User Reviews (11 - 21 of 21)

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A real Master of a Program!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: November 19, 2000
Author: Amazon User

It seems kind of dumb to review this program, now that CM 8000 is out. But here goes:

This is a great program. I have spent many hours with this puppy. I am a USCF Master, and I have beaten this program (on its top level) only a handful of times. Of course the strength of the program will be based on the speed of your computer's processor chip. I.e., the faster the processor, the stronger the program.

Some of the features I liked: A library of around 300,000 games!! A multiple personality, programmable playing engine. (There is almost an infinite variety of playing strengths here.) Josh Waitzkin's voice as he goes over some of his best games! (He explains the variations in great detail.) Josh will become your personal chess coach. You will definitely learn from watching his games and analysis.{See his victory over my friend, Moshe Khatena from a tournament in Bermuda.} I could go on and on. But by now, you should get the general idea.

I can heartily recommend CM 7000 to ANYONE. If you don't like it, I will buy it back from you. [I won't promise to pay full retail, however. ;) ]

Even better than 6000

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: February 04, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Continuing from the wonderful Chessmaster 6000, this version has some good new features. There's a couple more voice-annotated games from IM Josh Waitzkin, and there's a much better variety of computer personalities on offer.

The teaching facilities have been vastly expanded, with speed drills, puzzles, and extra coaching from Bruce Pandolfini. Children will also have much more fun than with 6000, because of the new "Kids Room" and the colourful layouts.

My only problem with this software is cosmetic...I liked the black background of 6000, but I couldn't see a way to get that back. But I still think it's a worthy successor to 6000.

Almost Too Much!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: August 05, 2000
Author: Amazon User

If you love chess, and you find it difficult to always have a playing partner, this game is your answer. I've had sessions where I play four or five games in a row, until late at night, and I take my time between moves analyzing what happened and thinking about strategy. Not many human players would put up with that!

The playing levels of this game are above and beyond what almost any amateur chess player would need. I am willing to bet that at the toughest settings about 1 in 10,000 chess players could win consistently. I like "watching" the saved games, seeing the moves of famous chess players. I also like the rating system built into the game. The graphics are terrific, very realistic, and the moves are very smooth. The views are great.

The only thing I would say about this game that is slightly negative is that there are almost TOO many settings -- adjusting the tilt of the board, choosing the color and "texture" of the board, choosing different sets of playing pieces. Also, you can endlessly tweak the personality of your opponent, making it more defensive, more offensive, more controlling of the center of the board, more protective of the queen, and on and on. I find I am always trying to adjust the settings. The best thing is to find a setting, then forget about settings and focus on the game.

I tried the modem-to-modem chess games, but found it too slow for my taste.

My chess game has definitely improved after using this game.

Very User-friendly Menus

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 16
Date: June 02, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Chess is a very beautiful game and it's my inner 'world-model'.It's ancient origins and how it survives throughout our history is enough to speak that chess is indeed a many splendoured thing.I love this game!

ChessMaster7000 has by far,of all chess software I've seen,it has the most user-friendly and intuitive interface.It has a strong engine too.Though I heard that Fritz6 has a stronger engine.But Fritz6 has very poor User-interface compared to CM7000.I told myself,"okey,I'll beat ChessMaster7000 first then I go to Fritz6 after that happens!".But I doubt if I could ever do that within this year!CM7000 is very strong player.Again,I like the menus and stuff UI.Good to anyone who wants to become NM,IM etc.CM7000 is a well-balanced product which considers the customer's needs and intuitive ease-of-use.Fritz6 on the other hand has this constant 'busy' mouse cursor every move and it greatly disturbes your focus.ANd certain buttons in fritz6 (the clock for example) constantly freezes-up then refresh when Fritz tries to crunch-up some deep level analysis during a game in each move.Much like you're talking to a weird eccentric scientist in front of you...you just can't understand his expression! THough,no doubt and I admit..Fritz6 is a very, very, very strong player.But again, I still have to beat CM7000 first..but I don't think I could ever do that within one year.I highly recommend ChessMaster7000...

Good program, lousy compatibility

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: August 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The program itself is quite good for an intermediate player like myself. However, it does not run on my Win2K machine at all. I loaded it on my Windows XP machine, but this isn't much better. The game runs, but has a habit of locking up the PC unexpectedly and randomly in the middle of games. I plan to ask for my money back.

A Great Bargain For Serious And Casual Players

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: May 18, 2000
Author: Amazon User

After reading (and largely agreeing with) the other positive reviews, I wanted only to add two points that were important to me (I am a Class A USCF player): 1) CM7000's continuing inability to seriously analyse a game (for example, that game you played at the club last night)still is a MAJOR drawback. Annotation consists of more than just identifying the opening and repeating the moves! Try Fritz6 if you like strong and easy-to-use analysis features. 2) Although there is really a lot of unnecessary "eye candy," CM7000's chess engine has been rated in the 2500+ category (and you can adjust that strength downward) and will challenge and humble you.

Makes learning fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 24, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I had not tried ChessMaster since about version 3000. I was able to get a version from an online auction for 10 dollars. It was really worth it. I really enjoy the games by Josh, and the way he describes what is going on in his own words. This is more enjoyable than reading a chess book or magazine for example and moving the pieces on your own. Many of the tutorials are really good too. The only drawback might be that some of the learning things are not as interactive as they could be, which might make the learning faster.

There definetly are some technical glitches ranging from positions that have incorrect answers, to what looks like a serious memory leak. You must go to their website and get the patches. I sent them several e-mails, but got no response, which was annoying.

But I would recommend the program to beginners and tournament players a like. There is something in there for everyone.

Very good for a first-time chessmaster user, but...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 08, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I've been using Chessmaster6000 since 1998 and I always liked it a lot. The program not only looks very nice (which can't be said of all major chess programs) but also is very "playable", whether you want to just play chess, improve your game, analyse, study theory or whatever. This being said I have to admit that I'm not really impressed with Chessmaster7000. The division in "rooms" is very nice (if you want to analyse you go to one room, if you want to work with databases you go to another and so on) and works very well. With these rooms you easily get where you want. If you have children in the "chess learning age": there's a childrens room where kids can learn and/to play in a way that looks good to me. But again, apart from these rooms Chessmaster7000 doesn't add much to the functionality of Chessmaster6000. So I'd say : try to define what you expect from Chessmaster7000 and then decide if you want to buy.

PS: if you use Chessmaster6000 to play via MPlayer.com, you have no choice but to buy 7000 (almost anybody else does and aparently you can't use 6000 to play against someone who's using 7000.....:-(

Beginners Only

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 13
Date: August 20, 2001
Author: Amazon User

It is annoying that the hype says this is the "number one" chess computer game. It clearly is not, and the serious player should consider games such as those produced by Rebel (....) I find there is something amaturish about this game, and why does it STILL not run on windows 2000?

Save Your Money For Chessmaster 8000; Chess Neophytes....

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: October 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This software is excellant for chess neophytes on the contrary don't acquire this item if you have a previous version, i.e. Chessmaster 4000.

For a game that's released in 1999 with that price tag, I expect the graphics to be superb. There are a few number of the same chess set styles from the Chessmaster 4000 game! Sure, it has the QuickTime 4.0 video and the Chessmaster Live, but solely judging this software on the basis of overall quality, please save your money for the Chessmaster 8000.

For a neophyte whom doesn't have prior chess softwares other than the prevous Chessmaster series, get this title. For you guys, it has the interactive teaching and a "Kid's Room" with a commencing introduction by the international chapion Josh [can't recall surname].

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