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Not supported on Windows 2000 or NT

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 63 / 94
Date: November 29, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game crashes in various places on Windows 2000. I reported the problem to The Learning Company and received a snotty email back from them saying: "We have experienced no problems with Chessmaster 8000 on Windows 2000 or Windows NT platforms. However, Chessmaster 8000 does not officially support Windows 2000 or Windows NT" So they basically denied there was a problem and blew me off to boot! What great customer service!

Great tool for learning

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 20 / 20
Date: November 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This program has been the number one tool in my recent chess advancement. Let me use a game I played not long ago to illustrate a point. I was playing a game against my chess partner recently and I made a bad move where the attack of my rook on a key square was blocked. I was about to loose as my opponent would queen on his next move and I would go into an end game with a knight and a rook vs. A bishop, a knight and a QUEEN! But I regrouped and looked at the board again. I found a check in two moves that skewered the newly made queen with my opponent's king. He had no choice an had to step away for his new queen to be taken. My rook sacrificed itself for the queen and I entered the end game with just a knight and pawns. I learned these tactics on the tutorials of this program. I managed to trade of the minor pieces and with my king pawn end game skills (which I also learned from the tutorials presented here) I went on to win the game. My opponent was no more shocked than I was!

But the tutorials are not the only important features of the game. I frequently play on Yahoo games and use the analysis engine included with this program to analyze my games. This has really helped me - one game I played recently was a particularly good learning experience. I had blacks king on the run and skewered his queen and king. I got greedy and took his queen, missing the checkmate in two moves that the analysis engine pointed out to me.

Don't bother picking up Chessmaster 7000, although it's cheaper it has fewer analyzed games, which are great as they are presented as "chess movies".

Unfortunately Horribly Buggy on Win2k Pro

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 22 / 23
Date: May 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

After getting trounced in chess games at ... I decided to buy this latest version of the Chessmaster series in order to actually begin learning the game of chess.

People seeing the VERY low rating I am giving this program should understand that the program is packed with goodness. In fact, it IS a 5 star program. A grand master goes over games of note, explaining all the moves he could have made, followed by the move he actually played. This I found facinating. You can play any of a large number of computer players, (all levels) and even customize the difficulty. The tutorials on the movement of the pieces are great for beginners.

Where Chessmaster 8000 suffers is that it is incredibly buggy. I've had this program for a day and it has crashed more than a dozen times!!!

I sincerely hope a patch that addresses this terrible problem is released soon. It clearly devalues the obviously great effort that was put into the product's creation.

No Windows 2000 or Windows XP support

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 31 / 38
Date: September 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This wonderful product will not run on any Windows after ME.
UBI doesn't even plan to upgrade Chessmaster even though Microsoft will stop producing and supporting the Windows versions that Chessmaster runs on. The product is fine on older machines but will eventually die out unless UBI sees the light and makes Chessmaster useable on the newer operating systems.

Good game but...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 16 / 16
Date: January 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

While the game is good (I have had it for a few weeeks), it doesn't work too well on Windows 2000! It takes up 99% of the CPU when the game commences and crashes from time to time - most often when there are popups in the tutorials section.

Also, quite a few times when its a really close game, the game just hangs! I have had this occur atleast 4 times out of the 15 or so times that I have played.

It definitely wasn't made for the Windows NT and 2000 OS's. So if you want to run it on 2000, watch out...

Very good program with a few design idiocies

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 16 / 17
Date: November 26, 2001
Author: Amazon User

My young daughter showed an interest in chess, so I thought I'd get us a chess program. Chessmaster 8000 is a good program and fun to use. As a teaching program for kids or adults it has a few very annoying flaws:
1) You can't pick up the (great) tuturial lessons where you left off. If you're at step 24 of a tutorial, and you stop, you need to resume from step 1.
2) The program is not keyboard friendly (on Windows 2000 at least). Alt keys don't work, and there's way too much clicking.

Not bad -- but there are better

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 14 / 14
Date: February 01, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Chessmaster 8000 is the best of the (remaining) mass-market chess games. It's fun to play against the personalities (but I can beat ones up to 1850 Elo but not Max, rated at about 1550?), and has some OK tutorials. However, it has problems under Windows 2000 (mostly a crash when you make a wrong move in a tutorial quiz), has a generally clunky feel to it, and generally feels less than solid or polished. ...

I suggest thatpeople get Fritz 6 ... instead -- in the long run you'll be happier. Many (most?) serious chess players have and use Fritz, and you'll find a wealth of information related to Chessbase products on the 'net. ...

Chessmaster 8K the good the bad and the ulgy

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 19
Date: June 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I want to start off by saying I have been a CM buyer since CM5K and have enjoyed all of them including this one. If you have CM7K there are not much new things in CM8K but Ill go over them first. New for CM8K is joshes endgame course. Its very good but not to long and would have been better if it had more lessons. The good thing about it is, it's voice annotated by josh himself and he goes threw the lessons very throughly explaning the whys and what ifs. Next they added more games to the library about 100 more if your into that. Also new is match the masters. I liked this alot but again its too short only 10 games long. What you have to do is guess the moves from some real games played by GMs and IMs and at the end it will give you a rating based on your guesses. But this is only good for 1 or 2 times after that you will start remembering the moves and the rating wont be real. Chessmaster 8000 has a much stronger playing engine my CM7K was rated on this computer at 2700 and CM8K is a full 200 points stronger, rated at 2900. Now unless your a GM the only thing I can see this usefull for is cheating on the internet! That about raps up the new things in 8K there are a few more little things added but not worth telling about.

If your a first time CM buyer you will get your moneys worth no doubt and that goes for the first time chess program buyer too.

It has over 100 computer players to play from ratings under 100 to GMs at what ever your computer rates at most will be in the 2600 or higher. The good thing about so many differnt players is style of play some are better there rating some not. Infact I have let some 2200 players play vs the chessmaster and it beats it? But most play at there rating and its good to play vs differnt playing styles.

For begginers and kids there are lots of lessions to learn from including joshes games. These games are voice annotated and he will explane his moves and his opponents moves and plans making it easy to follow and learn. Sad to say there are no new games added into CM8K one thing I would have like to see more of.

The things I would like to see in CM8K is a better chess coach one where it would show the book moves and best moves making it easy to learn openings, also a way to make a computer player play a certin opening every time so it would be easyer to learn the lines in that opening.

One thing that I dont like is the speed of the moves alot of players play at. I like to play 1 min games on the internet and would like to pratice some vs a computer players but all the players move faster then any human player can like 50 moves in 5 secs or even faster making it hard to get the feel of a real 1 min game. Also a better game analysis the one that it has dont really do much to help someone learn. CM has a 500,000 games database if your wanting to look at some games by players or openings it comes in handy. You can play rated games vs all the computer players, this helps you get an idea of how good your chess is. I have been playing chess for 3 yrs now and my rating is 2200 on CM8K so I rate in the expert class going by CM rating system. If your in to graphics chessmaster has some of the best out there you can pick the type pieces and boards size and 2d or 3d.

That pretty much wraps up my review and all in all its a great program for learning and just playing. Would I buy CM8K again knowing what I know now? No I wouldnt because I have CM7K and its pretty much the same program. So I would wait for CM9K and buy it. But if I wanted a chess program and didnt have one I would go out and get it. Hope this helps you to make up your mind on CM8K.

Keep playing chess and enjoy

SUPERB FOR BEGINNERS AND ADVANCED PLAYERS

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 17
Date: May 07, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Chessmaster 8000 is a treasure trove of chess goodies. I was a complete chess beginner, and Chessmaster taught me everthing that I needed to know to play a credible game of chess. When I went back for more, Chessmaster did not disappoint! There are lessons, drills, puzzles and lots more for the beginner, intermediate and advanced players. The interface is great, and is fully customizable. The opponents can be selected to match your ability, and after a while, you will be able to determine your chess rating via the tournament option. This software package covers the full gamut that every chess player, no matter the level, will appreciate. I also purchased a program call FRITZ 7. FRITZ 7 is a FANTASTIC chess engine and chess database. However, it really is more for intermediate/advanced players who don't need all of the extras that Chessmaster has to offer. For an all around quality chess experience, look no further than CHESSMASTER 8000! BUY IT!!!!

BTW, I'm running CM8K with Windows XP (it runs great). I close up all applications when I'm running CM8K because the chess engine "THE KING" uses up a tremendous amount of processing power.. make sure you buy the UBI Soft versin of the game...it is the latest version and you will NOT have to run any patches.

Where's The Patch

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 13
Date: January 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I had chessmaster 5000 and had much fun until I upgraded to win98 second edition,it wasn't fully compatible.
I bought Chessmaster 6000 for the o\s compatibility,it worked flawlessly.
I've now upgraded to Windows XP Pro which is NT based.I was told by several people that chessmaster 8000 would be XP and NT compatible so I bought it and it isn't.
I have only one question for UBI Soft,
WHERE IS THE PATCH!?
It's a good program,Dont make loyal customers waste so much money.

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