Komodo Chess 9

http://www.uscfsales.com/komodo-chess-9-multiprocessor-version.html

Bottom line: As I'm getting more and more serious about the game and playing competitively, I want to envelope myself with the absolute best training material I can afford. Thus far I have done that. 

When it comes to this software, Komodo Chess 9, and all that it comes with in the package for $99.99 now (they just dropped the price) I'm wondering the following: 

1) Komodo 9 is currently the #1 or #2 engine in seemingly a huge majority's opinion. Komodo claims to excel positionally and I'm curious as to if this is truly the case. Can someone who has experience with it confirm? 

2) It just released in May. How long before I see "Komodo 9 SE" or "Komodo 10" available? I don't want to spend $100 now just to see something new release in the near future and I'm not familiar with how frequently they roll out these kind of programs. 

3) With the access to all of the Chessbase material, the cloud database, and the Playchess account for a year, $99 is a great value, no? 

Just want to clear a few things up before I make the purchase. Thanks in advance for all who can contribute. 

I actually see that the company that makes Komodo themselves sell a 9.2 version for $60 USD. It provides ~30 ELO points of additional strength. Not that I would need this or anything but ...I see they would be rolling out small updates now and then. 

I've left this thread alone for a few days hoping someone would post but ...

Could someone who legitimately knows something about or has personally used this software please comment on this for me? I'm at the point financially where I'm basically either doing this or something else with the money and have to decide. Shipping + tax total = $112. Worth it? 

:( I know you're knowledgeable and also from Europe so I was excited to see you might have responded. I know that the Chessbase line of products is far more popular in Europe than in the US. 

Ok...well, after considerable research, in the end (in case anyone else is wondering about this product) I decided to pass. I have a ton of material already between all the sites I subscribe to, the books I have, and mainly? Because of the following: 

http://abrok.eu/stockfish/ This + ChessTempo's database is a) stronger b) more my style as I hate the Fritz/Chessbase product line's interface, free, updated more often and for free. Stockfish's latest version is totally integrated into Lichess, also which is the other site I'm playing at the most. It's brilliant what they're doing over there. 

All I could add to this is that it would be really nice to see Chess.com support engine integration in the future. On a few fronts similar to that one, what we have here is years behind some other sites/software packages out there. 

After several more discussions with people about this on this site and others, along with the fact that I had more money to work with this month than I originally anticipated, I finally broke down and bought this $99 package from Chessbase. 

Basically, these products are not user friendly at all but you can definitely do the MOST with them. Komodo 9.2 is worth $99 alone (and that's what it costs minimum) and PlayChess is clearly now the definitive and premium pay only chess site. It's definitely surpassed ICC by quite a bit at this point. 

Fritz + Live Book + Komodo is a deadly combination for analysis. All of this said, I still have to point out that ChessTempo's gold sub for $4/mo. is easily the most *valuable* chess investment out there. You can do almost everything with that site that you can do with the Chessbase materials (almost) and some people will probably prefer their layout over there. The only thing Chessbase has on ChessTempo is that it's been around longer. Given time, I think ChessTempo may surpass Chessbase as the best interactive database one can access. 

You're much higher rated than me, although I haven't played on Chess.com in a while and I've gone up literally 200 points on the other servers since then. Still, you're much higher rated than me. That said - I think Komodo 9.x (newest) is well worth it however fritz 15 just came out. If you buy the package I have in this thread, you're getting Fritz 14 SP, with regular updates. In all reality, we're splitting hairs from what it seems. If you don't have fritz and you don't have Komodo, this is an excellent software package. It's updated regularly and yes - My game has improved drastically since I've started using it in early October. Drastically.

If you already have Fritz or a GUI you're comfortable with, definitely spend $99 on Komodo's website and buy the newest version of Komodo with unlimited updates. If you buy it as a raw version without updates it's only $59.99 (I think...I haven't looked since I bought it). As said though, if you don't have Fritz and you don't have Komodo = Yes. You'll obviously only get even more out of it than I will. It's a great engine and analysis tool.

As for Stockfish - Make sure you're usiing the newest Dev version of Stockfish at all times. It's updated near daily. Just google "Stockfish Development Versions" and the rest is cake. 

Before I bought this software someone titled told me that the real value of all of this would be to a) analyze your game extensively without an engine right after it's played b) analyze the game with Komodo c) analyze it with Stockfish to see the differences between the two and what lines they recommend. So far, when I've chosen to go this far in post mortem, doing this has revealed so many different ideas and blunders that I absolutely never could have seen without paying a coach regularly.