What is Fritz?

I have an old computer game that whips me every time.  It is a physical board that tells you where to move pieces on its move - not a computer software game.

However, I am looking for help from a computer program - one that will analyze your games and tell you where you went wrong, tactics missed, etc.  I've heard this Fritz program mentioned a lot.  Is this what I'm looking for?  Outside of a physical teacher, is this my best option?

Thanks for your input,

Dan

you can find information about Fritz on the Chessbase website:

www.chessbase.com

(then click on Shop)

fritz is a chess program yap but their are better ones

I think Fritz is a good choice. I have Fritz 11, I frequently analyse games with it. Fritz often points out a lot of things I missed during the game. There are of course a lot of other programs that do the same thing, but fritz is considered one of the best.

Fritz is the name of both a user interface for analyzing your games and a chess engine. The user interface is very good but there are two competitors that are also good: Aquarium (pay) and Arena (free). The chess engine is not bad but there are definitely better options both paid (Rybka3) and free (Rybka2.2n2 or Toga).

Options:

• Fritz 11 user interface + Rybka3 chess engine $$
  
• Aquarium user interface + Rybka3 chess engine $$
  
• An older Fritz interface (at a discount) + Rybka2.2n2 or Toga $
  
• Arena + Rybka2.2n2 or Toga
  

It all depends on what you're willing to spend.  :)

Buying Fritz 11 user interface + Fritz 11 chess engine is not such a good deal anymore because it costs the same as the Fritz11 interface + Rybka3 engine!

Thanks for all input so far.  What is a "chess engine"?  Sorry, I only started playing this spring to help my 7-yr old son (joined chess club) to learn.  Now I am addicted and am looking for more resources to learn in addition to playing & reading books.

The chess engine does all the actual thinking about which move is best and why. The user interface displays a board you can move pieces on, provides overnight analysis (it tells the engine to think for 30s on each move in a game for example), etc.

Chess engines are rated by CCRL and CEGT, so which ones are the best at the moment is completely transparent. Of course, make sure if you rely on this you check the version that corresponds to your OS (32-bit vs 64-bit) and # of CPUs.

http://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/rating_list_all.html

Hi Dan,

have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_engines for an overview and comparison of chess engines, both proprietary and patent free.

Personally, I use a chess database program too, chessDB (http://chessdb.sourceforge.net/), integrated with Crafty chess engine (http://www.craftychess.com/).

In general, I'd say that having an user-friendly chess database is more important than having the best chess engine avalaible. In fact, unless you are a GM, you won't notice much difference between chess engines; while having a good chess database (as chessDB) can truly help you organizing your games, openinings and endgames study, annotate games and add variations to them, etc.

Bye!

P.s. How are you? And how's your kid doing in learning chess?

Ben_Palko wrote:

best thing you can get is:

Deep Rybka 3 (with special Fritz interface) + Official Rybka 3 opening book by Jeroen Noomen

and 'to get' doesn't necessarily mean 'to buy' - perhaps you can somehow errrrr acquire it...

I mean if someone of your friends owns it of course, I'm not saying that you should download it from torrents for free and that best sites are <edited> and <also edited> and that best tool for such download you can obtain at http://www.utorrent.com/ and that you can also download Fritz11 and all of your favourite software and books and movies and computer games while you're at it, no no - piracy is a crime... yeah! right...

You'll probably get a warning for that post, although I recommend the thread creator should read it...

Currently, the best deal is Rybka 3 with Fritz UI (or Aquarium UI, they're not too different and cost the same.) Which can be found here.

However I suggest you do some searching on Ebay and other websites to find a better price.

girolamo> In fact, unless you are a GM, you won't notice much difference between chess engines;

Well, I'm an amateur and the difference is clear to me. I guess we could argue (let's not) about the definition of "much" but since you can obtain Rybka2.2n2 or Toga for free I'm not sure there's a compelling reason for the original poster to settle for less. Here's an example endgame. I found the best move after a few minutes (and I could explain why it was best). Crafty never finds it (60s given). Rybka finds it in under a second.

Of course, the human analysis would be more useful to most humans since engines don't usually explain why in the clearest manner. :)

Thanks to all for your input!  I'll do some further searching online but I needed this input to start searching.

ps Girolamo:  Thanks for asking.  So far, I'm mostly selfishly working on my own learning.  I don't know how much help I'd be yet anyway.  Of course, we play a few times per week & I tell him about opening goals, etc.  His chess club will be starting back up with school though & I'm checking into some lessons for him.

Thanks for your input, likesforests.

Unfortunately, Rybka is not free and it doesn't support Linux, anyway; while Toga is technically proprietary, but its antecedent (Fruit) is still open source. I think I'll give the latter a try.

I downloaded Fruit 2.3.1 (which should be more or less equal in strength to Toga II 1.3.4) and made it briefly play against Crafty 22.0, at 4 and 60 seconds time controls.

I found that Crafty behaves very well in the opening and middlegame, reaching quite even positions, while Fruit is considerably stronger in the endgame.

So likesforests was right with his example!

girolamo> Fruit 2.3.1 (which should be more or less equal in strength to Toga II 1.3.4)

Yes, they should be quite similar!

> I found that Crafty behaves very well in the opening and middlegame, reaching quite even positions, while Fruit is considerably stronger in the endgame.

I'm glad you gave it a go and found some benefits.

> having a good chess database (as chessDB) can truly help you organizing your games, openinings and endgames study, annotate games and add variations to them, etc.

And I agree the user interface is very important. Each new interface I've tried has changed the way I look at the game in some way. My favorite in SCID (chessDB's predecessor) is the Endgame Tablebase Window where, for example, in a K+P vs K+P ending it will "color" all the squares where putting the Black king would result in a won, lost, or drawn game.  :)

Helpful thread--I'm quickly realizing I need analysis software to complement the tools I already have. I'm glad to hear there are cost-effective options out there that might tide me over in the short-to-mid term.

Well, I have an update regarding Fruit vs Crafty matches: it seems that, at 60 seconds time control, the latter reaches equality in the endgame too.

So, for now I'd say that Fruit is clearly better at blitz games, while there's not much difference in a regular match. Obviously, my analysis is very brief; I think I'll keep both engines and go on testing them in the future.

Bye!

P.s. Regarding the Endgame Tablebase Window, ChessDB has exactly the same feature.

To give an idea of their relative strengths, at 1 minute per move on the CCRL Crafty is rated 2646, Fruit is rated 2879, and Rybka3 is rated 3241. That means if you play Fruit & Crafty a dozen times Fruit should win more than 2 out of 3 games. The testing is done with 3-4-5-man EGTBs (free) so you'll probably want those, too.

3241 is very strong wowzors how can any humans beat it?

chaos_> 3241 is very strong wowzors how can any humans beat it?

They can't, in a match at reasonable time controls. GM Roman Dzindzichashvili (who recently won the NC Open) played a match against it with pawn and move odds (325 elo handicap). He was not able to win a single game, and he even lost the match (+0, =3, -1). Kramnik could not beat Fritz at an equal game, and Fritz is a weaker engine.

Humans have scored draws. A strong amateur accomplished this after about 40 losses.

Humans have even won when it's improperly configured. I've already done this against Rybka3. Super-GM Nakamura beat an earlier version of Rybka once at 3+0 by locking up the position and waiting for the clock to run down. Rybka3 is less vulnerable to such strategies, but perhaps a human will win once or twice. We will have to wait and see. :)