Chessmaster biggest load of crap ever

Also, there are some thematic opening books on the Ubisoft Chessmaster 10 forum. You might want to take a look at them.

http://www.pgndownloads.com/files/other/extras/OpeningBooks_Thematic.zip

There are also some thematic books for Chessmaster 8000/9000, but I'm not sure if they work for CM10 or CM11.

http://www.pgndownloads.com/files/other/extras/cmbooks.zip

The CM10 forums download page is here:

http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/397550-Chessmaster-10th-Edition-Downloads?s=c921bbdff2b5304cde8078a58ffce57f

@ MattMackay

Can you beat the 800 level computer here ?

Yeh I don't want to make a game that is perfectly in my comfort zone, I want to be challenged with new moves and ideas, I just played a game with fritz 13 on normal mode and I think I've found a HUGE weakness of mine. Finding checkmates... I am useless, I literally need like 4 peices all the time, unless I can get a back rank mate with 1 or 2 rooks.

I think I should work on finding checkmates near end game rather than going around with my peices and taking every peice the computer has and cower the king into the corner before pinning it lol. Trying to find out how to link my game with fritz so you can evaluate it.

**EDIT** Here we go I think this is it.

I think I missed many mating opportunities, specifically towards the end.

Never tried, I'll give it a shot.

If one of the first things people try to do in chess nowadays is trying to memorize "some popular openings", then Fischer must've been right after all when saying that chess is dead.

i really liked chessmaster, maybe for stronger player than me its absolute crap but i really enjoyed it. Weird an imaginative sacrifices, that might be illogical to a strong player but that very interesting to me back then and that pressured me a lot. It was playing like a human for me, for chessmaster was so much fun i cant understand that anyone would hate it.

not to mention ´the xbox version, so relaxing and fun to play chess sitting on the couch on a big tv.

Yep, I probably should have done more to discourage the OP from fixating on openings. Lots of times they won't listen to you anyway. (He's clearly never played real 800 rated players over the board.) The main point I was trying to get across is that you can customize Chessmaster quite a bit if you're willing to get familiar with the program.

Common mistake for those new to computer chess.

I'm not fixating on openings, but GM's use openings for a reason, I assume the reason is because it either creates a solid defence or solid attack, allows your minor peices good coverage of the board ect.

But if you guys check out the gam I played with fritz a few posts up, fritz doesn't suddenly turn into Kasparov, it played at a consistant ELO and the match was quite tough for me. I quite like trading off pieces.

I'm trying to find where I play strongest, openings, middle game, endgame, trading peices, defensive, attack? ect... I want to try all the types to see where my strengths lie, if any :P

Regarding your claim of Chessmaster suddenly playing like a GM - You might be right about that (I've heard some others also make that claim), but sometimes I wonder how much of those claims is truth and how much is exaggeration (or imagination). I really would like to see the game posted so we can either confirm or deny. And I'm still interested in knowing which personality you played. Maybe you could check to see if the game was saved in Chessmaster?

Chessmaster is very good software, but it is not worth more than $20. Its personalities are a far cry from Fritz on sparring mode. Aside from the tutorials, everything about Chessmaster is inferior to Fritz (playing strength, realistic emulation of weaker players, post-game analysis [see http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2009/12/chessmaster-versus-fritz-analysis.html], database features [in this aspect, CM is "crap"], and compatibility with other software [ease of exporting games, capacity for setting up matches between several engines]).

Tru dat. I never claimed that CM is the greatest thing since sliced bread...but neither can I agree that it's the biggest load of crap ever. It probably falls somewhere in the middle. (OK, maybe lower-middle?)

It's certainly vastly superior to Chess Titans. But lower-middle, or upper-bottom would seem about right. I found CM X several years ago at Best Buy for $20 and have not regretted the purchase. From 1989 until 2000 or 2001, CM was my only chess software, and it served me well.

However, once I discovered the search features in ChessBase Light (free, but limited to 10,000 games per database) and started downloading pgn files from Pitt Chess Archives, there was no reason to continue using CM for the database. Moreover, Fritz 5.32 (part of the download) was stronger than Chessmaster 7000's "The King".

The next several versions of Chessmaster had lots more tutorials.

Why buy software when there are so many chess engines, gui's, databases and so forth freely available on the internet? I heard chess coach Dan Heisman say on one of his TV shows that there is a computer on the internet that can only see 2 moves in advance and if you play so as to keep it from capturing any of your pawns or pieces you will get a rating of 1900. So maybe you should play like that and so what rating you get with Chessmaster.  

I would guess that most people who buy Chessmaster figure the tutorials are worth up to 20 bucks.

I played another game against chessmaster and I picked the personality of Manny who is rated 500 and I wiped the floor with him, he gave his queen away after just the 3rd move -_- still took my a while to mate him though, chessmaster is too strong at avoiding checks that is one thing I've noticed. I'll play another game with 1200 rating and I'll post the PGN. You'll notice that the computer is playing average and then you'll see what I mean when it's about the start losing or I'm trying to mate him... Goku turns into super saiyan? Chessmaster turns into Kasparov

Well Matty, it could be that you're just not very good.

It could be that you make the ordinary to average player look like Kasper because of your poor decisions

Ok here take a look at this match I just played. Me vs Christian 1205. I was doing just fine up until about move 28 and then I did make a bit of a mistake. I lose my queen and I acknowledge that mistake. But hopefully now you will understand what I mean about chessmaster suddenly start playing like Kasparov. After move 76 I resigned... the computer refused to let me checkmate it and this is exactly what I mean with Chessmaster and other computer programs like this, they play god awful and then when you're on the verge of winning they really, really up their ELO skill.

Please watch the game and I know I made some mistakes, I'm not a pro after all but look how impossible it is to mate the computer, I tried everything but suddenly the computer becomes Kasparov.

What sort of computer lets you take their queen in plain site on move 11 and then evades a checkmate for 20 moves.