Chessmaster vs Chess.com players

hi,

i'm just starting to play chess seriously, but often where I am I have no internet access, I have Chessmaster 11 and have been playing that. My goal simply being to play from about 1200 rated players up to as high as I can go in Chessmasters "personalities". Do you think I will be able to improve much playing them instead of humans on here? The reason I ask is that i've read somewhere that people say playing against computers is bad. Whilst I would agree playing against full strength engines is pointless, does the same hold true for weak chessmaster personalities? from my experience they don't blunder too often but make alot of positional mistakes, which should be good for developing?

so to sum up the question, can I get really good at chess by playing against chessmaster personalities and watching fritz training videos? or is human games essential for serious imrpovement?

thanks in advance

The personalites are horrible.  I've seen the 2000 rated personalites just out right blunder peieces and sac unsoundly.

No, get a Chessbase engine instead.  Hiarcs is good too.  Just buy some courses (I recommend Heisman's Improving Chess Thinker) that teach a good thinking process and find a good tactic trainer site. 

You're better off playing against humans since machines make mistakes that would be unrealistic for a human.  Let us for example note the mistake a 1200 personality may make:

I would say that any form of chess is good for improvement. Also if there is a local chess club near you could go down and play there once a week.

Unfortunately the chessmaster personalities aren't going to drastically improve your game.  Ratings in otb, or even chess.com are what they are due to an overall performance for x amount of time.  I.E., a person rated 1600 here say, could play games at a much higher level, but make mistakes often enough to prevent them from advancing.  With the chessmaster personalities they are programmed to only be so good.

Now, that's no to say that playing the personalities won't help you at all, it's just that playing against a human you're more likely to win a game because you found a move, or tactic, or idea that your opponent couldn't see or couldn't prevent, and that's where the improvement comes in. 

But! Playing the chessmaster personalities is a lot of fun though, and as long as you're having fun, there is no reason you shouldn't do it.

:)

Chessmaster is a great program. The ratings of the personalities accuratly reflects their playing strength too. They may have quirks or seem a little tweak with some of them, like blundering a piece in the opening and then playing 2600 level for the rest of the game but what it boils down to is that it's accurate to its playing strength even if its not always quite human like play. The tutorials and annotated games are great too. I think the main reason some people don't like Chessmaster is that the personality and engine haven't been updated in a while. If you had Chessmaster 9000 and then upgraded to 11th or Grandmaster edition you basicly have the same product, but its still a good product.