Chess Titans is for beginner, i had an ELO of 1200(well, beginners are like this) and we uses Arpad Elos method, take my challanges between Chess Titans Level 1 AI(I think it got 300). It's for beginner training. Chessmaster is for master's training.(Well, Chess Titans lets you eats his queen in special conditions eg:He eats the eating piece and another piece attacks.)
pawn(s) at a3 and b4 his queen at c5...
lol decided to play against it. Level 8 isn't that great. blitzed the moves out. I didn't understand many of the moves it made. i had a mate that i didn't take. Oh well.
Latvianfan, what program is that where you compared "RandomPrecision (1768) vs. Chess Titans (2)". The one you have pictured? I really like the way it displays the score!
Chess Titans is OK to play if you want to knock out a few games, but since you have Chessmaster 9000 already, that should be sufficient. I like to play a few games on Chess Titans, but sometimes I get frustrated with it just blundering by giving away pieces here & there or making some other odd move.
I'm about a 1700 ranked player on this site and I can reliably beat the first 8 levels, and usually beat level 9 on Chess Titans. Level 10 is a the only level where I don't win a majority of the time. Maybe that can provide some perspective.
Are you kidding? I love Chess Titans! In fact, it was Titans that got me into chess in the first place, and encouraged me to type "play chess online" into Google and join chess.com! It was life-changing for me (no joke!). I started out playing Titans, struggling against a level 3 (arh, back in the days...)
Anyway, I love the graphics of Titans, but I only really play against level 7/10. Above this level I find too slow (I'm usually in the mood for a blitz against a computer), and I find below this level the computer is too blunderous.
But I wouldn't be buying a Vista just for it.
I think it's so funny that at the low levels the game still uses opening theory. This usually makes for games in which the first few moves are stellar and then he starts giving away everything one by one. Always brings a smile to my face.
I usually circumvent the theory though by 1 Nh3 .... 2 Ng5 ... 3 Nf3 ... 4 Ng1
Then you can start the game P :)
Yeah it is good for mucking around with :)
@ stwils: I'm not saying Titans is awesome, I'm just saying it is the reason I am here today. It has it flaws, mainly in a fairly weak engine, slow moving, unable to offer draws and also unable for the computer to resign in lost postions. It does have the feature of playing person vs person, which is handy without a board.
Not sure if it's still time to bump this thread, but have you tried Chess Giants lately ? It's gone quite a long way since its first release.
It now uses Crafty as a chess engine (2700+ ELO) and comes with quite a load of other options (PGN browser, ability to load/save/review/comment games, FEN notation support, game history display, 2D or 3D view, themes support, etc.)
And still as superb as Chess Titans :
Granted, it's no longer completely free - though you can still download a demo version which allows you to play 15 minutes against a person. But I believe its price is quite fair for the work I put in it.
Give it a try, I'm confident you'll like it 
Chess Titans end games are suicide...get there and it self-distructs! But the REAL FLAW is that playing white 90% (at least) are queen pawn games. This is kind of nutty. Kinda blows for that reason. Elo is > 1200 i'm thinkin'
I have Chess Titans on my laptop which came with Windows 7. I'm not sure if it's a newer version or the same one that came with Vista.
does anyone else realise that this question is from September of 2008?
It's good to see that any Chess game comes with a computer, may it be a PC or Mac. As long as it is fairly decent. Maybe it will hook them into Chess and then they can get a better Chess program.
The biggest flaw with Chess Titans is its limited depth. Even level 10 makes obvious tactical blunders that indicate only a 6-8 ply search depth. I agree though that it's nice that it comes with the OS.
Comparing Chess Titans to ChessMaster 9000 is like comparing a gnat to an elephant, and that's putting it mildly. CM 9000 is all you need for now and probably a long time to come or until you become a NM or FM. Trust me on this one, the check is in the mail, I won't raise your taxes, ever and seriously, forget you even heard about Chess TItans!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chessmaster
I have both Chess Titans and Chessmaster XI on my computer, and enjoy them both. But you're right, there's really no comparison between the two at all. Chess Titans reminds me of a fancy version of those old simple DOS chess games.
i've only beaten level 2 on chess titans once...
I personally love Shredder Chess. As for Titans I just use it for openings. I can't beat past level 8 but everything below that really isn't good if you know to look at least two moves ahead.