User Reviews (21 - 31 of 152)

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The power of an Amazon review

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 13
Date: May 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I had all but written off this game because of the barrage of negative reviews, but the consensus from the users that managed to actually get the game installed was that it was good. I took a trip down to my local store and saw the game for the same price as on this website. I decided to take a chance, after reading that Ubi had put out a patch for this game. True enough patch 1.0.3 seems to have cleared up any issues with requiring a CD to run the game, as I'm running the program now with nothing in the CD drive. I have noticed to crashes or problem. The game is fun and a good investment.

Excellent program, exceeds expectations!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 22 / 29
Date: July 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have read the negative reviews of this program here and I do not share these views. First, the program runs great on my computer and does not crash. Not even occasionally. And I only have 256 ram or whatever. The interface is excellent. The tutorials are fantastic. For a beginning player trying to move to intermediate level, I am finding this program to be great. I looked at Fritz 8, and I understand it is excellent. But for someone other than an expert, I think this program is the way to go. And I do not see the big deal about the copyright protection, I am used to keeping the disc in my drive when running complex computer games. I do not get the negativity on some of these reviews.

Also, the program is worth its purchase price based on the excellent tutorials it contains, especially those by Josh Waitzkin. I think Josh is our most interesting Chess personality to emerge since Bobby Fischer.

A first rate Chess program, highly recommended.

Copy protection makes it useless

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 22
Date: January 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I like to play chess when I travel with my laptop. I needed a program that would be self-contained after installation. This is not it. Ubisoft makes you insert one of the original CDs, every time you try to start up you "full installation" from your hard drive. This is just wrong. When I travel, I don't even have my CD-ROM drive. In it's place is an extra battery. I feel like I've been ripped off by Ubisoft. If you care about fair use rights, don't support this company.

the worst chess software out there

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 22
Date: November 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Dear Reader: I suspect you are on the Chessmaster 10 page because you are unaware of the Fritz program (Amazon ASIN: B000B643GA), which is what serious chess players use to play chess, both against the computer and against others on the internet.

Chessmaster (even version 9) has got to be one of the most irritating, intrusive pieces of software that I've ever installed on my computer.

First of all, before permitting itself to be installed, Chessmaster scans your hard drive for any software it deems illicit, such as CloneCD or other kinds of Windows utilities that allow users to duplicate files. If it detects anything it doesn't like, it won't allow you to install the game on your computer. The problem is, much of the software on its "banned" list are, or at least were intended to be, completely innocuous. As if this wasn't enough, Chessmaster won't deign to tell you which piece of software it objects to, leaving you to guess. What's really baffling is the realization that software pirates could easily copy the Chessmaster CD without having to install it first, of course! So what was the point of the programmers having Chessmaster do this? To strike a blow for intellectual property rights in general?

Anyhow, another irritant is that the Chessmaster game has decided to model itself on certain racing games, which only unlock certain tracks and cars if you've beaten certain lesser opponents and tracks.

Well, Chessmaster works the same way. The programmers have decided to make certain colored 2-D boards and all the 3-D boards unlockable, meaning that you can't adjust the board's colors and look to suit you, unless you "unlock it." This means you have to play about, I think, 25 games at a certain level before you're even allowed to play 3-D chess, one of the reasons many people buy this particular program, I think. Very frustrating for those who like to play 3-D right from the outset.

But it goes further. Chessmaster also won't allow you to specify your level, meaning that you have to play dozens of probably unpleasant games against opponents which probably cruelly out-rank you, or laughably under-rank you. You have to "earn" your rating, so to speak. You're not allowed to start playing at your level for quite some while, and you're also not allowed to play above your level.

No, I'm not finished yet. I've noticed that chess programs are popular on laptop computers because of their low graphics and sound requirements. Unfortunately, Chessmaster requires you to insert the disk every time you play it, making play on-the-go more of a hassle.

Boy, am I sorry I bought this thing!

Ignorant Service

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 15 / 17
Date: January 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I had received two copies of CM10 for XMas. Due to reviews I directly asked UbiSoft for verification. I only have a CD-R/W and a DVD-R/W on my PC. My laptop only has a DVD-R/W drive. The box claims that the software has issues with some drives (failing to state the r/w issue) and some virtual disks. I needed additional information that the UbiSoft representative was unwilling to provide. Will it work on my specific system? Which drives have known issues and which virtual disks?

Unless you are certain you can return this product for a full refund it is not worth the risk installing on a modern PC. I had never heard of Fritz 8, and would never have tried it except for this issue. I traded CM10 for Fritz 8 Deluxe and it is actually very good. My second CM10 I exchanged for a Chess clock. $40 is too much to spend on something that "might" work for me and the only support offering is for me to downgrade my system to a plain CD or DVD drive and remove any conflicting software (Nero) that I also use almost daily.

It's also very sad when users need to educate a companies developers that software copies are made "TO" R/W drives, not "FROM" them. This solution doesn't solve anything but irritate good customers. Bye bye UbiSoft.

Terrible product

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 15 / 17
Date: January 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is a terrible product, and I say this as a formerly loyal Chessmaster fan who has used three previous versions of the program. Other reviewers have pretty much covered the problems with this product; I want to emphasize the insensitivity (?dishonesty) of the manufacturers in not making it clear under what restrictive conditions (dedicated CD drive, disk always in the drive, incompatibility with many other programs, etc, etc) it can be used. It's just not worth the hassle and the risk.

Buy Fritz (or Shredder, or Rebel, or Hiarcs). These (and other programs) can be set at different levels of expertise, provide you with fun and training for years. And Fritz interacts with Chessbase, the chess database that most leading chess professionals use, so that even if you get up to grandmaster level, you will still find the program useful.

Minimum requirements must not be possible

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 20 / 26
Date: March 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game two days ago for 20 bucks and now I see why. First I will state my PC info.....

2 GB DDR sync ram
AMD 64 bit CPU running at 2GHz
Windows XP
Direct X 9.0c
512 mb pc-express x 16 ATU graphics card

That should be enough info and enough to run any game.But not this one. I can play it, and it does not crash, but you have to wait a good 10 seconds to make a move for the program to catch up and you lose time on your timed game. Also, even with FULL installation and the CD in the drive, the voice overs skip. I can play Doom3 all day and never does it skip a beat. Thief Deadly Shadows runs like a dream. Not chessmaster though. Once the PC made the next move before I even got to put my piece down. Just awful. And they just do not seem to care.

Get ChessMaster 10th Edition

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 19
Date: September 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

As a former owner of Fritz 8 I had to buy a new chess program when I lost Fritz 8 due to having to reinstal windows xp on my computer. I looked at a few games that I downloaded as demos such as Kasparov, Chessrally, Chess Commander but nothing to get excited about or better then Fritz 8. Since ChessMaster 10 was brand new I decided to buy this and I am glad I did. This game is for a young beginner all the way to someone with a master rating. I strongly recomend this for someone new to chess or that is young under 10 years old because it has a great teaching tutorial. What I like about this game is that it deals in different personalities rather then just a rating like in fritz 8. Also you can create your own personalities too. There also is a tourniment section that exist and you can create. Another section for studing opening moves and focusing on a passed game. There is a large selection of boards and the 3d is much better then the fritz 8 3d. There are also 2 boards that are fun to play where the pieces are moving in a medieval battle and a fairy tale setting, this is something I think kids would like to play chess on. The only negitive that I can see is when you are playing a longer game the computer player will really take its time in its moves. I personally play my rated games at 30 minutes with a 5 second add on to each move. In a typical game like that the computer might be making 1 move a minute until its time nears around 15 minutes then it speeds up. I myself am actually a slow player when I play on line so in a way I would say the computer plays a little like me time wise but the average player would play faster. The ratings seem about right though maybe a little exagerated. I play the same on yahoo as I do in my rated games and my rating on yahoo is around 1400 and right now my rating on chess master is around 1450. I do think a 1400 player on yahoo is probly about a 1500 on this game though. The top players which are a selection of grand masters and the top program all are around 2700 in ratings so I would say the program itself is strong enough for 99 percent of chess players. I played GM Morphy and I completely was destroyed in about 20 moves. For the price I just think that this would be a good chess game to get I just dont think anyone who gets it would be disapointed.

Great Game, Lousy Software

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: October 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Great chees game, lots of adversaries, great academy lessons with Josh Waitzkin (improved my game a lot), great graphics, cruely good player when playing at the highest level.

Unfortunately, the game crashes all the time, and I had to reinstall it again many times in my computer. Worse, it crashes during the games (and freezes the computer). Most of the times it will come back to normal in some minutes, but your time during the crash is lost! I work with IT and tried everything I know (including downloading patches), but the game still crashes. Pity, because all the rest is great.

Indespensible for the beginning player

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: July 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Quick Note: I am running this program on a Dell 4700 desktop with Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz processor and 504 mb of RAM. I use a CD-RW drive and have had no trouble with copyright protections or other irritations. I have not had a single problem with crashes, freezing, or laggish play. You do have to keep the CD in the drive in order to play, but I heard there is patch to fix that problem (I don't really mind it). The main menu always takes about 15 seconds to become operational, and when exiting out the program you will have to wait about 20 seconds for it to close completely.

If you are a beginning or intermediate chess player looking for a great piece of software to help improve your game then you would be remiss not to consider this software as it is probably one of the most temendous chess values on the market. For twenty dollars you get hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of information ranging from basic/intermediate chess instruction to annotated, or audio commented games. For instance, Josh Waitzkin's audio tutorials start from the basics of how to play, and build sections on tactics/pattern recognition, basic strategy, game psychology and endgames. He even includes about a dozen or so of his most interesting games which are fully commentated for study.

The software comes with a list of 825 "great" historic games which include light annotations on the interesting moves and variations. It comes with a master database of over 500,000 games which can be sent to training and analyzed by the chessmaster engine. The engine itself is very powerful with a rating of over 2700 ELO so you know its analysis is sound up to about that level of play.

In training mode you can do just about anything you want. There are over 180 opponent personalities to choose from. Their in game ratings range from 23 ( a six year old girl named Cassie) to 2917 (the chessmaster and other CPU's modeled after great players like Fischer and Cappablanca) though some of the ratings are definitely inacurate (some of the oppnents should be rated as much a 300 points higher than they are, so don't loose to much sleep if certain personalities in your range seem annoyingly difficult). You can even create your own custom opponents by fiddling with about 30 different settings like randomness, control of center and contempt for draw. At any point you can ask chessmaster for advice, anything from a quick hint to in depth analysis and prediction of the opponents future moves. It is even illuminating just to watch chessmaster play against the other personalities in the game and watch it dismantle the lower rated players and expose their weak or random moves.

You can also play rated games against the CPU personalities with no help or advice. You will then be given a rating based on your strength of play. You can set up tournaments and even play on-line.

Aside from the Waitzkin tutorials there is another tutorial section called the "chessmaster series" which includes more great instruction and drills with a sections on beginning strategy by Yasser Seierwan, and openings by Bruce Pandolfini. There is a ton of other features to this software that I have not mentioned that add even more to the value of this software. Basically, there is enough here to keep beginning and intermediate players busy for months, if not years. I give my highest recommendation to this software.

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