. That puts a server with mostly american peak activity from about 7pm eastern, to about 2am eastern (taking into consideration the time difference between east and west coast.)
So it would slide about 8 to 10 hours earlier on playchess.com… which means most yanks are working at that time.
I believe the version that Target sells is the Viva Media version http://viva-media.com/fritzchess12thedition.aspx . As I recall, the only difference between the Viva Media version and the Chessbase labeled version is product support. To get support for the Viva Media version the buyer calls the Viva Media 800 number to reach a US based tech support person. The Viva Media version does appear to include a membership to Playchess.com.
The Viva Media versions I’ve purchased in the past have included Playchess although sometimes only 3 months.
That’s what I got and it did include the membership. In my case, not worth much, since I had the very old version where the membership doesn’t expire for something like twenty years.