Great game. Now its your move! (Fritz Chess 11 (PC))

Member Name: Nigel1

Product:	Fritz Chess 11 (PC)
Date:	15/02/09 (276 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Powerful chess engine can be adjusted to suit your own strengths.

Disadvantages: On full power it is unbeatable.

Retailing at £17.99 from Amazon,Fritz Chess 11 (PC) is one of the most powerful chess playing engines that is currently available today. Indeed, in 2006, this Fritz 11 was pitted against none other than the reigning World Champion Vladimir Kramnik- and beat him 4-2!! (which isn't so surprising, as Fritz can search through millions of 'move combinations' per second, in order to seek out the best move available).

But please do not let this awesome power put you off, because the Fritz 11 software can be adjusted to your own playing strengths (or weaknesses) to exactly match any opponent.

For beginners, Fritz will explain moves and positions, or warn you of any dangers or errors that you are committing via the 'coach' who continually watches and appraises every move you make, advising you of your moves advantages, or disadvantages. Indeed, many Grand Masters including Garry Kasparov (undisputed World Chess Champion 1985) continually use Fritz 11 to study their games and to search for more powerful openings!

Fritz 11 is fully customisable, with the ability to change the coloured squares of the board to your own preference, change the 'style' of the actual chess pieces and even change the surrounding surface from anything from marble or wood, right through to metal or stone.

You can also change the 'view' of the playing board from 2D into 3D although I find the 3D view rather confusing and prefer the 2D view, but the choice is entirely up to the user.

You can also add different 'chess engines' to Fritz 11, for example, Shredder or Rybka 3 (which is even more powerful than Fritz 11).

Fritz also offers various playing modes including Blitz, Long, Rated, Friend, Sparring, Handicap and Fun, all the way through to Tournament mode. Each of these modes can be further adjusted so that Fritz will adjust its playing strengths to match those of your own, otherwise you will be beaten out of sight no matter how good a chess player you are!!!

Fritz 11 also has a 'set up' position mode where you can put pieces on the board in any position you want and Fritz can analyse this position and inform the player what his positional strength (or weakness) is. It can also analyse the position to find how many moves it will take for a 'checkmate' to occur. Amazing!

Having installed the Fritz 11 software, which is straightforward enough, the user is presented with the Fritz 11 icon on the desktop. Clicking on this opens up the application, where you are presented with four options.

First option is 'Play Fritz' which is where you open up the Fritz engine and chess board where you can play against Fritz after adjusting its strength (unless you want to be totally destroyed).

Second option is 'Playchess. com' which opens up the world's biggest and most popular chess server in the world. Here you can play against people from all over the world and where you can play 'rated' games that give you points for winning your chess games, which are transferred into your personal ELO rating. Also you can just opt to watch other people playing chess (kibitzing), and indeed, Nigel Short, The British Champion, is a patron of Playchess and often comes onto Playchess to play other opponents, which I gleefully watch with great interest. It was also reported that Kasparov, and indeed the late Bobby Fischer, were frequent visitors to Playchess although, as you can use any 'username' to login to Playchess, nobody knows for sure whether these chess greats did visit the site. However, it is a certainty that Nigel Short Plays there as he comes on under his own name. He usually plays 3 minute Blitz games which are absolutely fascinating to watch!

Also, during important chess championships, including the World Chess Championship, by using Playchess.com you can watch the actual moves of the Grand Masters playing in real-time, because a chessboard opens up, which you can watch, and all moves made are transmitted to this chess board immediately. Fascinating stuff!!

Third option is 'Chess Course' where thousands of important games have been stored. And by simply 'clicking' on a game that interests you, the chess board opens up and you can watch the game, move by move, exactly how it was played at the time!

And the fourth option is simply 'quit' which is self-explanatory.

A really must-have application for anyone interested in the game of chess, from the complete and utter beginner, through to county level players and all the way up to Grand Masters and World Champions alike!

I myself, love the game of chess. and was always playing chess, much to the annoyance of my wife. Indeed, so annoyed was she that she gave me the ultimatum of either HER or the CHESS-- I shall miss her dearly!!!!

Summary: For anyone serious in chess this is a must-have.