Fritz Chess 14 Reviews

Although I have little experience chess engines this software seems to be really buggy. Clicking some of the buttons like the force fritz to move button do nothing in some of the training modes. Really disappointed that I paid what i did for this. I thought that I would be getting a quality product that could help me with my chess game but I did not. Hopefully they fix some of these issues and add a tutorial. If they did im sure I wouldn't be as disatisfied.

Amazingly detailed Chess software. AI is pretty brutal. Even once you figure out how to turn it down it can still be rough. Casual Chess players might get more out of the free program WinBoard, but for serious Chess players, this is where it's at. If you are considering joining an orginization like the US Chess Federation, or any kind of club player status, owning this software can be a major tool for analyzing past games you have played. Again, if you just want to play a bit of computer Chess, this may be a bit too beefy for you.

Updating from Fritz 8 is perhaps unnecessary: the older version by and large does the same thing. That said, I have not regretted purchasing Fritz 14 as I will try to establish below. The newer Chessbase-themed GUI is very nice, but the chief benefit is that it is easier to manoeuvre the database. That in essence is the purpose of the Fritz chess suite: chess-playing software is ubiquitous and cheaper (and can play a stronger game: see the open-source multi-core Stockfish) but offering native Chessbase Reader (free) support along with plain-English analysis is of greater value for the serious chess student. In limited games, I've found the Fritz 14 engine to be stronger than the Fritz 8 engine (processing power held constant) but that wouldn't be important really unless I was GM-standard. Overall the cleaner interface wins the day. Dispensing the CD-media to enable the Steam experience is also very convenient, and I look forward to taking my Fritz experience anywhere my light laptop can go.

[h1]Great potentional but to many bugs and not a great overall experience![/h1] In its current form, this software seems unfinished and unpolished. [list] [*]Everytime I start the software, It launches a setup for Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 x64 Redistributable Maintenance. It's already installed so I just cancel the setup and the game starts just fine. [*]I bought the game just to play against a strong player with handicap. But I am not able to do so as I want. When I play agains the engine with "queen+move"-handicap, it plays fine, but when I castle, the engine expects white to play two moves in a row. After that, It's impossible to move pieces and I need to restart the game. Castling is only a issue in handicap-mode as it seems. [/list] The analysis works fine and you are able to include other engines easily. When the bugs are removed, I will update this review as well.

This is a great software to run engines in, as well as the three engines included. This is also the only chess software that is available through Steam that takes itself seriously. So you don't have many options anyways. I bought this on Steam sale when it was $19.99 and $9.99 for "64 bit dlc". You probably would only use the latest Fritz 14 engine, so basically you get one good engine and two old ones. There is a ton of included games from history from all the famous players. They can be searched by all criteria like years, last names, etc. There are many analysis options. You can see suggested moves on the go or analyse the whole game. One nice feature is intentionally vaguely worded hints. They give enough descriptive advice but don't directly give you the best move. You have an option for exact moves though. While the core of the game is pretty good. But it is really puzzling how a known chess software maker can make a good engine and not take the effort to include more options in its main selling point which is the 2D and 3D representation of the chess board. You get very few options for the 2d chess board. There are nice wooden texture and tones included, but there are just five total! It doesn't even have the green and white traditional vinyl board colors that many players are used to. Doesn't have solid color options. You get too few chess graphics as well, and only 3 out of 5 are any good. The other two are abstract designs no one would use. The 3d chess board graphics look nice but they look like they've been made very lazily. For example you get a number of options for traditional 3d pieces and boards but they can only be combined with solid color background. You can adjust something as insignificant as lighitng and reflection, but don't get many texture options for the background. The themed 3d graphics with backgrounds are pretty good, but they're mainly for novice players. In my opinion the experienced players would not bother running these nice looking 3d graphics since they are used to plain 2d diagram. So basically I'd give it a 7 out of 10. You get lots of advanced options but not enough color and graphics variation. I'd even be willing to purchase additional ones as DLC if they were available. But there aren't any. Seems like such a missed opportunity to simply add more colors and graphics options. The only explanation I can think of is lazyness.

Pros: Strong engine. Awesome online community. Can watch grandmasters games and all tournaments. 6 month playchess/chessbase subscription. Easy chess engine import and implementation. No brainer for anyone who loves to play chess. Cons: Tutorials are hidden and lacking in content . . . (find them in your "C:\Users\[NAME]\Documents\ChessBase\Media files\" folder. Crazy number of options with no documentation. Not really for beginners who wish to learn without playing online (but then again, the best way to learn how to play chess is to . . . play chess, not read books or tutorials). Overall, the cons are minimal and can be ignored. If someone wants to learn how to play chess, YouTube has a TON of free content. Fritz allows for amazing analysis of games, very large chess database (which is easily expandable via numerous file type support) and online kibbitzing with some of the best players on the planet. I highly recommend this for anyone who is serious about chess.

I first met Fritz many years ago when it was the talking chess program and was mentioned together with Kasparov in New in Chess - Yes he was actually playing back then. User interface is a bit nicer but really no major improvements. Included multimedia is aimed at beginners. Some more games commented by a stong player would be nice (remember the Karpov comments with (I think) chessmaster 3000?). The engine is still terribly strong for a measely human like me. It's still just Fritz - a strong program with nice database options - both for reference and for storing your own games. Is it a good buy? Well if you just want a chess program and a database then you should probably look at free options on the internet. But if you want to play at Playchess.com and use their material then it looks like a good deal because of the 6 months included membership. Should you consider upgrading with the DLC for 'Deep Fritz'? - well are you a superstrong chess player? I'm not so I wont. In fact I'm very happy with the chance to get Fritz+playchess for a good price and I dont miss 'Deep multicore etc.' options. For reference I'm a "hobby" player with an Elo rating around 1900.

I had this uninstalled for a while and decided to come back to again. Serial number? What? For a game I've owned for years? Googling, I see this: "A valid serial number allows you to unlock an account only once. When the serial number has been used for an activation, its useful life is over and thus the serial number can no longer be used for further activations!" Wasted my money. Buyer beware. One activation allowed, only. One star. I'd give it zero if I could for this kind of greed and horrible treatment of a customer who bought the product.

The user interface or engine is somewhat buggy but has potential. Fritz 11 SE seems to be the only engine included. The advertised Fritz 14 engine appear to be missing. I know Chessbase since 20+ years and expect them to fix the problem. For now, view this as Early Access. Update: Looks like the Fritz 14 engine is now available though it did not install automatically.

Something you need to know about Fritz is that it hardly belongs in the games category. Think of it less as a fancy chess game and more of an analysis tool for chess enthusiasts. Every single bad review you'll see for this program is due, not to some defect or bug, but because this is a bloody complex application and it's rather hard to intuit what it is you want to do. Reading through the manual, especially if something doesn't seem to make sense, is highly, *highly* recommended. If you just want to play chess, and nothing else, you'd be better served by the pack-in games that come with your operating system. The Fritz engine that comes with this software has a low end rating in the 1400s and is absolutely /not/ for beginners! So what can you use this for? The killer feature for me is the ability to load up PGN-formatted games (I usually annotate them on my phone) and have the engine go through your game and note where and how you messed up. What you could have done better, and so on, using plain english. This is starting to sound like a sales pitch, but in short, I recommend this whole-heartedly if you have more than a passing interest in chess.