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Customer Rating:   
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List Price: $60.00
Our Price: $49.95
Your Save: $ 10.05 ( 17% )
Availability:
Manufacturer: ChessBase
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Product Description
Fritz 11 for PC, the program that for many years now has fascinated the chess world. Whether it was the 2006 match where it defeated World Champion Vladimir Kramnik or drew former World Champion Garry Kasparov in 2003, the pitting of wits of the strongest players on the planet against the world's finest chess playing program has generated unprecedented media attention and fired the imagination of people from all walks of life. "Man vs Machine" has become one of the great themes of our time. Don't be afraid! Fritz has a different side to its personality. The program can help you during the game, with sophisticated coaching functions, adjusting its playing strength to exactly match that of any opponent. It displays threats and plans, and provides full opening statistics. For beginners Fritz will explains moves and positions, or warn you of dangers and of errors you are committing. It has instructive training modules and amusing handicap levels. For club and tournament players Fritz has long become a trusted friend and indispensable advisor, helping them to study their games and find new opening ideas for their next tournaments. A database with more than a million games provides the basis for state-of-the-art analysis. Even Garry Kasparov uses Fritz on a regular basis. With its Media System Fritz brings the world's greatest players into your living room, in high resolution video and sound and a synchronized chessboard. Listen to over 13 hours of videos of Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Viktor Korchnoi, and Alexei Shirov while they explain important openings and ideas that lead to success. A host of other famous chess teachers provide instruction in more mundane subjects, like opening traps, middlegame strategy, or endgame skills. For those of you who have never played chess before there are elementary courses to teach you the basics in a matter of hours. Includes Free Subscription to PlayChess.com - A $39.95 Value
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Features
Presale of Fritz 11 - Estimated Ship Date of November 23rd The Strongest Chess Player Program Ever - 80 ELO points stronger than Fritz 10 World Champions Kramnik and Kasparov use Fritz - Shouldn't you? Over 13 hours of instructional video from Kasparov, Kramnik, Shirov and others. Includes a free one-year membership to PlayChess Internet Service - a $39.95 Value
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Customer Review(s)
Customer Rating: Summary: Excellent engine, UI could use some help Comment: This is a great product for analyzing your games (I'm sure for playing head to head against the computer also, although I don't use it for that). The post game and positional analysis which can be done from PGN or FEN files is very well done.
My only gripes are the interface, figuring out how to load FEN and PGN files is not very intuitive. Trying to manually enter moves will end in tears as there seems to be no way to tell the computer that you want to control both sides. Also, the "Explain All Moves" option is wonderful, but tends to hand on certain positions, and there does not seem to be a way to configure around this. Perhaps there is a patch that addresses this, which brings me to my final negative point on this product, which is that finding patches/updates is a very painful process.
Please realize these gripes only keep it from being 5 stars, its still a great product that I use daily. The analysis is priceless if you are trying to improve your game. Customer Rating: Summary: Still Improving Comment: If you can't find the improvements, you haven't looked. In fact, if you've played Fritz 11, you would have stumbled onto them!
They are improvements that help play, study and analysis. Mostly a lot of practical fine tuning that makes already good features better. But a few new major features like calculation training, which improves your ability to see ahead without moving the pieces. You can jump into calculation training from any game. Your calculations show up in notation, but not on the board. The engine can then analyse your calculations. You can then go back to the game and play them (or not), or see what happened in a database game. Whatever you happen to be working with.
There are some new rapid-fire tactics training features. Not the usual "find mate" puzzles. (Yawn.)
If you've been impressed by the competitor's handicap levels, only to find that the handicaps are mostly blunder ratios, you'll like Fritz's handicap levels. Clearly Fritz is weakening the engine and not merely averaging out with blunder ratios. But be advised that Fritz's handicaps still start around 1400.
The interface is somewhat improved. As usual you've got the simple 2D board or the fancy graphics -- if you like that sort of thing.
It boils down to how much time you spend on chess. If you spend a lot of time, the changes will be worth the upgrade. If you only play now and then, it's too much to spend on an upgrade. Customer Rating: Summary: Overkill Comment: Get ready for a weird concept: I gave Fritz 11 5 stars and I meant it, however I do NOT recommend you buy it! Try to understand me here. If you were going to trim your lawn on your little 1/4 acre lot, you wouldn't go out and get a riding mower, or probably a better example, a farm combine would you? The same applies here, unless you are a titled player and or paid chess journalist you do not need this. It would be like getting "Jet Lee" to spare with a 10 year old Taekwondo white belt. Beyond that, even experienced players and savvy users are going to be simply overwhelmed by so many features and sub features. It's so bad, that it borders on making it unusable. It's like these stupid "smart phones" they can do everything but brush your teeth for you, but most of us just want to dial a number and have a clear connection. 85% per cent of people who might buy this just want to play chess. Sadly, you are getting that plus a lot more, too much more.
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