Customer Reviews

Fritz 12 (PC DVD)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

To be honest I'm a pretty dreadful chess player: one who's used to Chessmaster's slick interface, often uses the 'take back move' functions and makes extensive use of tutorials. According to the Peshk@ software, Chessmaster and the Fritz tactics training I'm about 1500 ELO, but I have a suspicion that they're just being kind.

When I came to have a go on Fritz 11 last year, largely out of a need for something with an wide range of tutorials available, I found the interface rather opaque and illogical in places and eventually gave up and went back to Chessmaster. I had a lot of questions about the new Fritz 12 program when I heard they had updated it. This review therefore just covers the issues (largely related to interface and usability) that I was curious about before I bought the game, and I submit it here in the hope that it will prove useful to others in a similar position to me.

If you're a real pro, or a club player, and not particularly bothered about the UI or useability you may wish to skip this review. If you're considering an upgrade I hope you find it useful.

Installation and DRM

This edition of Fritz comes on a DVD. You may install Fritz 12 on up to 3 machines (e.g. Laptop, Desktop and Work), and you can deactivate an installation if needs be. I had no problems with installation or activation, but when updating the software it reset some of my GUI settings. Installing the game does not install the included tutorial vids to your hard drive though, and so you'll need the DVD in the drive if you want to view these.

Menus and Interface

The revamped interface is based around a Ribbon, a bit like the ones used in Microsoft Office 2007. It's been built to conform to Microsoft's 'Fluent UI' standard, and uses a row of tabs, beneath which all the options related to that tab are laid out in a readily accessible fashion. This means you can see a large number of related options at once. The Ribbon is, however, thicker than the usual menu strip, and if you find that the Ribbon's too clunky and takes up too much room on your monitor, you can just right-click it and minimise it. If you don't like the default Blue colour scheme, you can chance the theme to Black, Aqua or Silver (though doing this also resets the board design settings if you've changed them).

The menu interface is customisable, insofar as you can right-click on any icon in the ribbon (e.g. 'New Game') and add it to a small 'Quick Launch' area at the top left of the window. This means that if you have a frequently-used option you can pin it to the top of the window (I have the 'New Game', 'Handicap', 'Sparring' and 'Help' options up there). Seriously, I cannot emphasise enough how useful this is, and for me this is the one feature that has made Fritz 12 far, far more useable than it's predecessors!

Also welcome is the ever-present 'Help' icon at the top right. The included HTML help files are more extensive in detail and scope than the printed manual that's included with the DVD, so it pays to make use of it when you get stuck.

'Save layouts' is a very useful function. Once you've moved your windows around to your satisfaction, you can save the arrangement. I have one saved layout for using with the Fritz Media system DVDs, and another one for just playing chess. The panes themselves are the usual boxy Windows panes, though this time round they're fully dockable around the edges of the screen, and you can leave them free-floating if you prefer (although you cannot save a floating layout).

For me these changes made a real difference to my enjoyment of using the program, and my appreciation of just how powerful it is. It still takes time to learn in order to get the most out of it though, so do make sure you set aside a little while to fully read the manual (preferably the 'Help' manual installed with the program) and explore the options. If you want to see how the interface works for yourself without risking your money, you can download a demo of Deep Fritz 12 for free from the Chessbase website.

Fritz is still rather eccentric in a couple of ways though. For example, in the messy bit at the bottom of the application menu, 'Main menu - Customise' just allows you to change keyboard shortcuts, not customise the layout, use of engine or board appearance (those options are elsewhere). It really should have been named just 'Keyboard Shortcuts' as the Tooltip indicates, but minor niggles such as these suggest that usability testing may not have been 100% rigorous.

Selecting 'New Game' when using Opening Training or Endgame Training just resets the board to the same Opening/Endgame you've just played. You have to go back to the training option and 'turn it off and on again' in order to change the opening/endgame you are practising to a different one.

Choosing to play White or Black is a bit different to most chess games. Here it's a matter of starting a game, and immediately moving a White piece if you want to play White, or hitting 'Space' to make Fritz move first if you want to play Black. There's no 'Do you wish to play Black or White? (B/W)' dialogue box or anything. I actually quite like this touch, but I found it a mite confusing before I worked out what it was doing.

Difficulty Levels

Fritz will beat most human players even on a reasonably fast machine. Luckily it's easy to lobotomise the engine with a number of preset handicap settings, given such descriptive names as 'Careless' and 'Moron'.

Stick the Handicap icon in the quick bar, and Fritz suddenly becomes pretty much pick-up-and-play, allowing a beginner to set up a game of 'beatable' difficulty in two mouse clicks.

Help and In-game training

You can activate a virtual Coach who'll give you advice on what to play and what to avoid doing. If you're about to muff something up, a window with a picture of a grizzled old boy in a hat, smoking a cigar, will pop up and give you some sagely advice. Sometimes it can be rather bizarre advice, especially durung the endgame or if used during a training session, and so I've found that sometimes it pays to use one's discretion with this feature (especially if you're using something like the Danish Gambit).

You can set up another chess engine to 'Kibitz', i.e. play alongside the game. Attempting this caused a crash the first time, however subsequent attempts worked fine.

There's also a useful 'Spy' function, which shows you what Fritz is thinking. I haven't used this feature much, but it can provide an interesting way of finding weaknesses in one's position that have been overlooked.

The 'Hotness' dial and the Mate-O-Meter are nice touches, if a trifle paranoia-inducing.

Playchess.com

Selecting the Playchess.com option on the startup splash screen opens a program that connects to the Playchess.com servers. Here you can play against other players around the world, watch video lectures chat, etc. Some functions here, such as tutorials, cost a small fee, using a purchasable currency known as 'ducats'. Others, such as tactics training, are free.

I have found that once logged into Playchess.com I need to log out again, back to the splash screen to play a normal game with Fritz.

Tutorial videos

Included with this edition are some Fritz Trainer tutorials. These load into the Fritz interface, and consist of little window with footage of your tutor, and the board updates automatically with pieces and arrows to illustrate whatever it is that's being taught. These work fine, and for some reason I find having the video footage of the GM tutor useful and somewhat more inspiring than the rather more impersonal approach of reading through moves and analysis from a book.

The tutorials are kept on the DVD rather than being installed on your hard drive, and so unless you've somehow manually copied them over to C:, you'll need to stick the disk in the drive if you want to access them. You'll find a Beginners Course with GM Andrew Martin, along with samples from the FritzTrainer Grandmaster Tutorial DVDs, Openings DVDs, Endgame DVDs and Tactics DVDs. These samples include lectures from such luminaries as GM Garry Kasparov.

Andrew Martin's Beginner's Course is certainly welcome, and the material covered is very accessible. There is however a huge jump in terms of audience skill-level between the beginners course and the other sample tutorials, which cover some relatively advanced subjects. There's no equivalent of Josh Waitzkin's excellent 'Art of Learning' tutorial in Chessmaster: Grandmaster Edition, which bridges that gap beautifully.

In keeping with Fritz's somewhat curt presentation style, the videos just 'end' when they finish. There's no pop up to see if you want to watch the next one, or even just to let you know it's finished and not crashed on you. If you go back to the video menu window, and choose another tutorial, it opens yet another Fritz window rather than loading the media into the existing one.

It's easy to use Fritz 12 with Fritz Trainer DVDs: just open Fritz with your tutorial DVD in the drive and choose 'Chess Course'. Or go to 'Open Chess Media File' in the main menu if there's one sitting somewhere on your hard drive. You can also stick the DVD in your drive, go to 'Open' -> 'Open Database' to open the Database program, click 'Open Database' in the main menu of that, navigate to your DVD drive and open the .cbh database file. I tried opening them directly from the DVD, but only got Karsten Muller speaking German on his Endgame DVD using this method. Far easier just to use the splash screen.

Chessbase have a huge library of tutorial DVDs available, and the idea of being able to purchase 3 hours of tuition about a specific opening variation is very appealing to the Geek-within, although I'm not currently at a level where I'm likely to benefit much from these. At £20-£30 a throw you need to be pretty keen too.

Fluff and Gimmicks

I personally find the chatter function dreadfully funny, but I can understand some people may find it irritating after a while. You can turn it off. Fritz is the only chess program that's managed to make me laugh, and it has over 1000 soundbites which it trots out depending on the progress of the game. This gives Fritz a real 'personality' all of its own, though it may not be to everyone's taste.

I never use the 3D boards, preferring 2D. The 3D boards look great, but in play they just seem to get in the way. They're useful for showing friends and family members (who tend not to be so impressed by things like the database of 1 million+ games and the analysis tools), but I find it a bit difficult to look at a rendered 3D Chessboard and 'get' the position at a glance.

Conclusion

If, like me, you're just starting out learning to play chess, the best advice I can give you is to buy both this and Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition (PC DVD) (you should be able to find it for a fiver on Amazon). Chessmaster has fantastic tutorials, and once you've been through them you'll be in a far better position to start to appreciate Fritz's awesome functionality in terms of analysis and training.

The changes to the Fritz interface are very welcome, especially the ability to assign frequently-used functions to the Quick Launch panel. For sure, there are some glitches, but they do not entirely detract from a far more polished and useable UI. I'm finding this edition of Fritz far, far easier to make use of than version 11, and I'm confident this will become my UI of choice from now on.

I don't usually write reviews etc but feel the need to do so on this occasion for this product.
The CD version constantly requires the reinsertion of the CD. While this is clearly a matter of personal choice, personally - even after a few days - I've found this constant request to reinsert the cd quite irritating/annoying.
I already wish I'd bought the more expensive DVD & shall certainly go for the DVD option in future purchases of Fritz.

This is a bargain buy... you can install at home and at work (licence allows two installs) and it doesn't matter it's the single processor version. Download Houdini or Stockfish and install as UCI engines.

This turns your cheap Fritz into something even better at analysing games (or playing) than the more expensive Deep Fritz.

Revised 24/12/09.

Those who have read my Fritz 11 reviews will already have a good idea what the program is about.

Periodically Chessbase rolls out their latest release in the hope it will become Christmas stocking fillers.

As always the chess engine and its opening book are strengthened and expanded.

For most of us mortals the version number at the end of each release has become less significant; for playing purposes Fritz 6 will wallop us just as heavily as Fritz 12 would and we could hardly tell the difference. It would be if you used the chess engine for analysis that improvements in chess knowledge and more efficient searches are more likely to pay dividends.

As always I tend to buy the full version which is more than twice the price of that offered here. The cheaper version offers slightly more than the basic program.

We have discussed the benefits of a Playchess Subscription before. The cheap version offers 3 months of the basic subscription which will allow you to play and receive updates whilst it lasts. The full version offers 12 months of a new premium subscription which allows free access to Chessbase broadcasts and sometimes the opportunity to participate in a simultaneous exhibition against a master, amongst other privileges. Essentially this is the difference between the two.

Actually I think the previous reviewer is a little optimistic to think that someone could sign in as a guest and still receive their updates. Even with a longstanding membership I have still had to register my full product serial number about twice and then go through an activation process which reminded me of Passport Control before I finally got the go ahead to download the first update.

Other benefits of both versions include a one million+ database of every significant game played since 1625, right up to 2009. This database can be used to power some of the new training features such as defensive training and attacking training. Also 12 hours plus of training media is imbedded in both discs.

What you will get with both versions is the brand new interface Chessbase have developed. It has been modernised to comply with Microsoft's "Fluent UI" standard; used increasingly with all modern software today. Even if you are an old hand at Fritz you will find the new ribbon layout strange to start with. However, if you are familiar with Office 2007, for example, the navigation is very similar.

I still refer back to the Fritz 11 menu whilst still getting my head around the new one. Don't worry too much if you do too.

Firstly, Fritz is a really great program. It might not include the very strongest chess engine in the world at the moment but the difference is negligible to anyone who is not a Grandmaster. Fritz also has great modes even for players just starting out, so it really is suitable for everyone. There are masses of different playing and training modes to try out and the price is very good considering what you get. Highly recommended for anyone interested in more than a casual game, but see below to see if you might want the 'full' retail version instead.

For existing owners considering upgrading, a big improvement with Fritz 12 for a hobby player like me is in playing 'rated games' at the lower levels. Fritz can now play at a lower strength without the hassle of switching engines (down to ELO 1000), and the play at these levels seems more realistic - in previous versions Fritz didn't make big blunders in rated games no matter what the strength was set to. The 3D graphics continue to improve, and I now play all my games using the 3D view, which I think is better for improving real life play.

In spite of all the good stuff, I've nearly knocked one star off Fritz for it's slightly poor menu structure. A key example: when you start a new game, it should be obvious how to choose a chess variant, a time control and an opponent strength/type. It isn't, instead the controls for these things are spread around the ribbon bar just like they used to be spread around the menus. Also doubling in rated games should default to off (or the whole gambling idea should be tossed out). These issues make getting started with Fritz a bit more painful than it needs to be.

Note that Fritz 12 is also available in a green box at a significantly higher price: with previous editions this was because the cheaper version did not include 1 years full membership to the online playchess service, and with Fritz 12 this is now premium membership. Even with the cheaper version, you could still access playchess as a guest, play games and get program updates, so if you don't want to play a lot of online chess, this version offers great value for money. If you want full online access it may be worth tracking down the full retail version.

I agree with Steve Martin 100 per cent. The interface is an organisational nightmare and it's full of bugs. There are lots of free AND BETTER interfaces out there (Arena, Jose, Mayura, WinBoard + Polyglot, etc). As for the engine, any mediocre engine running on a three-year old laptop can beat the strongest humans these days. However, if you happen to be an international grandmaster running a Pentium I that you inherited from your great grandmother, there are a few engines out there that are significantly stronger than Fritz and are free as well (Rybka 2, Stockfish, and more), so I wouldn't waste one quid on this program. The interesting thing is that Fritz 5.32 is an excellent product, it's free, and it's a tiny 4.3MB download. Make it capable of running UCI engines and I might give you a tenner for it.

I have been a long time Chessbase user all the way back to Fritz 5.32. And until Deep Fritz 12 I have been very satisfied with their product. However Chessbase has decided to release this new version of software without the "2 Computer Match" feature. I used this feature a lot to play my other computers with earlier software against each other. When I emailed Chessbase and inquired why they removed a great feature they replied that it was too much trouble for them to support.
Just lazy German programming.

I thought that software evolved to more features not less? Isn't that what justifies buying upgrades every year? Hmmmm... Well Chessbase certainly isn't giving a break on the price. Oh yeah thats another thing, why are they still selling a "DEEP" version? All cpu's today have multi-cores and the programming for parrallel processing is already done.
I guess Chessbase just wants your money and not give you any features. I wonder what they will cut next?

The Fritz 12 chess engine is only marginally stronger than Fritz 11. Rybka 4.1 just mops the floor with Fritz 12 in Engine match, it so embarrassingly bad. One recent engine match had Rybka winning 24 straight games and no draws. This was with the same book for both engines.

Do to the fact the Chessbase doesn't care to listen to their customers and continue to support features established for over a decade and it's poor showing against Deep Rybka 4.1 I would have to say that Deep Fritz 12 is just not worth buying. Stick with Fritz 11 and buy from Chess Assistant or use Arena. At least they value their customers input.

I've bought and installed Fritz 12, but it incesantly nags for the DVD, it doesn't seem to have installed properly, the chess course, chess database, etc, aren't available (why not ???). The GUI is abysmal lacking any structure. Often thanks that you want to do are greyed out, or give the windows alert boing when selected. Any attempts to get support (e.g. email / web-form / chat) are simply ignored (the latter because I'm too low a rank ?!!!!).

Previous fans may will enjoy the updates, anyone else will struggle.

I was pleased to find that I could change the playing strength of Fritz. Also I could stop it talking to me during a game if I wanted. The database of over 1 million games to play through , and select by opening was a bonus.
Getting on to a website through this software so I could watch strong players compete and even play against less strong ones was useful over the Christmas period.The options to buy other software thru the internet is also tempting-particularly the chess tutor.

The game itself is awsome, however it does have a down-side. To play it you have to insert the DVD, I would have thought with the size of todays HDDs, all of the data would have been transferred.