Customer Reviews

Chessmaster 10th Edition JC

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought the 10th edition from Amazon and it works okay. But here is my review of the jewel box edition just to warn the reader what THIS product MIGHT be like.

Yes, I am very PO'd at ubisoft and here's why:

I spent three hours today and a couple of hours yesterday trying to get the jewel box edition to run on my computer. (Yes, I have too much time on my hands.) It did not run even though it expressly says on the product that it will run under Windows XP. No matter what I did--I installed it four times, ran all the patches from ubi, I tried various configurations--it would not run. Apparently ubisoft which currently owns the program doesn't care. Last patch was from 2004. Furthermore, their support site just gave me the runaround, requiring me to fill out forms and then redirecting me back to the same path without allowing me to contact them directly. Poor customer service is rampant these days of course, but I think ubi is worse than most.

By the way, I have Chessmaster 10th edition running on my Vista machine (with some minor problems). The irony is that although it is not designed for Vista, it runs on Vista but not XP.

I feel ripped off, but also sad because I have used Chessmaster since the first edition which I think was called Chessmaster 2100, which couldn't beat a class F player, and I have watched the program grow through many editions (some of which I still have) until it became unbeatable and a lot of fun to use with many interesting features. The fact that I cannot use it on my XP machine would be only sad, except for the fact that I paid cold hard cash for the program and can't get my money back.

Bottom line: R.I.P.O.F.F.

I recently purchase and installed Chessmaster 10th edition.
This game takes 1.6GB space on hard disk and requires keeping CD in the drive or it doesn't start. According to Ubisoft tech support, it only works for one account- administrator who installed the game.
Game has some obvious bugs, such as pop up windows sometimes stay on top of chess board and you can't see the game. Tech support said this issue may have been solved in their updates, but problem is that updating doesn't work and I was unable to resolve the issue with Ubisoft tech support. Their help is laughable: Update drivers, defragment disk, empty windows Temp directory, and empty recycle bin. None of that had any affect on updates.
Buyer be ware.


Chessmaster 10th Edition JC

Chessmaster 10 Jewel Case (CM10 JC) is a great program at an amazingly low price. It features good tutorials for chess beginners as well as exercises for club-level players. Its full playing strength is of course well beyond the ability of 98% of chess players, but the game also matches you with AI opponents at your level (Elo rating) and selects your AI opponents over time to match you as your ratings (from the games) goes slowly up - hopefully - or down. I have enjoyed this program. I have also in the past bought and used Fritz, Hiarcs, Rebel and ChessPartner, and they are all excellent as well. However, they are more expensive than CM10 JC, and so the latter makes pc chess more acccessible to many people, including youth. I really recommend CM10 JC for all the reasons above. I do note that some here have had bad experiences with running CM10 JC on Win XP. I have Win XP SP3 myself, and the installation and running of the game were both flawless! Someone else complained that one has to have the CD (yes, this is not a DVD program) in the CD-ROM drive when running the game. The latest patch from UbiSoft fixed this, and I never have to insert the game CD any more. So at least on the basis of my personal experience, I can wholeheartedly recommend this chess software on the basis of both fun and of Win XP compatibility.

Great program that sharpens up your game & schools you on the finer points. There are a few minor bugs, but nothing that affects the gameplay. Having worked as a game tester, these bits jump out at me. Bottom line: I trample my opponent much more often since getting this program.

We got this game over the weekend and my 10 year old son and I have not stopped playing it. I knew the program itself would be solid, but due to other reviews I was concerned it would not run on my XP machine. The CD's loaded flawlessly and the game started right up. The second concern was that I would need to fumble for the cd every time I wanted to play since the game in it's current format requires this. Ubisoft must have listened to somebody because I downloaded the latest patch (v1.03) and now I don't need the CD to start or run the game.

Here is the link:
http://www.ubi.com/US/Games/Info.aspx?pId=1103&tab=download&dcId=63


The game has a tremendous amount of features. The tutorials are excellent, and there are a ton of Grandmaster games and famous games from history that are broken down and commented on.

My only negative comment is a minor one. I don't recommend playing with infinite time. It seems to take the computer infinite time to move. Play with 15 or 20 minutes per side and the computer moves at a reaonable pace.

We think this game is fantastic! It runs perfectly, the lessons are outstanding, and the content value for the money is off the charts.

I have really benefitted from the instructional materials in Chessmaster 8000, but it is very unstable on Windows XP. So I was very eager to give this 10th Edition a try, now that the price is so low. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked for me. My 6-year-old laptop could not read disc 3 during the installation, so I obtained another copy. This time, two of the three discs were unreadable. My laptop reads other discs just fine, and my other computer (a hefty mid-tower desktop machine) seems to read Chessmaster 10th Edition OK. I guess I can't entirely rule out a problem with my laptop's drive. However, looking at the software CDs, I suspect that Ubisoft has been using very low quality discs. They contain a lot of speckling, scratches, and other surface defects which can be felt with my finger. My laptop's DVD+RW drive might not be the best at handling these things compared with what's in my desktop computer, but it seems clear to me that something's wrong with these discs - not the drive.

Since I want this primarily for my laptop, I'm going to try to return this software again. I don't think getting this to work is worth a hardware upgrade. Perhaps I'll try the next edition instead.

First, this is not a review of the game, just the packaging and contents. This "JC", or jewel case version, shows on the cover that it contains a DVD Rom and requires only 120MB of hard drive space. The package actually contained 3 CDs, the install routine copied about 1.6 GB worth of files onto the hard drive it and requires the CD to be inserted to play. This wouldn't have been a showstopper if it had been stated in the product description, but you may wish to look for a package with the DVD.

This is the classic Chess tutorial and adversary - and this edition does not disappoint. Intuitive interface is easy to navigate, tutorials bring a player of any level up to speed, the sophisticated adjustable skill rating for the computer opponent is great, the advanced attacking tutorials are useful, the puzzles are good breaks for work/studying. Overall an amazing value for just ten dollars. Buy if you want to improve your chessgame or if you want a new challenge.

Although the power of this software is some what obsure (you have to dig for it). I ia a very good learning tool especially the tutorials, Worth the price ten time over.

I got this game and design not up to standards of older versions and simply spent more time trying to get kinks out while trying to play . to many problems, Will say did contact seller and then did a credit.