User Reviews (41 - 51 of 152)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

It is now apparent the issues have been resolved

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: January 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Some of the past reviews slam Chessmaster X for setup problems and having to have the CD in the Computer during play. Even the first two featured reviews on Amazon are inaccurate as they are dated in 2004 before subsequent updates were issued. This is totally unfair to Ubisoft as this is a great program for such a cheap cost. It is now apparent the issues have been resolved. I purchased Chessmaster X from Amazon on January 16th, 2007 and have installed the program on a new computer. My computer does have a CD/DVD RW drive, and I can copy DVDs and CDs. Some have claimed issues loading this program if you use a RW drive. If this was true, the problem no longer exists. There was no problem loading or running Chessmaster. After the load there is a Readme file with valuable information. One issue some reviewers have claimed is you always have to run the CD in the Drive. Not so! As explained in the readme file, you only have to run the CD the first time you play after the load. The readme file explains you are prompted to run with the CD once every two weeks or after 14 uses to protect against copyright infringement. Although Ubisoft has updated the current issued software with obvious fixes, I now have updated the software at http://www.chessmaster.com/us/ and installed the current update dated ("Tuesday 12.20.05: Update v1.03 Now Available!") The link to this site is installed on the programs menu (start- All Programs- Ubisoft- Chessmaster 10th Edition) when Chessmaster is loaded. Also installed on this menu are the important readme file and a copy of the entire Manual in an adobe PDF file in addition to the manual being provided with the three disk set. Be advised that a complete load takes 1.7 Gig of space.
I am impressed with all the tools available to learn and improve your game of Chess. There are tutorials for kids, and a great Academy by Chessmaster Josh Waitzkin. Also included are 800 of the most famous matches from 1619 to 2004. The database is huge. You can watch these great matches play by play with commentary. I haven't even scratched the surface to all that is offered in this program. My challenge now is how to beat my children, and for that matter, my Grandkids. My motive in buying this was to find a way to keep my mind active to slow the effects of ageing. I had no idea how much fun I would have.

Don't believe the ratings

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: April 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Chessmaster is one of those pieces of software that you probably are familiar with, it's been around for quite awhile, the engine is rated high enough to beat 99.9% of all users but you can pick from opponents that are closer to your own rating.

While I like Chessmaster I don't use it to play against, I use Chessmaster for the lessons by Larry Christiansen and Josh Waitzkin, both are accomplished players (Larry is a GM and Josh an IM) in the Chess world and you can pick up some pointers by watching their lessons, also included are chess puzzles by GM John Nunn, an endgame quiz by GM Larry Evans and Bruce Pandolfini filling in other areas.

For those wanting to practice their Openings, that's included although the program just touches on them.

There is a feature that allows you to play online chess against other Chessmaster users but when I tried there was only a handfull of players online, your much better off going with the Fritz software or sign up with ICC or FICS if your looking for online play.

It does have a significant database of chess games, there again your alot better off buying Chessbase as it contains just as many games and offers just a ton of additional features that are out of the scope of Chessmaster.

I highly recommend Chessmaster 10th Edition for those rated under 1700 as the lessons are worth the price for what you will get out of it.

Good for playing, not so good for serious training

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: May 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It all depends on your level of playing and your seriousness about chess. For a beginner the many features it has are great to make you like the game. Training modes, Graphics, Tutor, Chess Academy, Different players of different strengths.

If you are more serious about chess however, Chess master alone may not be the solution, I would get Fritz as well. Not because of playing strength because I'm sure Chess Master is still a very strong chess engine, but Fritz seems to have features more geared toward Analysis and Training as well as the fact that its engine is definitely stronger.

The nice features about the product are:

1- Visually appealing
2- Training materials for beginners and various nice training options
3- Large database of games with position search (however the Internet makes this really not needed) and they are not annotated.
4- Chess puzzles

But what I personally like most are:
5- So many players of so many different levels and strengths specified by their ELO rating which Chess Master claims it is close to real and they got it from playing real human opponents.
6- You can hold tournaments between you and other computer players at your level
7- You level evolves as you play more and your accurate ranking is computed after 20 games.
8- The Price!!

Now what I don't like most about the program is:
1- Had to put the CD to play, until I learned about the patch that you can get from ubisoft or [...] Great annoyance has been solved and downloading the patch is nothing it's less than 4MB.

but the most personally annoying is:
2- Players at a low level do non-human like stupid blunders. You are in the middle of a strong game with threats here and there and then your opponent makes the most stupid (and disappointing) move that makes you win the easy way. I don't know if this happens per level or it's just the personality you play cuz that didn't happen with everyone. On the other hand Fritz has the "friend" mode which it claims it just plays weak moves not straight blunders.
3- The analysis feature is lacking. Fritz has more powerful analysis with variations and possibility to try different lines and play your own line in the middle of a position.

I have both products, Chess Master for playing, and Fritz for Analysis.
If you are a beginner or intermediate or even a strong player who wants to play from time to time then this is a good software. If you are serious about chess and care about game analysis and a strong engine to continue from certain positions, etc, then couple that with Fritz or get Fritz and play online. You will miss however all the bells and whistles and visually appealing features of Chess Master. Under $20, I would give it a try.

beware !

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 21
Date: March 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Here's a warning to u all : DON'T BUY IT !!!
I'm gonna tell u why...
First of all the soft is buggy, and I'm not gonna list all the buggs in here, it's gonna be (realy) too long, just pay a visit to their forum on www.chessmaster.com.
And if u have a laptop or any CD-emulation or even some burning software on your machine, just pass your way.
Or maybe u're intrested in the online play?!?...well that's the best part, cause it's realy humourous. The online play of this game is a real joke (troubles connecting, disconnections in games, extraterrestrial ratings, cosmic number of games played...)
What about the support???...Here's where u feel that u're talking in an empty box and that u have been ripped off. Instead of fixing a game that they've already sold and received the money for, they just made a pared down version (CM Challenge) where they've simply stripped off the problem areas, trying to get some extra money with very little work (if no work at all).
Chess players are supposed to be smart, right?...So pass your way and make another choice, there's plenty out there. Fritz is one of them.
For me, this has been the last time where Chessmaster / Ubisoft saw the color of my money.

A steal at under $20

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: December 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This software is excellent for beginners and those who want to continue to improve their chess play. It has nice graphics, and valuable auxiliary training features such as the Training Academy. I had no trouble installing it on my desktop PC, going to the Ubisoft site for the latest updates. I think this is an extremely useful feature packed chess software product. Does it have any faults? I don't know, ask me when my rating gets higher; for now it is all I can handle and at under $20 (14.98) it is a bargain.

Stay away from this piece of crap

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 20 / 29
Date: June 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I couldn't even get this game to install on my own computer. For the one computer that I /did/ get it to install on, after much hassle and grief, it inexplicably froze up so much I said the hell with it.

Do yourself a favor and avoid this disgusting fraud of a game. What a waste of time and money.

10th Edition - the best Chessmaster ever?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: August 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I just received the CM 10th Edition and played it for about 4 hours. The new interface is great IMHO - easy to learn, easy to use and plain easy on the eyes - much, much better than the one in my old CM8000. Moreover, there are several color sets (called "skins") - my favourite is the B&W one. I guess it's hard not to find a set of your liking, as the 4 available are very different.
Enough on the interface - Chessmaster is about playing chess, isn't it? :)
There are a lot of computer opponents to choose from; I started playing against one of the weakest and was pleasantly surprised to see that, at the end of the game, Chessmaster proposed me to play an opponent more fitting to my strength. I obeyed and after a few ups and downs I found a set of opponents against whom I performed satisfactorily (not losing too much, that is :))
I liked a lot the game chart available - each of your moves gets a note and you can see exactly how the game went, where did you play well or wherenot.
About the other game modes:
Puzzles - simple but fun, even if I was bored after a while
Tournaments - if you win a tournament you gain access to a new one; seems to be the way to go after I get bored of playing standard games
Online - not many people when I logged in, only a couple guys battling it out. That's normal though, the game's out since only a couple days.
Academy - Haven't checked this carefully (it's HUGE) - just browsed the Attacking Chess section. I was intrigued to hear that GM Larry Christiansen lost against CM9000, so I watched a couple games - very interesting.

On the minus side, there are too few 2d sets, which are the only ones I use for serious games. I was really impressed by the looks of the 3D sets - the glass and metal ones are awesome. The Fairy Tale and Clash sets are fun, but mostly for kids - I can't see any serious player using them. Oh, and you MUST hear the sounds of the Rubber set. :)

Overall, this is a very solid chess program, and in my opinion the best game in the series (I don't own 9000, but it is certainly head and shoulders above CM8000)

The good is very good, the bad is very bad.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: February 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The good:

If you are out to learn chess, or hone your skills through tutorials, you might very well want to spend your money on Chessmaster. The tutorial sections are excellent, and what better way to learn chess than through the engaging live-teaching by IM Josh Waitzkin; a truly gifted chess teacher.

The interface is clear, and the chess sets pretty - and at it's strongest level, the engine can give most GM's a run for their money. Sure, there are somewhat stronger engines out there, but why on Earth would you need something stronger? Unless you rank yourself among the likes of Kasparov, CM will beat you every time anyway.

There are various "personalities" you can choose from, if you aren't quite ready to face off with the full fury of CM - the personalities are rated from the very beginner all the way to grandmaster level, and supposedly capture something of the playing styles of the people the "personalities" are modeled after.

Which brings me to the Bad:

The personalities are all schichophrenic; one moment they play like a GM, and the next they trade a knight for a pawn without any compensation; in a way that no human, no matter how low rated, would do. It appears that the way the game "simulates" low level play, is simply to play normally, and then throw in a random move every now and then. The result is that the games you play against low level and mid level CM personalities all end up very similar: you try to develop normally, your opponent throws away a piece for nothing more than minor initiative, and then begins playing flawlessly for a while, driving you to defend. If you defend accurately, eventually you'll be rewarded by another insane move that allows you to gain more material. And then it's back to defense again - repeat this cycle untill your material advantage allows you to dominate, even against accurate play. There is nothing whatsoever in the way of actually trying to simulate human-like play, and you'll soon get very bored playing against the Chesmaster personalities.

But the absolutely worst aspect of the game is the online play feature, and the fact that support has completely given up on it; complaints and requests for fixes go unheard, or at least unresponded. First, when the game was released, you were allowed to use the "chess coach" in rated online games! Whoever thought of that, must have forgotten to take their medication that morning.

They fixed that "feature" in the patch they released, along with other fixes to numerous bugs reported by people - but the problem is that installing this patch is optional, and completely up to the user; as a result, all those who rather like having the advantage of chess coach during their online games simply won't patch up. Furthermore, people are not really informed of the existence of the patch in any visible way, and so many simply don't know to look for it.

And because of this, the bugs remain - only some people have patched up, and those play at a disadvantage, plus suffer from all the connection and database storage problems caused by the unpatched games. And support won't do anything about this, nor will they respond to questions as to why they don't do something about this. All suggestions as to what to do about the problems are concistently ignored, and have been for months now. Many long time fans of the series, myself included, are very disillusioned by how this potentially great game has been abandoned by Ubisoft.

As can be expected the "thriving chess community" isn't thriving very well, nor are there many there to thrive.

So in conclusion, if you buy it for the tutorials, you won't be disappointed. If you bought it to play against the computer, you'll be longing for humand opponents very fast, and finally, if you bought it for online play, well, I'm sorry for you - you just completely wasted your money.

If it weren't for the tutorials, I'd give the game a single star for the lack of support, and totally botched up online play. May Ubisoft give thanks to Josh and the other chess experts that still associate with the series for the three stars in this review.

Do not purchase

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: December 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Purchased Chessmaster 10th for 12yr old, installed it Christmas Eve. It actually let me select the players but would never go pass the login screen. I uninstalled and re-installed it twice but it never worked. Waste of time and money!!! Any suggestions for a suitable game? (My 12yr old likes chess but I can't play the game.)

Great Teaching Mechanics and a Super Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: January 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Loaded this game up yesterday and spent the better part of the whole day playing. With all the various tutorials, can't even begin to tell you how many, for beginners who havn't even seen a chess set, all the way up to and beyond intermediate, you can spend hours and hours just learning all the differant nuances of the game. Attack strategies, Defence, opening moves, its all here in this phenomenal game. I'm with the earlier reviewer, I had no problems installing and/or playing this game. I updated to 1.3 version before I even started playing. Then took out the disk, rebooted (thats just what I do after I install new games) without the disk, and have been playing ever since. Told my wife about it and she is looking forward to playing it as well. Tried teaching her the fundamentals before, but I guess I'm not that patient of a teacher. This teaching game should fill in nicely in that respect. My computer is 2 years old with only a memory upgrade to 1GB, and graphics card upgrade to Geforce 7600GS, both drives are CD/DVD RW. Either the naysayers had really old computers that were not up to standards, or they were looking to do something illegal to begin with. Even if I had to keep the CD in while playing (which is the case in most circumstances with games today), big whoop! Who really cares, Cry me a River! This is truly a great game to teach and to play Chess.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next 

Actions