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Holistic Guidance - Fritz 11 for Windows (DVD)
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List Price: $60.00
Our Price: $49.95
Your Save: $ 10.05 ( 17% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: ChessBase
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Misc.
Brand: ChessCentral
Feature: Presale of Fritz 11 - Estimated Ship Date of November 23rd
Label: ChessBase
Manufacturer: ChessBase
Publisher: ChessBase
Studio: ChessBase
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Features
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Presale of Fritz 11 - Estimated Ship Date of November 23rd
The Strongest Chess Player Program Ever - 80 ELO points stronger than Fritz 10
World Champions Kramnik and Kasparov use Fritz - Shouldn't you?
Over 13 hours of instructional video from Kasparov, Kramnik, Shirov and others.
Includes a free one-year membership to PlayChess Internet Service - a $39.95 Value
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Editorial Reviews:
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Fritz 11 for PC, the program that for many years now has fascinated the chess world. Whether it was the 2006 match where it defeated World Champion Vladimir Kramnik or drew former World Champion Garry Kasparov in 2003, the pitting of wits of the strongest players on the planet against the world's finest chess playing program has generated unprecedented media attention and fired the imagination of people from all walks of life. "Man vs Machine" has become one of the great themes of our time.
Don't be afraid! Fritz has a different side to its personality. The program can help you during the game, with sophisticated coaching functions, adjusting its playing strength to exactly match that of any opponent. It displays threats and plans, and provides full opening statistics. For beginners Fritz will explains moves and positions, or warn you of dangers and of errors you are committing. It has instructive training modules and amusing handicap levels. For club and tournament players Fritz has long become a trusted friend and indispensable advisor, helping them to study their games and find new opening ideas for their next tournaments. A database with more than a million games provides the basis for state-of-the-art analysis. Even Garry Kasparov uses Fritz on a regular basis.
With its Media System Fritz brings the world's greatest players into your living room, in high resolution video and sound and a synchronized chessboard. Listen to over 13 hours of videos of Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Viktor Korchnoi, and Alexei Shirov while they explain important openings and ideas that lead to success. A host of other famous chess teachers provide instruction in more mundane subjects, like opening traps, middlegame strategy, or endgame skills. For those of you who have never played chess before there are elementary courses to teach you the basics in a matter of hours. Includes Free Subscription to PlayChess.com - A $39.95 Value
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Still Improving
Comment: If you can't find the improvements, you haven't looked. In fact, if you've played Fritz 11, you would have stumbled onto them!
They are improvements that help play, study and analysis. Mostly a lot of practical fine tuning that makes already good features better. But a few new major features like calculation training, which improves your ability to see ahead without moving the pieces. You can jump into calculation training from any game. Your calculations show up in notation, but not on the board. The engine can then analyse your calculations. You can then go back to the game and play them (or not), or see what happened in a database game. Whatever you happen to be working with.
There are some new rapid-fire tactics training features. Not the usual "find mate" puzzles. (Yawn.)
If you've been impressed by the competitor's handicap levels, only to find that the handicaps are mostly blunder ratios, you'll like Fritz's handicap levels. Clearly Fritz is weakening the engine and not merely averaging out with blunder ratios. But be advised that Fritz's handicaps still start around 1400.
The interface is somewhat improved. As usual you've got the simple 2D board or the fancy graphics -- if you like that sort of thing.
It boils down to how much time you spend on chess. If you spend a lot of time, the changes will be worth the upgrade. If you only play now and then, it's too much to spend on an upgrade.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Overkill
Comment: Get ready for a weird concept: I gave Fritz 11 5 stars and I meant it, however I do NOT recommend you buy it! Try to understand me here. If you were going to trim your lawn on your little 1/4 acre lot, you wouldn't go out and get a riding mower, or probably a better example, a farm combine would you? The same applies here, unless you are a titled player and or paid chess journalist you do not need this. It would be like getting "Jet Lee" to spare with a 10 year old Taekwondo white belt. Beyond that, even experienced players and savvy users are going to be simply overwhelmed by so many features and sub features. It's so bad, that it borders on making it unusable. It's like these stupid "smart phones" they can do everything but brush your teeth for you, but most of us just want to dial a number and have a clear connection. 85% per cent of people who might buy this just want to play chess. Sadly, you are getting that plus a lot more, too much more.
Customer Rating:
Summary: No improvements to speak of
Comment: They spend a lot of effort (supposedly) improving the Elo ratings of programs like this, but that's a waste of time and money; Fritz 8 (on one of today's fast computers) is probably better than 99% of the players out there, and the other 1% don't account for enough purchases to matter.
What I WOULD like to see is some very simple improvements in the interface. First and foremost, I would like to be able to enter a game without interference. (Does anybody know how to do that, without turning on Infinite Analysis?) I almost never want Fritz to choose a move, so twenty times a day I have to tell it to STOP MAKING MOVES, DAMN IT!!!! And take back the one you already made, too!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Training Tool
Comment: What I love about Fritz 11 is the Calculation Training function... this, in and of itself, makes Fritz 11 worth the purchase! The remainder of the program features have been to the greatest extent duplicated elsewhere. I've never seen anything on the market that resembles the Calculation Training function at all.
The video clips, though obviously promoting the full DVDs, are nice since they do give an entire game or entire training session. If they were to cut the game (or training session) off mid-stream, it would be a poor marketing ploy. The way it's set up is useful, as well as an excellent way to test drive other Chessbase DVDs.
Being able to set up a Tournament, using several different engines as well as allowing a human to participate, is an nice feature that I have yet to experiment with.
The only thing I really don't like about the program is the electronic eye that hovers above the 3D board, along with the thumbnail viewpoint of this E-eye, I find it to be annoying and have yet to find an option to make it disappear.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not worth the money
Comment: While other chess apps like Shredder have better established engines and are true cross-platform apps, Fritz has always brought the glitz. Only problem with version 11 is that it's a chronological upgrade and not one built on new features. The other problem with Fritz is that it's limited to Windows only, and if you're running it on Vista, it's slower than normal. This devalues the software right from the start, since I use both operating systems. At best, this should be a x.2 update, not a full version upgrade. Save your money and wait for version 12.
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