Fritz 12 Chess Playing Software Program & Play Chess - Have Fun Fritz E-Book (2 item Bundle)

by ChessCentral

Product Features

• Fritz 12 Chess Playing Software Program & Play Chess - Have Fun E-Book (2 item Bundle)
• Fritz remains the most popular chess program worldwide. Whether you're a beginner, club player or professional -
• This chess program has beaten a reigning World Champion in the battle of man vs machine, and has worked with World Champions as a training partner.
• Fritz 12 will teach you everything you need to know and have you playing your first game in an hour!
• Includes 1 year Premium Membership at Playchess.com
• Fritz 12 has everything that chess players could want.

Product Details

• ASIN: B002P7EXZ4
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,359 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Fritz remains the most popular chess program worldwide, a super-strong chess playing opponent developed by ChessBase. Whether you're a beginner, club player or professional - Fritz 12 has everything that chess players could want: automatically adjusting playing strength, handicap and coaching functions, explanation of positions, colored danger warnings, openings statistics, automatic game analysis, trainings modules for openings, tactics, endgames, and a database of 1.5 million chess games. Read that list again! Fritz 12 can even help you train with a human Grandmaster. Fritz provides you with twelve hours of video lessons for every level of play, in which you'll enjoy the instructive analysis of master games, and the discussion of clever openings traps, or deadly combinations to solve. The video material introduces you to world class Grandmasters like Alexei Shirov, Vladimir Kramnik, Vishy Anand, and even chess legend Garry Kasparov. If you cannot play chess at the moment, Fritz 12 will actually teach you the rules of the game! And Fritz 12 gives you Premium Membership to Playchess. Without further costs or obligation you will be able to listen to the audio commentary during major events, receive live training, play in simultaneous exhibitions against top GMs, watch the TV ChessBase shows and play in league tournaments. Minimum System Requirements: Pentium III 1 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Windows Vista, XP (Service Pack 3), DirectX9 graphics card with 256 MB RAM, DVD-ROM drive, Windows-Media Player 9, internet access (playchess, updates and activation). Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 7. Play Chess - Have Fun! interactive e-book expertly bridges the gulf between the simple rules of chess, and how to actually play a strong chess game. Lewis McClary has been teaching chess for many years, and he has a knack for guiding students rapidly to winning chess. So if you want to move beyond merely playing "at" chess, to become a Chess Player, then this is the e-book to get.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spend some time with it, December 23, 2009

By 

Jeff "Always Learning" (Midwest USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fritz 12 Chess Playing Software Program & Play Chess - Have Fun Fritz E-Book (2 item Bundle) (CD-ROM)

If you're half-way or totally serious about chess, buy this software for education and entertainment. I'm a weak rated player who needs hints, suggestions, and move evaluations. This software has it all and it's very fast when giving you the results. I tried playing my first Fritz 12 game against the computer by taking all its advice. This means the computer is effectively playing itself. It's nice to know that I won, even with a few variances of my own. One feature that I love is the use of its database. Specifically, open up the database window and click on the filter option. Then, enter positions of black and white pieces and click GO for the database. The search engine finds games in its library that match the position you entered. Then, you can review the matching game, find out what it took to win or lose the historic match plus it will show you all the moves. You can even turn on the analysis function and get an on-screen report of the strength or weakness of each move. In the training mode, the background voice isn't irritating or humiliating like other programs.

One issue that gave me a little trouble was the technical writing of the manual. I'm a technical writer by profession and I know user manuals need to be written better for wider acceptance. I realize that a relatively low-cost program can't deliver expensive manuals but most buyers would accept paying a little more for a better manual.

In summary, this is a great program with extremely high value for the price. If you have a computer and you love chess, you simply must acquire the software or you're missing a great deal.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good upgrade from previous versions, October 7, 2010

By 

Matthew K. Morgan (Ruther Glen, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fritz 12 Chess Playing Software Program & Play Chess - Have Fun Fritz E-Book (2 item Bundle) (CD-ROM)

Fritz is arguably the most commercially-successful and popular chess package available. I started using Fritz at version 6 and have purchased most of the upgrades, up to version 10. With each successive version the whole package has gotten better and better though some of the upgrades were more worthwhile than others (one reason I never purchased version 11). Version 12 is a quantum leap forward, though it is still not perfect.

Installation from the DVD was painless and uneventful. However, there is one issue with the installation that bothered me - the installer never installed a desktop icon or a program group, so I needed to navigate to the installation directory, from which I made a shortcut to the application binary on the desktop. After this step, everything has worked smoothly and I can launch the application without issue.

The interface has gotten a huge facelift - this is not a color scheme change or rearrangement of the menus and toolbars, but rather it is a complete overhaul with Windows ribbon controls serving up the components. Normally, I would be wary of such a large change to the overall interface, but ChessBase has done an excellent job of designing the interface and it is very well-organized. There is a learning curve, though, for people who have grown very accustomed to the older ChessBase interface, as some things are a little difficult to find unless you have familiarity... Given a couple of hours of exploration, the interface becomes second nature and finding things becomes easy again.

The Fritz engine itself is a strong one, able to crush practically any human player (including seasoned grandmasters) with ease when used at full playing strength and it holds its own against other top-drawer engines. It is not the strongest engine available, but for the vast majority of players it doesn't need to be the strongest. When using an engine this strong, playing against it is not the most useful activity; where engines of this strength are most useful is in the analysis of games.

Fritz includes several analysis modes, my favorite being full analysis for post-mortem scrutiny of games. The full analysis function works backward through a game and adds move suggestions as well as canned commentary as the selected chess engine evaluates each position. Though the English commentary is not always especially informative (for example, comments like "This is a futile try to save the game" are common), the comments do add a more "personal" touch to the analysis which would otherwise be simply a dump of suggested moves. When the engine finds an especially good move, the commentary is usually a little more helpful.

I found an annoying glitch with the Full Analysis mode. After fully analyzing a game, the interface simply chopped the last quarter of the game from the report, even though I could still iterate through all of the moves. I never could get the rest of the analysis on the screen.

Another very helpful analysis mode is "Infinite Analysis" which takes a single position and continuously analyzes it until the engine is interrupted or the position is changed. This is especially helpful for taking a deep look at a position and trying several what-if scenarios.

Deep position analysis is another mode, as is Monte Carlo, though I have used these so little that I cannot really comment on them.

The last analysis mode I will talk about is "Engine Shootout" which takes a position and feeds it to two or more engines for analysis. These engines evaluate the position and play through, with the intent of determining how the game would proceed and the outcome as a result. Though it's a feature I really don't need, it is something I use occasionally to look at games I have played when the game was unfinished but the outcome wasn't clear. Different engines arrive at different conclusions which makes this even more intriguing.

The Fritz package includes a large database of games, which can be used to explore and analyze. Where I find this database to be most useful is in researching specific styles of play. For example, it is easy to track down all of Tal's games and follow his playing style with the database search functions.

Also included on the DVD is a set of training videos. To be honest I have never found these to be especially helpful but others may very well benefit from them.

The UCI interface continues to improve, so adding in UCI engines is easy and reliable. I have found several weaker engines against which I can play so I have them bound into the interface for playing. I use the Fritz 12 engine for analysis after the fact.

Central to the Fritz interface is access to the ChessBase chess server. Through the interface, players can log into the server, play games, read chess-related news, watch seminars, and observe important matches with live coverage.

There are a couple of different versions to this package. The version sold by ChessBase and its resellers sports a green box whereas the version sold through Viva Media comes in a black box. I noticed an appreciable price difference and I investigated that difference. The software appears to be the same; the real difference is in the access given to the chess server. The more expensive package offers a 1-year premium membership which gives access to all content on the server such as seminars, elite tournament coverage and other content. The less expensive package also offers a 1-year membership but the access is more limited and excludes much of the premium content. Both offer guest access which allows anyone to log in and play games without hindrance, but as a guest so there is no tracking of progress. Which kind of access you desire should be considered when choosing which package you need.

Fritz 12 is a big step forward and is a worthwhile upgrade from previous versions. The engine is stronger and the interface is vastly superior. It is not without its glitches but the problems seem to be few in number.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fritz becomes grea, November 4, 2009

By 

Alonzo H. Ross (Shrewsbury, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fritz 12 Chess Playing Software Program & Play Chess - Have Fun Fritz E-Book (2 item Bundle) (CD-ROM)

I have used Fritz for several years, but I have always found the Program a little clunky. They have done a great job making all of the features readily accessible. I most often use the Program to analyze my games, but you can also play Fritz or use Training Programs. I have not yet used the Training feature but I am told that they work well also. Very good product at reasonable price.