I finally broke down and bought a copy of Fritz 9 and I'm extremely underwhelmed and confused.  The guide book is very small and the help manual is also highly lacking.

Does anyone have any recommendations for learning how to use this program more intuitively?  I'd like to use this to learn opennings, etc., but I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere fast.

Any suggestions on ways I could make the most of this program?

greersome wrote:

I finally broke down and bought a copy of Fritz 9 and I'm extremely underwhelmed and confused.  The guide book is very small and the help manual is also highly lacking.

Does anyone have any recommendations for learning how to use this program more intuitively?  I'd like to use this to learn opennings, etc., but I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere fast.

Any suggestions on ways I could make the most of this program?

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 I have an English language manual for Fritz 10 in .pdf format. If you think that it will help, I can send it to you.

Personally, I think that Chessmaster 10 and especially Bookup 2000 are better for learning openings. But that, I suppose, is a matter of opinion.

There is link elsewhere on this site to an openings encylopedia that you could use with Fritz or the Chessbase Reader included with it.

http://www.chess.com/download/view/encyclopedia-of-chess-openings 

Thanks, Hooper.

The program came with a manual, but it's not very big and doesn't really explain things very well.  Feel free to send a copy to my chess.com email (username@chess.com).  It may be exactly what I already have, but can't hurt.

 

Any other Fritz 9 users out there who have recommendations? 

greersome wrote:

Thanks, Hooper.

The program came with a manual, but it's not very big and doesn't really explain things very well.  Feel free to send a copy to my chess.com email (username@chess.com).  It may be exactly what I already have, but can't hurt.

 

Any other Fritz 9 users out there who have recommendations? 

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 The Fritz 10 manual is 120 something pages long. If you want it, let me know.

You might want to give this a look as well...

http://www.chessbase.com/workshop.asp

(this is for Fritz 8, but a lot of this stuff is still the same in Fritz 10)

Okay... here are dozens of tutorials about Fritz 9.

http://www.chesscafe.com/archives/archives.htm#ChessBase%20Cafe

Fantastic, Hooper.  Many many thanks!!!

Okay...

 

I started diving into the second CD that came with the game.  The manual doesn't mention the second cd nothing is printed on the second CD telling you what it is for or what it does.

 

However, I explored this 2nd cd and found some *.pdf files.  I assumed it was identical to the 28-page manual that came with the program, but it was not.

 

This pdf file 94 pages long and contained a lot of the detail I was searching for.

 

Maybe I should write a book on how to make the most out of Fritz! 

Fritz for Dummies?

I think my book would actually be titled "Fritz By Dummies". 

The user interface is the poorest I've ever seen in an application.  Menus are weak, functions don't work without additional tweaking.  No instructions on tweaking provided.