Fritz 9 - A Quick Review By Art Byers

Chess Base began shipping Fritz 9 on November 1st . I received my copy on November 4th. It is now widely available for sale.

To start, let me give you the caveat emptor.

It arrives on DVD. If your Windows computer does not have a CD drive that can read DVD, it won’t work.. However, the actual chess program itself is very similar to Fritz 8 - only lacking the new niceties, conveniences, and the hours of samples taken from DVD video lectures. My advice to those without a DVD drive: If you do not already own Fritz 8, now is the time to buy as it has dropped to half price or less from just about every source.

Recommended for best viewing of the video lecture samples is: “2.2GHz processor or higher, at least 256 MB of ram, Windows XP, a GeForce 5 or equivalent graphics card with 128 MB of RAM, a Direct X compatible sound system and Windows Media Player 9”. The chess playing program itself will run on a processor of only 300 MHz or more, as little as 64 Mbytes of RAM, and everything from Windows 98 on up.

Chess Base, in order to print a lot of information in the accompanying manual, which must fit in the plastic case, measuring 5 1.4” X 7 3/8” X 3/8”, has used a tiny 7 point type font that looks like Times New Roman. Therefore, it is not the easiest manual to read. You can print it out, 23 pages, from a file. There are lots more detailed instructions available on Playchess.com.

I am not going to review the chess playing/analyzing program itself which has a congruent interface to that of Fritz 8 (and the 8 program has been reviewed in detail many times) - nor am I qualified to comment on the accuracy of the claim that it is stronger than 8 and “thinks” more like a human grandmaster in strategic and positional planning. What I am going to tell you about is the best of the many NEW goodies!

First: The sample video lectures. Yes they are put there, for the main part, in the hope that you will purchase the complete GM lectures from Chess Base. Never-the-less there are more than 3 1/2 hours of video chess lectures by Kasparov, Korchnoi, Andrew Martin, Roeschlou-Kersten, Jacob Aagaard and Peter Wells - PLUS an extensive video course for beginning players by IM Andrew Martin.

These alone are worth the price (which runs between $45 and $50).

Next it comes with a free one year membership in Playchess.com. - another big $$ saving. Membership gives you free access to weekly on line video GM lectures and the video archive of past lectures, free access to Chess Base’s humongous online data base, and just about all the online chess you’d care to play. Also by registering your Fritz 9 Serial number on line, you become eligible for updates etc.

New features include an Elo system (in which you can play for “virtual” money) to rate your own playing strength , the ability to print out a scoresheet in a handwriting font, Fisher Random Chess!, a great 3D board on which you can change the viewing angles, rotate the board, etc. and more etc. The claim is made that with the Elo rating system, Fritz 9 can take results from the one million game accompanying data base and allow you to find ratings for such luminaries as Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine.

Serendipity! Since I already have Fritz 8 on my desktop, when I listed the engines on either program, ALL the engines from both 8 & 9 were available for use - including Fritz 5.42, 8 & 9, Crafty 19.1 & 19.19 and Comet 50.

All in all I am very pleased and do not hesitate to say it is among the best chess purchases I have made.