Should I get Fritz?

You should download the Stockfish engine, it's a free engine, based I think on Rybka, and it's quite strong + fast.

By the way, I wholly agree with you about Chessmaster's inability to play like a weak human. I like playing against the handicap personalities... but they play, for the most part, handicap chess... 95% of the moves are made by a strong player, and every so often there's a strange blunder. Fritz does a better job of playing like a weak human imo. 

Chessbase Light is free.  Download it and try it out.  It comes with an old version of Fritz (usually 6.0), but you'll get an idea of what to expect when you start shelling out real bucks for it.

I have used both programs.

If your a beginner (like I am) I highly reconmmend Chessmaster. The lessons taught by Josh Waitzkin in the game are extremely helpful in developing foundational chess skills and tactics. There is easily 10+ hours of lessons in CM.

As mentioned earlier, Fritz is geared towards more advanced/professional chess players.

I don't agree with this at all. It's pretty obvious that Rybka is the best engine right now to analyze your games with, no need to pay some chess coach to tell that to me.

It's no rocket science: If you want a program to analyze games & positions, get Rybka. Not Fritz, not Hiarcs, but Rybka. Instead, if you want high-quality chess lectures, get chessmaster.

Even The King is an adequate analysis engine for game analysis, but all engines must have a user interface. The interface (GUI) determines much of what the engine is able to accomplish, such as analyzing without human guidance.

The Fritz interface is best for serious analysis; ChessBase 10 is even better than that. Rybka runs on this interface, of course. The King (Chessmaster's engine) does not; nor do other engines run in Chessmaster's interface--a major weakness in the software.

For the average player (as well as for the novice), no analysis is better than going over the game with a master, but chess engines are far cheaper. $75 will cover one lesson or the latest version of Rybka, Fritz, Hiarcs, Junior, Shredder. With the master, you'll learn things that help you think your way through new games; with the engine and GUI, you'll find your tactical blunders in thousands of games to come.

Hi, going back to the original post: you are not going to find a definitive answer unless you get both and try both programs. Assuming that, this is what I think:

I know both Chessmaster and Fritz, and you should get Chessmaster if you are interested in tutorials and "computerized" chess lessons. The latest versions (10th edition, GrandMaster edition) include the extensive old Chessmaster lessons (from Chessmaster 9000) and also new tutorials for begginer/medium player (I consider 1200-1300 to be a beginner/medium player). I think they are all very good. This may interest you.

If you do not want tutorials or lessons, and want it only for analysis, I recommend you Fritz. Chessmaster does "natural language" comments on analysis results, which is nice but not really useful, as the "comments" are normally a plain description of material changes or pieces/squares attacked or defended. Fritz is more difficult to manage, but probably more powerful in analysis. However, if you are 1200/1300, you may need some help in understanding analysis results... computer is going to tell you the information, but not how to use it!

I would not bother to consider Rybka and other chess engines. It may be true that Rybka is best engine, but if you are 1200/1300 you are not going to notice the subtleties (I think... as I am probably around 1300, also).

So, to sum up: I would get Chessmaster (Chessmaster 10th edition must be cheap, if you can find it) and go through its tutorials and then get Fritz. A little of research (books or internet) on common openings is always useful. I am no expert... but at least this is what I try to do myself.

I hope it helps, and good luck!

I'd like to see the conclusion of those two games. I ran a shootout with six engines (in shootout, the engine plays itself). There was one white win and eleven draws. The first set was played at blitz controls; the second set 40 moves in 40 minutes. Crafty was the only engine to beat itself, and only in blitz. None of my six engines played 21...Rf7, nor would I play it.

21...c5 was the most popular move. 21...Rd7 was second (and that's what I would play).

Sorry but I fail to understand the logic behind this. Why would anyone suggest not to buy the stronger engine, and suggest the weaker one instead?

I saw this happen more than once on this site. And I doubt it's about the price, there's no difference between the price of deep fritz 11 and deep rybka 3.

It's analysis is much more accurate, it's positional understanding is much more advanced, and variations it produces are much more human, it does make a difference, whatever your rating is. 

If I were buying my first chess engine today, Rybka with the Fritz 11 GUI would be my choice. I've been using chess engines for twenty years, do not yet have Rybka, and must rely upon Hiarcs 12 (also with the Fritz 11 GUI) as my strongest engine. Even so, Rybka is among my planned future purchases.

philidor_position is correct that the logic of buying a weaker engine is suspect.

Even so, for learning, it's the GUI that makes most of the difference. 95% of the time, even a free engine such as Abrok is strong enough. But, the Fritz GUI is not free, and it is far superior to Arena, SCID, and all other free software platforms. It is also far superior to Chessmaster in its versatility. Abrok, BTW, will run in the Fritz GUI.

Chessmaster, nevertheless, has merits. It is worth at least the $20 it usually costs at several retail outlets. If you are looking for tutorials aimed at the novice, Chessmaster is worth buying. If you want to perform quality analysis of your own games, forget Chessmaster.

If I can get to them I'll load up the board positions but I've been having problems loading boards for some reason.  With White, I won with White getting into a Rook pawn v Rook ending. With White CM9000 drew once and won once. But, CM8000 on an old Win98 machine refuted 4.e5?! and on the game position played 21.c5.  If CM8000 weren't so dodgy on WinXP, I'd probably be using that.  But, I wouldn't use CM 10: it's weaker than CM9000.

As for quality analyses, I believe that computers are an aid not a substitute for doing analysis.  They are great for combinations and tactics but I follow the Rules of Fine, Marshall, and Staunton in going over my games. 

Mike

That's news to me. Inasmuch as it is the same engine, what accounts for your assertion?

By the time 8000 came out, I had wholly switched to Fritz. When I found CM 10th for $20 at Circuit City, I bought it so as to examine the new design, which I find inferior to earlier versions. The interface is one thing, the engine quite another. I find it hard to believe that the same engine is weaker.

I've run plenty of engine-engine tournaments. Fritz 5.32 will score an occasional upset against later versions, but over many games it is clearly inferior. Another weakness of Chessmaster is that such engine-engine matches cannot be performed well without two computers because one engine will steal all memory from the other.

You are right. My statement at this point was a mistake, as I have not tried Rybka. I was saying that just because I thought Rybka was more expensive than Fritz (and it was, actually, when I bought Fritz... at least in Spain...). But it is true that I could not talk about Rybka in the terms I did, as I do not have enough knowledge on it. So, excuse me for that, and thanks for pointing it!

First practical first hand experience: I have both and played them against myself and against each other using the same personality on similar computers and CM9000 usually did better.  Supposedly, the chess engines are the same but it doesn't show it even on similar machines with the same OSes.  And, I'm not the only one who noticed that the newer version didn't do as well.  So, did these guys when the program came out:

http://www.stmintz.com/ccc/index.php?id=480660

http://www.avlerchess.com/chess-computer/Chessmaster_patch_for_nonUS_10th_Edition_107036.html

Mike

Here you go, I win here but it took a lot of time:

This game is the Draw:

CM9000 wins in shorter time:

CM9000 has 21...Rd7 as a loser:

And CM9000 played the immediate 21...c5:

I'd like to see how the other chess engines played it.

Mike

If nothing else, the poor endgame play of Chessmaster in those illustrative games should serve as a strong advertisement for Fritz. If you cannot see the blunders in Chessmaster's endgame, my engine shootout will not be of use. Fritz employs tablebases. When its search depth finds applicable tablebases at the end of the optimum lines, it ends the game.

So, for instance, Fritz 9 found a theoretically drawn position 17 plies deep at the conclusion of this analysis.

Hiarcs 12 found a draw 21 plies deep at the end of the second.

My annotations at move 52 in the third (one of yours) show how easily Black could have held the position. The annotations (if you view the pgn, you'll see these) after each move that I entered show my thinking time--only a few seconds per move. Fritz employed no thinking time because it was playing from tablebases, thus perfectly.

Philidor, Fritz 10 sells for $15 and Rybka 3 for $57.

Yes, this sounds more clear to me. I think Fritz 11 was about 20€ in Spain, some months ago; and Rybka was about 50€. Anyway, Philidor was talking about "deep" versions of these programs, which may sell (I suppose) at different prices.

Anyway, as we were not discussing which program was cheaper or which engine was stronger, and despite all what has been said, I continue thinking that ChessMaster is better for a beginner to learn (the tutorials are good!), and Fritz (or Rybka) is better for more advanced players (for analysis).

I am a low/medium rated player and I think I have to learn many many things before I can take true advantage of analysis in Fritz. I suppose the story could  be different for another low/medium rated player, of course. This is just my personal view of the matter.

A big advantage of Chessbase products over Chessmaster is their ability to handle databases and edit .pgn files. It's extremely useful if you want to take advantage of chess resources on the web, which extensively use this format.

Chessmaster handles databases, including PGN. But, it is far harder to manage these databases, harder to comprehend the obtuse menu system in the database view, and the database uses a small--not resizable--board.

I used Chessmaster 3000, ... 7000 for database work for several years prior to beginning to use ChessBase products. Having spent countless hours searching positions in Chessmaster's database dramatically shortened the time required to learn Chessbase software. After using Chessbase products, only one reason ever exists to use Chessmaster's database: to see if improvements have been made (10th edition is a step back from earlier versions--they've made it less accessible).

Bardu, Fritz 10 is from years back, so I guess that difference in price should be normal.

I just checked out the prices in the chessbase site for deep fritz 11 and deep rybka 3, they were the same and didn't look anywhere else, there might be some other sites where fritz is cheaper.

I agree with Lievin about chessmaster. I would suggest chessmaster to a beginner instead of rybka too, because Waitzkin's tutorials are what made me love the game in the first place, Rybka can't do that.