Fritz 12

All Things Chess
1

Fritz 12 is about to be released.

Chatter on other forums suggests that most will wait for Deep Fritz 12 to come out. Early testing seems to suggest Fritz 12 is weaker than Deep Fritz 11.

Going to be a hard sell to people with Deep Fritz 11. Looking at the splash page on Fritz 12, it has a new interface, but other than that, doesn’t seem to list anything what I would consider a “must have” upgrade option.

Personally, I think its getting harder for Chessbase to sell upgrades to Fritz. They already pumped the program with tons of extra stuff like 12 hours of chess video, massive 1.5 million game database with limited functions, and other bells and whistles that have been in previous versions.

2

Chess cafe has a nice review on Fritz 12:

http://www.chesscafe.com/Reviews/review709.htm

Its a neutral review for the most part, more for informational purposes, rather than a critical review. Athough the writer was clearly impressed with the new version. Its only compared to earlier versions of Fritz, so not really a critical review in my mind. And he definately not comparing the strength of Fritz.

Since its been a years since I bought a chess program, I might end up getting Deep Fritz 12 when it comes out. Last Fritz program I bought was Fritz 8, lol. I do have a more current copy of Chessmaster, but truthfully I didn’t see much difference between CM11, and CM10.

Chessmaster 11 has some new training material, but not so much I feel like CM11 was a must buy over version 10.

I get the feeling Chessbase is selling Fritz now based on improvements to the interface, and other stuff designed to help a person improve thier play, akin to Chessmaster’s long standing tradition.

There will always be a market for “best engine”, but right now, other engines like Rybka and Shredder are taking that lead. For the vast majority of players, Fritz 12 might be a good investment over earlier versions of Fritz, if only for the redesigned interface.

Chessbase sells Rybka and other really good engines, so they might just not feel a huge need to market Fritz based on strength now. I predicted a while ago that Chess enging -vs- Human matches were all but gone, and thats pretty much a given now. Maybe Adam’s match was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Even before that, it was getting harder and harder for developers to even find a qualified GM to put thier reputation on the line in a man vs machine match, and that was a few years ago.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2476

3

People those days are not buying Fritz for an engine strength. There is Rybka for this and there is actually Rybka Chessbase flavor, with a serial number that provides same level of access to playchess.com as Fritz 11. What Fritz 12 added and that is what certainly worth the upgrade is access to premium content on playchess.com. Those are educational videos and real-time commentary on playchess.com for a full 1 year. Interestingly is that premium access is only available with Fritz 12, they do not offer it with any other engines or with no_Fritz playchess access at this time. Without premium access you pay per use of those services.

I stop short of recommending Fritz 11 users to upgrade, but it certainly make sense for users of “ancient” Fritzes like Fritz 8-9-10 to upgrade and I think this is audience that chessbase is targeting.

4

I absolutly agree.

When Chessbase pumped Fritz 11 (maybe even Fritz 10) full of educational stuff, they clearly were trying to give users more bang for the buck. Its a good trend. So far, Chessmaster looks like its going to stagnate at version XI, and unless they pump something really new into the product, I don’t see a reason for them to actually bother making a new version of Chessmaster.
-Chessmaster is owned by a corporation, and not chess lovers, so I wouldn’t look to them for making a new version anytime soon. I don’t doubt some research is going on for a new version, but its probably more of a side project with just 1 or 2 individuals working on it when they have time between other projects that have a bigger audience.

I can’t predict the life cycle of Fritz, although Chessbase has been pretty good about getting a new version every year, but it would not suprise me if Fritz has to either have a longer life cycle, or Chessbase will have to start pumping even more bells and whistles into the next version of Fritz.

5

The best thing about the release of Fritz 12 may be bringing down the price of Fritz 11. :smiley: