I got the diamond membership for multiple reasons and one of them was to get that 2500 analysis engine on this site, but is I think it is insane, it says I make 10 mistakes when I beat 1800-1900 players, which I probably do, but when it doesn't change my winning or lossing percentage(it says I made a mistake when My advantage went from 1.35 1.89 and it's "best move" only went to 1.56 for me). What gives, chess.com, there is no way that computer is rated 2500 especially when it says book moves, are inaccuracies!
You get a lot of value for the diamond membership, but the computer analysis is IMO the least-value item chess.com offers. The analysis is very well presented (I wish chess.com would design an engine gui, I think they'd do a good job) but as you've noticed the output itself is inconsistent in places.
The best way to analyze a game with software is "by hand" -- that is review the game with a chess engine stepping thru it one move at a time, look at the evaluations and suggested lines. At critical points in the game explore lines suggested by the software. The tools to do this are freely available online. I reccommend using SCID or ChessDB (a database program with built in software analysis features ) fully using these programs might pose some problems for an inexperienced user but the integrated analysis engine is quite easy to use. The ChessDB download comes with a chess engine (crafty, I think) and you can DL (for free) even higher quality engines like Toga II and very easily install them. Toga II is 2900+ strength.
Chessmaster, Fritz, Aquarium also will let you analyze... an inexpensive copy of Fritz doing auto-analysis will give you results as good as the chess.com auto-analyis. But, as I said, going by hand is better.
(SCID and ChessDB are very similar programs (chessDB is built from SCID) ... the latest SCID is beautiful but it doesn't seem very stable on my system, and it doesn't allow automated downloads from TWIC. So I recommend ChessDB.
well my version of chessmaster(my only engine besides chess.com) is really glitchy and it keeps on freezing before I can analyze anything with it.
I am going to take a look into these free engines, thanks for the advice.
Yeah some versions of Chessmaster are really glitchy -- I had that problem too with one version -- with me it was the the 3d board... try it in 2D view instead of 3d, and the freeze ups may go away. If you've got a spare 20 bucks (probably less) an older copy of Fritz will work...
There's no perfect solution IMO because the free solutions require you to figure out how things work without a lot of documentation, and the commercial programs aren't as well-designed as one would reasonably expect. Oh well.
Good luck with ChessDB. It is NOT primarily an engine interface -- it's primarily a database program, so what you can do with the engine is pretty minimal, (you can analyze lines by hand, that's about it) ... If you want more options Fritz or Chessmaster *(if you could get it working on your system) are the way to go, you also might want to check if there's a patch for your Chessmaster.
Someone is bound to reccommend arena at some point, or you'll find it on your own googling, so here's my .02 on Arena:
Arena is a free Graphical User Interface for free chess engines... in my opinion (and others) it is quite difficult to work with... it is designed with the chessengine-gearhead in mind, not the casual user.
As a small side note to what has been said above, I feel it necessary to point out that some book moves ARE inaccuracies. You seemed a little confused by that.
what are you talking about Nytik? They are called book moves because there is nothing better than them in that variation.
I disagree.
But I guess we are all entitled to our own opinions....
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