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Excellent chess program. Works fine on Windows 98

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 127 / 130
Date: December 02, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I am somewhat of a chess nut and I have owned the most recent version of Chessmaster since its inception. Chessmaster 8000 is an excellent chess partner/teacher for players at almost any level. It is versatile and can provide opponents that will challenge but not overwhelm players at skill levels from beginner to master. However, if you really want to test yourself, you can crank it up to its highest level and give it a go. Unless you are an international grand master, chances are that it will be a lesson in humility.

The tutorials for beginners and children are particularly good. There are a number of exercises for intermediate players, but the real value is Chessmaster's ability to analyze games and recommend moves. The opening book database is vast and the database of games of Grand Masters is very useful, especially for intermediate and advanced players who want to improve their games.

Chessmaster 8000 has several desirable improvements over 7000. This is the second release using the new interface and the initial bugs have been worked out. I have had no problems with it on Windows 98. The 3D perspective has been improved and a number of new chess sets and boards have been added. The children's area has also been improved. There is a very valuable tutorial on endgames by Josh Waitzkin for intermediate player and above. There are also far more computer opponents to play against. The best improvement is an enhancement of the chess engine that makes it even stronger. This is a difference that less than 1% of tournament players will discern, but it furter legitimizes Chessmaster in minds of serious chess players. Even with the stronger engine, Chessmaster 8000 is not the strongest chess program available, but on the highest level it will beat 99.9% of players and it cannot be matched for versatility and teaching.

If you are you are looking for a good chess partner or teacher, you can't go wrong with Chessmaster.

Amazing! but has flaws

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 49 / 51
Date: February 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game shortly after the christmas holidays, as, although I can't say why, I was consumed in a storm of chess obsession, and was buying chess paraphernalia left and right. Over the holidays, while in Montana, my younger brother and I played several games a day on a set we had brought, and had a great deal of fun, but we both had absolutely no idea of how to play the game beyond simply moving the pieces. Becuase of this, I decided to, once we got back home in Virginia, buy several books and a computer program to work on my skills. Let me tell you, I'm sooo glad that I bought this game.

In short, this game is outstanding. The size of the game is enourmous, packing two CD's full of constant learning and fun. The game is organized into six rooms, namely the Game Room, Tounament Room, Classroom, Kids' Room, Database, and Library. The Game Room, obviously, is where you can play unrated games agaist a whole host of personalities, ranging from simulations of such GM's as Tal, Kasparov, Anand, and Fischer, to three year olds. In other words, you're sure to find a suitable oponent, and, for 99% of the players out there, an oponent who can dispatch you with ease. In addition to a wide selection of possible oponents, the Game Room has a great deal of other attractive features, such as a Quick Hint option for your next move, and, my personal favorite, the option to have the game analyze all of your and your opponent's moves, offering suggestions and highlighting mistakes(after you've finished the match, of course). This feature can have a decidedly sobering effect, of course. For example, shortly after discovering the feature, I had one of my games analyzed for me, smugly thinking I had soundly beaten my opponent, only to be informed that I had missed 16 mating oportunities!

Another area of the game that I frequent is the Classroom, where a whole range of interesting and informative tutorials can be accessed, starting with basic stuff, such as how to move the pieces, to advanced end game courses by Josh Waitzkin, the protagonist of the movie Searching For Bobby Fischer. Josh's courses are absolutely great, as you can actually hear him speak his lessons. The only downside, I suppose, to his courses is that he goes very rapidly, and you need more chess ability than I currently possess to really get the most out of them. Unfortunately, the other courses are spoken by someone with an incredibly irritating voice, so I normally just turn off the sound when he's talking. In fact, its almost painful to listen to him at times, when he says stuff like: "If you got that one right, give yourself a cookie. Oh, and, give me one to." Yes, its really that bad.

The Library, like all of the areas of the game, continues the trend and has a ton of great stuff. For example, there is a section containing illustrative games dating back to the late 1700's, of such players as Morphy, Kasparov (including his Deep Blue matches) and many others, all with commentary and annotation. In addition to to classic game section, you can look at Chessmaster's opening book references, or make your own opening book, which, needless to say, is an invaluable tool.

The Tournament Room is where you can play in tournaments with other personalites, or even create a tournament with only the best of the GM's and watch how they play each other. Actually, I got some interesting opening ideas from watching a Kasparov-Karpov simulation match, so making tournaments like the above can actually be quite helpful. Also, the tournament room is where you can play rated games, to get a feel for what your actual chess rating is.

The Kid's Room is basically a mini game within the game, and provides kids with a condensed version of bits of all of Chessmaster's other rooms. For example, you can play kid specific opponents, ranging from very bad to a young Josh Waitzkin, rated at 2100. My little sisters, 6 and 9, both enjoy this part of the game a lot, and the 6 year old was overjoyed when she crushed Stanly the Chimpanzee, rated at 1, who makes completely random moves. Also, the kid's room has a great deal of chess sets designed for kids, like a set where the men are all little gnomes.

The next room, the Database, contains a collection of some 500,000 games played throughout history. Unfortunatly, I don't have much to say about this area of the game, as I haven't used it very much, but its basically what you would think it would be. You can search for specific games, specific opening lines, etc.

After such a glowing review, you may be wondering why I bothered to say that the game has some flaws in the title of my review. Well, it certainly has its fair share. As nearly every other reviewer has written, the game, for some idiotic reason, doesn't seem to work very well with Windows 2000. Most of the problems seem to arise in the classroom sections of the game, especially when audio is involved. Its become a painfully common occurence for a little error window to pop up, saying that something or other's size is too small, whatever that means. Regardless, the sound gets cut off, and every once in a while, the whole game crashes. Also, as others have said, the game takes up all of your computer's available resources while running. For example, while writing this review I had the game on, minimized obviously. The game's seemingly unquenchable thirst for memory caused the appearance of my typing on the screen to be delayed, so that what my fingers were doing didn't show up on the screen until after I had finished typing. Although not that bad, it is somewhat annoying. Also, as at least one other reviewer stated, the game lacks polish. For instance, the classroom tutorials a chock full of minor errors, such question numbers that don't match the page number of the tutorial. For example, on one tutorial, the page number was something like 17, but the question number on the page said 27. Minor things like that plague the game, things that should have been caught before putting the game on the market.

Despite all of this mind-boggling flaws, the game is still amazingly fun. Chess on its own exerts a peculiarly addictive force on all those who come in contact, and this game, in my mind, multiplies that force several times. With this game, you can participate in a lively, challenging game whenever you want, day or night. You don't have to bore yourself because your opponent doesn't feel like playing. Its always there. Consequently, I've played an enourmous amount of chess during the past two weeks, and I've profited from it immensely. When I first bought the game, I played a player named Jonesie, rated at 900 or so, and I was utterly annihilated. Now, only two weeks later, Jonesie is a breeze, and I rarely loose to players rated at 1450 and above. If your a beginning player who would like to become a serios competitor, this game is ideal. Look at my results. In two weeks I jumped 500 rating points. I can't wait to see how I'm doing two more weeks from now! In conclusion, buy this game if chess means anything to you at all. Although I've never played any other computer chess games before, I can't imagine them topping this one. Thank you Chessmaster.

An awesome way to learn

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 43 / 44
Date: August 11, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Most people really enjoy making fun of Chessmaster 8000, saying that other engines like Fritz 6 and Shredder are a lot stronger. However, personally I don't care if I'm beaten in chess by a 2600+ engine or a 2700+ engine. Chessmasters true advantage lies in its easy-to-learn approach. Often in other engines the interface and the menus are hard to navigate through, and if you have a child they easily become discouraged by playing against such an engine. But in Chessmaster 8000 you have everything to make you play better. If you have a child that's interested in chess, he/she can play in the "Kids room" where there are exercises, voice lectures by IM Josh Waitzkin and tonnes of opponents, from rating 1 to rating 2200. If you are a teenager like me, or an adult, you might want to move on to the "game room" where you can play the same opponents as in the kids room, but in this case their USCF rating goes as high as 2700, with more than 170 different players, including 80+ human-like players, 39 opponents based and styled after famous grandmasters, and the CHESSMASTER himself, expected to play at 2600 USCF, when playing at full strength, and if that's not enough, you can create your own characters, set their strengths and weaknesses, and you can even incorporate other chessengines into chessmaster, such as Crafty. Furthermore you can play the masters such as Kasparov, Lasker, Capablanca, Nimzowitz, Larsen and Botvinnik, and you can have your game analysed by chessmaster, so that he points out where you went wrong, and where you did the right move. He can even during a game suggest the best move to you, or he can go into dept and try to find a forced mate. You can also pair computers vs. computers, play rated and unrated tournaments in the tournament room, look up EVERY opening and see comments to it in the "library room", check out classic games (more than 700) with annotation by Grandmasters, including Yasser Seirawan and Larry Evans, hear voice lectures from Joshua Waitzkin, solve exercises from mate in 1 to highly advanced Master exercises, you can go online and play against other users of chessmaster 8000 (and no it's not possible to cheat during play), there's a giant database with over 500000 chess games played throughout history, you can search for ELO, player, tournament, position etc. The graphics are 16-bit and you can choose from 33 different chessboards, in "birds eye view", "over the shoulder view", "3D", "Perspective" or the traditional "2D". You can also chose the pieces. If you are not satisfied, you can create your own board. There's nothing that you can't do in chessmaster, and the lectures by Bruce Pandolfini, Seirawan and Waitzkin are of top quality, and most of them are read aloud! This is like having your own personal IM or GM at your disposition at any time. Chessmaster 8000 is an awesome and fun way to learn chess, recommendable to children, teenagers or adults! If you're 400, buy this game, if you're 1500, buy this game, if you're a grandmaster, yes, buy this game, seeing it is grandmaster strength. This is definitely the best chess engine ever.

Great Game: However, not essential to update from CM 7000

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 38 / 39
Date: January 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I own several chess-playing software programs, including Fritz 6, HIARCS, Chessmasters 2000-8000, and they all play strong games. Chessmaster 8000 is a great buy for virtually all players, including serious tournament players (though I greatly prefer Fritz 6). However,if you already own a Chessmaster 6000 or Chessmaster 7000, do you really need the update? Chessmaster 8000 isn't dramatically different, although there are improvements in graphics, playing strength, etc. The analysis function is still less than satisfying (I prefer the more professional Fritz 6 annotations) and although the Josh Waitzkin endgame course is both valuable and entertaining, I couldn't say that it made CM8000 a must buy.

ChessMaster Review

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 27 / 44
Date: October 30, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I am a gifted chess player and do not remember a time in my life when I did not play chess. Imagine my disappointment when I first went to kindergarten and discovered that I was the only one who played chess much less even knew the game. ChessMaster, with its tutoring capabilities, is the program for the beginning player and, with its library of games, a must for the chess affecianando. With a variety of levels of play to select, as well as playing types, only the very, very best chess player will be unable to find a competitive, but not dominate, opponent.

While the graphics might appeal to others, I am a dinosaur and the standard board is fine. However, those options are available and are quite good. In general, the program has everything most people would want and is an important program to have in one's library. The only drawback to the program is the one common to all chess programs. Chess by machine lacks the spark of human intuition and reflects the brute force approach to the game which obtains from mathematical equations.

For the male mind in particular, chess is a 'must learn' game. It uses all areas of reasoning and teaches reading and language skills (surprise!) as well as the more commonly recognized spacial logic. Chess players at very high levels are also accomplished artists. They write, play music, paint, speak multiple languages, and, in the last century, one strong but unsuccessful candidate for the world title was a professional ballet dancer. Personally, I have worked in highly technical fields in aerospace, exactly where the common perception puts chess players, but I have also been an interpretor and am now writing books for a living.

ChessMaster teaches chess and chess teaches much more. As the best general chess program available, consider ChessMaster.

Bought it for my kids; I play when they're in school!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 28
Date: January 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I bought the Chessmaster 8000 program when my seven year old son began beating his father after a few months of addictive play on the Lego Chess program. He took to this new program like a fish to water. All I did was install it, show him the Kid's Room Icon, and he was off, playing a range of kid opponents (names, photos, and playing style of each provided) with skills from Chimpanzee to future International Master. He has his choice of playing a rated or unrated game, so he can still practice playing strong opponents without compromising his rating and bruising his ego.

There's a large number of chess sets and boards to choose from, although the most whimsical (gnomes, dogs, etc.) are a little hard for him to distinguish during play.The tutorials in the grownup part, plus the drills that follow, have also been great fun for him.

We have not put this program to the full test, since no one in our family is an expert player (yet), but give us a year or two to work with this program, and who knows? In the meantime, I have to wait for the kids to go to school to get my turn with Chessmater 8000, and it has proved an excellent teacher and opponent for me as well.

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".

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.

Great Product Even Using Windows XP

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: September 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Without knowing the requirements I purchased Chessmaster 8000 and loaded into my Sony Vaio notebook using Windows XP. Chessmaster works fine with that operating system. Yet I am uncertain if updates and downloads from the Ubi Soft website will work.

All in all I really enjoy playing Chessmaster 8000 in Windows XP. A truly great product.

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