Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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127 of 130 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent chess program. Works fine on Windows 98, December 1, 2000
I am somewhat of a chess nut and I have owned the most recent version of Chessmaster since its inception. Chessmaster 8000 is an excellent chess partner/teacher for players at almost any level. It is versatile and can provide opponents that will challenge but not overwhelm players at skill levels from beginner to master. However, if you really want to test yourself, you can crank it up to its highest level and give it a go. Unless you are an international grand master, chances are that it will be a lesson in humility.The tutorials for beginners and children are particularly good. There are a number of exercises for intermediate players, but the real value is Chessmaster's ability to analyze games and recommend moves. The opening book database is vast and the database of games of Grand Masters is very useful, especially for intermediate and advanced players who want to improve their games. Chessmaster 8000 has several desirable improvements over 7000. This is the second release using the new interface and the initial bugs have been worked out. I have had no problems with it on Windows 98. The 3D perspective has been improved and a number of new chess sets and boards have been added. The children's area has also been improved. There is a very valuable tutorial on endgames by Josh Waitzkin for intermediate player and above. There are also far more computer opponents to play against. The best improvement is an enhancement of the chess engine that makes it even stronger. This is a difference that less than 1% of tournament players will discern, but it furter legitimizes Chessmaster in minds of serious chess players. Even with the stronger engine, Chessmaster 8000 is not the strongest chess program available, but on the highest level it will beat 99.9% of players and it cannot be matched for versatility and teaching. If you are you are looking for a good chess partner or teacher, you can't go wrong with Chessmaster.
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39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent game - plus an important correction, November 26, 2001
First I want to make a correction to a review I read on here that is WRONG. In fact, I almost didnt purchase Chessmaster 8000 on the basis of this review stating that the program didn't run on Windows XP. It DOES run on XP. I have had no problem whatsoever installing or running this great game. I also installed the patch, available off of Chessmaster.com. Maybe there are problems with Win 2000, but none that I can tell with XP. As far as the game...I am blown away. It's simply fantastic - with a wealth of opponents to play, detailed learning materials to access, and a variety of cool sets to play on. I was introduced to chess over 20 years ago when my parents brought me back a wooden hand-carved set from Germany (I still have it), and although I havent played consistently over the years, I have always enjoyed the game. Certainly this is no substitute for sitting down across from another person, but CM 8000 will definitely improve your game, no matter your level.
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43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An awesome way to learn, August 11, 2001
Most people really enjoy making fun of Chessmaster 8000, saying that other engines like Fritz 6 and Shredder are a lot stronger. However, personally I don't care if I'm beaten in chess by a 2600+ engine or a 2700+ engine. Chessmasters true advantage lies in its easy-to-learn approach. Often in other engines the interface and the menus are hard to navigate through, and if you have a child they easily become discouraged by playing against such an engine. But in Chessmaster 8000 you have everything to make you play better. If you have a child that's interested in chess, he/she can play in the "Kids room" where there are exercises, voice lectures by IM Josh Waitzkin and tonnes of opponents, from rating 1 to rating 2200. If you are a teenager like me, or an adult, you might want to move on to the "game room" where you can play the same opponents as in the kids room, but in this case their USCF rating goes as high as 2700, with more than 170 different players, including 80+ human-like players, 39 opponents based and styled after famous grandmasters, and the CHESSMASTER himself, expected to play at 2600 USCF, when playing at full strength, and if that's not enough, you can create your own characters, set their strengths and weaknesses, and you can even incorporate other chessengines into chessmaster, such as Crafty. Furthermore you can play the masters such as Kasparov, Lasker, Capablanca, Nimzowitz, Larsen and Botvinnik, and you can have your game analysed by chessmaster, so that he points out where you went wrong, and where you did the right move. He can even during a game suggest the best move to you, or he can go into dept and try to find a forced mate. You can also pair computers vs. computers, play rated and unrated tournaments in the tournament room, look up EVERY opening and see comments to it in the "library room", check out classic games (more than 700) with annotation by Grandmasters, including Yasser Seirawan and Larry Evans, hear voice lectures from Joshua Waitzkin, solve exercises from mate in 1 to highly advanced Master exercises, you can go online and play against other users of chessmaster 8000 (and no it's not possible to cheat during play), there's a giant database with over 500000 chess games played throughout history, you can search for ELO, player, tournament, position etc. The graphics are 16-bit and you can choose from 33 different chessboards, in "birds eye view", "over the shoulder view", "3D", "Perspective" or the traditional "2D". You can also chose the pieces. If you are not satisfied, you can create your own board. There's nothing that you can't do in chessmaster, and the lectures by Bruce Pandolfini, Seirawan and Waitzkin are of top quality, and most of them are read aloud! This is like having your own personal IM or GM at your disposition at any time. Chessmaster 8000 is an awesome and fun way to learn chess, recommendable to children, teenagers or adults! If you're 400, buy this game, if you're 1500, buy this game, if you're a grandmaster, yes, buy this game, seeing it is grandmaster strength. This is definitely the best chess engine ever.
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