Fritz has value only within the Chessbase ecosystem. If you just want an engine it's an incredibly bad deal as Stockfish is at least 200 ELO stronger and free software (as in freedom AND beer).
Also, if you have a multi-core system (and if you don't, you really need to buy a new computer) you should get the "deep" version of a given engine to allow analysis parallelization.
Well as a $14 stand-alone chess program it's OK - nice slick GUI and works great with playchess membership and Chessbase if you have it. Also has a decent opening book etc.
I got it myself when I was getting back into chess last year.. but mainly because 6 months' premium playchess membership was incldued and the fact it works with the 'let's check' feature so if anyone on playchess has analysed the postion before (which in most opening lines people with much better computers have to great depth) you can see it straight away without having to burn engine time.
Obviously as a modern engine, it's plenty strong enough to beat us mortals into a bloody pulp. As an engine vs other engines it isn't that strong though - it's only single core and its postional evaluation is often makes it an outlier from Houdini and Stockfish (and usually the latter are more accurate). For Fritz 14 (just relased) they have rebuilt it from the ground up.
It is really easy to add other engines to it and use them in preference to the Fritz 13 engine - I tend to use Houdini 1.5 (free and multi-core) but Stockfish has probably overtaken that now as the best free one.
I'd say for $14 it's worth getting as a nice modern and easy to use GUI if you don't have one esp. if you ever intend to join up to playchess or buy Chessbase (you can get old Chessbase 10 and 11 DVDs fairly cheaply though the current CB 12 costs a lot).
Stockfish has no GUI, could you give some help which GUI's we could easily use? I have done this before with Japanese chess, shogi, but since there are probably many more chess programs which GUI do you recommend as the easiest to use?
Arena Chess is a very nice interface but it looks quite complex. It feels like learning to drive, after a while you'll get used to it.
Tarrasch is another free option, much simpler, but lacks advanced features.
ChessGUI is newer and more intuitive, a little unstable but nothing major. It is currently being used for the nTCEC computer chess tournament.
You might even be able to use {x, Win}Board with some minor tweaking, there are some xBoard/UCI adapters that work just fine.
I don't think any of them supports chess variants, though.
(edit) Chess engines are so much stronger than humans, even on off-the-shelf, commercial hardware that it doesn't really matter anymore which is stronger when they play each other. Competition among producers is not about playing strength but ancillary software (databases, playing servers, interfaces, etc.). That's what you pay for, not the actual engine.
Personally I've had nothing but issues with Fritz 13. Partly because I dont think It's very user friendly, and I just get better benefit from the chess mentor on here. Premium membership on here is the best software you can get in my opinion. Fritz has donated to my chess clubs library for other better players to enjoy.
Hey AnarchyMaster did Fritz 13 from Viva Media @ Amazon (assuming because of cheap price) come with a free playchess account?
Yes. A one month membership. I'm not really planning on doing anything with it though.
So, I just bought Fritz 13 for $14 on Amazon. I owned Fritz 12 before that. I know that Fritz 14 was released, but it's around $90, which is quite a bit of money in my opinion for a chess software. Was my Fritz 13 purchase worth it in your opinion, or do you think I should stayed with Fritz 12?