Fritz 9 Tips 1: Attack Training

I've decided to start posting tips and tricks for users of Fritz 9. 

Some of you have seen my previous posts noting frustration with Fritz 9, one of the top computerized chess systems available.  I've scoured the internet for helpful instruction for this application and have come up largely disappointed.  When this happens, I feel it's time to contribute your own content.

In that spirit, I post.  Please send messages to me with questions any of you have had regarding Fritz 9 and I'll do my best to answer them.

Attack Training:

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Have you ever played a game when your opponent surprised you by taking a piece you didn't realize was even being attacked?  Besides being humiliating, these situations can bring about sudden and dramatic shifts in advantage.  Being able to quickly and accurately recognize potential attacks available to you and/or your opponent can prove exceedingly useful.

Fritz 9 offers a great tool to improve your recognition of attacks and it's creatively called "Attack Training".  Attack Training will help you hone your ability to recognize potential attacks more quickly and accurately.  I'm warning you now, however.  It's addicting and could eat up vast hours of your time otherwise devoted to tasks such as homework, communicating with your family, sleeping, etc.  Here's how it works.

Fritz 9 will present you with a position typically in the middle game with pieces distributed on the board.  You are tasked with identifying (by clicking on them) every piece (black or white) under attack within a pre-defined time limit (say 1 minute).   Clicking on a piece turns its corresponding square green.  Clicking on it again de-selects it.  If you  correctly  find every piece under attack on the board before the time limit has expired, Fritz will give you a new position to analyze.  Your goal is to get through as many boards as you can within your time limit.

After each game, Fritz will mark each piece under attack you missed by changing the color of its square to yellow.  If you had incorrectly selected a piece that actually wasn't under attack, Fritz marks that piece with a red square. 

When your time is up a window titled "Result Tactical Training" is displayed which summarizes your performance.  The window has the following values:

• Last:  The score you achieved in the game which just finished.
• Average:  The running average number of pieces you correctly identify in any given game.  Fritz keeps track of this as you play.
• Highest:  The highest score you've ever achieved in any one game.

Each piece correctly identified = 1 point.  However, if you select a piece that is not under attack, you get zero points for that game and your average suffers.

To have another go, click the "Try Again" button.  If you've had enough, click "Cancel". 

I have to admit, I really like this feature of Fritz 9.  From the moment I started, I found myself addicted to the prospect of increasing my high score (so far, it's 25 for 1 minute games).

I'm convinced this is a great way to improve one's board awareness.

Fritz Commands:

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Here's how you start the training.

1. Start Fritz 9
2. Select "Play Fritz" from the starting screen.  Fritz presents you with a chess board.
3. From the menu select  Tools==> Training ==>  Attack Training...  A small window appears titled "Tactical Training".  Yeah, I know, logically it should say "Attack Training", but who said the people who made Fritz are logical?
4. You have three parameters to manipulate.

• Database:  Each game you analyze comes from the chess database you select in this section.  My game came with a database file called "Database.cbh" and it contains over 1 Million games played throughout history.  You can change this setting to use any database you wish.  Several are available for purchase on the market.
• Next Game:  This essentially shows you how many games you have played so far.  Strangely, you can change this, but it doesn't affect your average or high score.  I'm not sure what function this serves, but if anyone else does, please let me know.
• Minutes:  This is the number of minutes you can give yourself to analyze.

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I hope this post proves helpful to owners of Fritz 9 and other computer chess players.  I'm open to any suggestions to improve my posts, so please let me know if anything you see here is inaccurate or unclear.  My goal is to help newbies such as myself to avoid the pains I've gone through.

14 years later... Fritz 17 is here

#Reviving Old Threads