ChessBase Reviews

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CDs, DVDs, Software Part 13

Fritz and Chesster By Joerg Hilbert

As I write this column, I instinctively know that someone is going to say that a review for this CD doesn’t belong in the SCCA Magazine. True it’s aimed at 8 to 13 year olds to help them learn how to play chess. True our readers are all chess players who have mastered the game and are slightly older than the targeted audience. So what can I say in my defence for including a review?

Well quite simply this is one of the best CDs I have ever seen and anything that encourages youngsters to play chess is to the long term advantage of the world of Correspondence Chess. The whole concept of the CD revolves around the fact that you can put it in a PC, leave the youngster to play around with the program and they will learn how to play chess without any help from you.

So how does it work? Basically the program is fun. The youngster takes on the role of Fritz where they have to learn to play chess in order to defeat a challenge from King Black. The youngster travels through a mystical land where they play various games which teach all the fundamentals of how to play chess and its strategies and principles. The games which teach all this are fun and will keep the youngsters amused just like any other computer game. For example, a Sumo wrestling arena game teaches the concept of opposition between kings.

Once the kids have played all the various fun games they are ready to take on the Black King in a game of chess. Having learnt to play the game they can then get free access to the Playchess server to play chess against others on the internet. Ok, our readers might not want the CD, but buy it for a young member of your family. Or better still buy a copy for your local Primary School.

The Isolated Queen's Pawn By Reinhold Ripperger

The main database on this CD contains 112 games and texts and is the backbone of the author's work in teaching the reader how to handle isolated queen's pawn positions. The articles and annotations are easy to follow and most club players should benefit from this CD as it will help them understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of isolated queen’s pawn positions.

Since the games in this database are taken from those played by top flight players such as Kasparov, Karpov, Anand and a whole host of others, the CD should also prove useful to correspondence players.

The CD comes complete with a training database of 70 positions to help you test your understanding of what you have read and its own reader so there is no need to own a copy of ChessBase.

Junior 8 and Deep Junior 8 By Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky

Deep Junior 8 is the program which was pitted against Gary Kasparov earlier this year when the world's top player was held to a draw. In that match the program was running on a Compaq PC with 8 processors. In game five we saw Junior play a stunning bishop sacrifice on move 10 which stunned everyone and smashed Kasparov’s kingside. Kasparov found the best moves to hold the draw but it was the first time we had seen a computer program play such stunning chess.

G Kasparov (2847) - Deep Junior [E48] FIDE Man-Machine WC New York USA (5), 05.02.2003
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 0–0 5.Bd3 d5 6.cxd5 exd5 7.Nge2 Re8 8.0–0 Bd6 9.a3 c6 10.Qc2 Bxh2+ 11.Kxh2 Ng4+ 12.Kg3 Qg5 13.f4 Qh5 14.Bd2 Qh2+ 15.Kf3 Qh4 16.Bxh7+ Kh8 17.Ng3 Nh2+ 18.Kf2 Ng4+ 19.Kf3 Nh2+ ½-½

Junior 8 is designed for only one processor so there will be no advantage from it on multi processor machines. Deep Junior 8 will run on a single processor PC but obviously its playing strength is improved if a PC with more than one processor is used.

With Junior 8 you get two chess engines, the original which played Kasparov and the most recently developed one. With Deep Junior 8 you get three engines. As well as the Deep Junior 8 engine you get two experimental engines, Deep Junior 8.0YY and Deep Junior 8.0ZX. Both programs come with the Fritz interface and a one year subscription to the ChessBase Playchess server.

System requirements are: Pentium or compatible PC, 32 MB RAM, Win 98, Me, 2000, XP, CD ROM drive, mouse.

World Champion Fischer By Robert Huebner

Those of us of a certain age can’t deny the influence Robert Fischer has had on our lives. I know for a fact that I probably wouldn’t have started to play chess if it wasn’t for the coverage of his World Championship match against Boris Spassky. The CD contains tournament reports and nearly a 1000 of Fischer’s games with about 460 of them containing excellent analysis. Robert Huebner has done some excellent analysis for this CD. The CD also contains some interesting video clips. The CD comes complete with its own reader so there is no need to own a copy of ChessBase

Tiger 15 By Christoph Theron

This program has to be one of the best attacking chess engines around. Not only does it have a good track record in OTB tournaments against GMs, but it is also placed 4th in the SSDP computer rating list behind the Fritz and Shredder playing programs.

Tiger has a very aggressive style of play and is very strong in the tactical department. As a sparring partner I would say it is the ideal program to hone your defensive skills. If you don’t keep on top of your game you could very quickly find yourself in all sorts of trouble from unexpected attacks. Whilst you don’t need the latest PC to take advantage of this program I would recommend having at least 100 Mb of RAM to get the optimum performance. In order to use the Tiger engine in either ChessBase 8 or 7 you need to do a full installation of the program but this also gives you access to a large database and a tournament tested CTG key.

The program comes with the Fritz interface and a one year subscription to the ChessBase Playchess server, so if you have Internet access on you PC you can play games against people from all over the world until your heart's content.

System requirements are Pentium PC, 32 MB RAM Windows 98,ME,XP,2000, CD ROM drive & mouse.

Fritz Technique Training By Henrik Schlossner

I found this a very enjoyable CD to play around with. It is basically an exercise CD where you have a given position and are asked to achieve a given goal. It's tempting to have an analysis engine switched on so that you can get some hints but this spoils the fun. Anyway Fritz or its 'friends' would probably solve the problem far quicker that I would. Even if you come up with a satisfactory answer you can go back and find out if you can see a more efficient way of achieving the objective. Even the author says "The solution I have chosen comes from my inadequate brain and is not always the continuation which Fritz would have chosen. But it worked - if not always at the first attempt!".

The CD has over 100 winnable game positions. Almost all the positions are taken from real games so there is nothing phoney about the positions. It’s a very instructive CD and I feel you always learn more if you are enjoying the process. Here’s one of the test positions:

HINT :- With his major pieces and Ne5 Black has already lined up a good attacking force, and Nd7 is ready to follow its brother on e5. Only the bishop is in an unfortunate position. For the moment the White king is sufficiently protected by 2 minor pieces. Your job is to do away with the protection and storm the royal bastion.

Also included is a full multimedia report of the Man v Machine report from Bahrain. You will need to have either a ChessBase program or one of the playing programs such as Fritz to be able to use the CD.