Chessmaster biggest load of crap ever

You're welcome! I hope the instructions were helpful.

One more thing that I didn't bother discussing is logos for the imported engines. Most engine logos are in the standard landscape format, but Chessmaster uses a portrait logo format. Using a graphics program (I use the freeware XnView), I usually take a standard landscape jpeg logo for the engine and squish it to a 76 pixel wide, 97 pixel high bitmap image. Then I rename the bitmap image to the same name as the engine's personality filename (except for the .bmp file extension), and put the bitmap image in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Chessmaster 10th Edition\Data\Personalities\" folder. If you do this correctly, the imported engine will now display a "squished" version of the original engine logo. It looks kind of crappy, but I think it's better than nothing.

I was just telling someone this weekend that I did not know anyone who had successfully imported another engine into Chessmaster. Now, I must revise that.

I must say, however, that I do not share your sense of aesthetics. To me the Chessmaster graphics are childish and unattractive. The GUI also lacks the effective functuality of ChessBase products and even Arena. Why must you completely change the screen to move between lessons and playing environments? Why not make the database and analysis features easily accessible from the playing environment? That's what I've been able to do in Fritz for the past fifteen years. 

You mean UCI engines, right? You've always been able to directly import Winboard engines into Chessmaster.

On the aesthetics issue, I can't really argue with your logic. To me, the big plusses of Chessmaster are the tutorials and the rating management system. Everything else is, well, maybe not so masterful.

Strange, when I started playing chess a year ago I only trained against computer on chessmaster. I'm 1300 now too and I only had problems the last time I did it was against 1200 rating ( half a year ago). Maybe you use a wrong time control? This way an 800 can make very good moves if it has a lot of time. Also opening errors are bigger with 800 but when there are fewer pieces chessmaster has less possibilities to calculate so it becomes sharper.

Finally, someone else thinks the Chessmaster GUI is garbage! I've never understood why people compared this GUI favourably to Fritz's GUI.

And another thing - why does Chessmaster feel the need to preach at you at the end of each game, esp if you play an opponent with a lower grade than yours:

"Ha! So you lost to the much weaker Luke! Funny, judging by your rating you should have won. Looks like you were winning in material but failed to see he had a mate-in-nine. You twat."

LMAO

Ah, you must have the British issue of Chessmaster.

Well, in defense of Chessmaster in this case, I think you can turn off the post-game analysis in the engine preferences. Besides, what's the deal with Fritz's mafioso coach, complete with cigar and bad hat?    (Yeah, I know, you can turn that off too.)

Yes, the coach! I'd forgotten about that - looks like "Paulie" out of "Goodfellas" - "betta move ya Knight or you'll be sleepin wiv da fishes"

The first thing I switched off in Fritz was the hilarious comments it would make. I imagine everyone switches these off - in fact I don't even know if the later versions of Fritz still have this feature ?

I couldn't say. It's been a long time since I've given any of my money to Chessbase.

Back to the OP's original point - In the Talkchess thread below, one of the people involved in making Chessmaster 9000 gave his opinion on a handful of engine personalities in roughly the 1100-1400 range that play a "reasonable" game. (Next to the last post on Page 1)

http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?start=0&t=38277&topic_view=flat&sid=e6ab71cdabbb270c60db7177e8755d8b

I'm running a tournament with those engines to get an idea of how they stack up against each other. I already know I wouldn't want to play the Lacey personality, because it moves instantly.   I'll try running the tournament in both Chessmaster 9000 and Arena.

The advantage of using Arena is that I can add a few other non-Chessmaster engines to act as reference points; Also, Arena supplies more useful information during the tournament. The disadvantage of using Arena is that it's a major pain in the posterior to install Chessmaster engines into Arena.

Running tournaments in Chessmaster 10 isn't feasible because there's no auto play feature in tournament mode, so you have to start each new game manually. I don't know whether they fixed this in CM11.

I agree chessmasters digital 'players' leave a lot to be desired. However the tutorial package is really second to none. And compared to fritz 12s few decent Kasparov queen's gambit opening tutorials, chessmaster 10/11 has literally over fifty themed and focused studies on topics ranging from the middle games to the end game. I would not choose chessmaster for the opening theory (as the themes it teaches tends to be more positional), and if it's openings you want to focus on the would choose rather the foxy video series. But for endgame, and middle game theory and intro theory, it really is second to none!

Well, I started my Arena tournament for a handful of Chessmaster 10 personalities, and I guess the tournament's gone on long enough. It took some work to set everything up. I had to create Arena opening books that were converted from the Chessmaster books used by the personalities. One problem that surfaced had to do with the four personalities that pondered (also called permanent brain, or thinking on the player's time). I found that every time I restarted Arena, those ponder settings sometimes got disabled. I don't know why this happens; I just had to learn to manually check the ponder settings if I had to restart Arena. It's a good thing none of the personalities use tablebases, as the de Koning tablebases will only run in the Chessmaster GUI.

I should also note for anyone who uses Chessmaster 9000 - The strength of play setting for the "Josh Age 6" personality is set at 23 in Chessmaster 9000, but it's set at 26 in Chessmaster 10th Edition. So this personality will be a little weaker in CM9000.

Also, I noticed that the Lacey personality performed better in CM9000 than in CM10th. This is very strange, since the settings didn't change between the two GUIs. (The personalities do use larger transposition tables in CM10th, but it's not clear to me how this could cause a difference in Lacey's performance in the two GUIs.) I should also note that Lacey always moves instantly, and I don't care for that trait.

Anyway, the results are shown below. They were calculated using the Bayeselo program; I assumed an offset of 1300 elo for the "Delfi Trainer 5.4 elo 1300" engine. That is, I assumed that the "Delfi Trainer 5.4 elo 1300" engine strength is correct, and Bayeselo calculated the other engines' elos based on that offset. Note that the + and - columns are the possible margins of error (in elo points) based on a 95% confidence interval.

The bottom line for me is that I wouldn't use the Lacey personality at all, because of the instant moving characteristic. The other tested personalities are OK, although you would need to take note of the actual strength instead of the "advertised" strength. And I still prefer the more natural moves of Delfi, Hiarcs, and Shredder.

why pay for chessmaster 9000 or 10000 when lucas chess is free and imo better program.

I found CMX at Best Buy for $20. I wouldn't pay any more than that. It was new then and the makers maintained an online playing environment. This was a few years before chess.com and it proved a training ground for cheaters who would later infest this site.

Thanks for posting that EscherehcsE! Don't suppose you could do some more of the personalities?

Theoretically, I could, but it's really a lot of work whichever way I'd decide to do it. (I just did the previous tournament as an exercise to see if it was really possible to do it.)

For running the tournaments in Arena, it's a lot of work to create the CM personalites for Arena. First you have to substitute the Crafty engine for the King engine in Chessmaster to get the detailed settings for the personality. (Crafty creates log files when playing games; The King engine doesn't.) Then you have to manually paste the detailed settings into a WB2UCI adapter for use in Arena. Then you have to install the WB2UCI engine into Arena.

For running the tournaments in CM10th, I'd have to import the reference UCI engines into CM using a polyglot adapter, which isn't quite as much work as the Arena/WB2UCI route. But CM10th only runs one tournament game at a time, so I'd have to manually start each tournament game, which is a major pain.

Running tournaments in CM9000 would probably be the easiest way. I'd still have to import the reference UCI engines into CM9000 using a polyglot adapter, but at least CM9000 will automatically run all of the tournament games in one shot. The disadvantage of CM9000 is that it doesn't have as many personalities as CM10 and CM11.

Ha ha, I love bumping this thread; People keep reading that Chessmaster is the biggest load of crap ever.


I decided to run another Arena tournament using Chessmaster personalities in a different rating range than before.

The results are shown below. As before, they were calculated using the Bayeselo program; I assumed an offset of 2054 elo for the "Monarch 1.7" engine. That is, I assumed that the "Monarch 1.7" engine strength is correct, and Bayeselo calculated the other engines' elos based on that offset. Note that the + and - columns are the possible margins of error (in elo points) based on a 95% confidence interval.

This thread has lost its relevance because Chessmaster is no longer available for sale except through the market for used goods.

Nonetheless, for the record, in 1989, Chessmaster 2100 was probably the best chess software that was widely available. Within a few years, however, Fritz surpassed it without looking back. 

come on you dumb dickless motherfucking puss

I'll respond 5 years later (as that is when I stumbled upon this).

Chessmaster's personalities are actually a tad bit OVERrated. I'd say by about 200 points! A real 1300 would DESTROY a Chessmaster personality's 1300 most of the time in a slow game. The thing is better than humans in speed chess because it doesn't have to move pieces with the mouse, and it cannot accidentally make an illegal move.

With that said, the Chessmaster equips some personalities with certain opening databases, so they'll play just as good as a master in the opening, and every personalities over say 1,000 will not miss simple checkmates or 2 move checkmates.   In that regard, they also won't miss if you have mate, which is why you cannot 4 move checkmate anyone, not even the lowest rating personalities (go ahead, try).

With that said, the personalities aren't perfectly accurate. There are weird formulas for creating the personalities, so some characters will play ridiculous considering their rating (such as Max or Berry).  Also, a Grandmaster personality like Morphy will lose to a high ranking non-titled personality.

Take it with a grain of salt. ;-)