User Reviews (1 - 11 of 152)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Some Worthwhile Features But It Will Kill Your CD-ROM Drive

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Chessmaster 10 was the first chess program I bought after a 20 year break from playing chess. Initially, I found that it was fun to play with its many bells and whistles: avatars, game analysis, lessons from gms, etc. However, when I became a little more serious about chess I noticed its shortcomings.

First, the only way to run the program is by installing it on your hard drive and then putting it in your CD-Rom. The CD-Rom whirs incessantly (showing my technical ability) to the extent that the program will burn out the drive. This is especially true with laptops. Luckily for me after the program burnt out my drive, the folks at Dell Computer were kind enough to supply me with a replacement drive gratis. However, that was the last time I used Chessmaster and I switched to a far superior program, Fritz, which does not require insertion of the program disk after installation.

Second, it is very difficult to analyze your own games or the games of others using the program and the program is not especially accurate in showing the best lines of play. Again, Fritz is far superior in this regard and comes with a fairly decent initial database of games.

Third, the ratings system is well overblown. I had a rating of 2200 when I stopped using the program, while my USCF rating, at the time, was about 1500. For those who like numerical validation of their chess ability, I suppose Chessmaster will give them a nice ego boost. However, deducting at least 700 points from that assessment to achieve reality is just not acceptable.

Overall, this is a fun program for those players rediscovering or learning chess. However, I cannot recommend it because of the disk issue described above and lack of analytical quality.

chess buyer

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

easy, smart, good to use from me up to my brothers. It is cheap too. Something bad: Always one CD needed to run.

Great program w/ small annoyances

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is a great program on so many levels. It's a very strong chess-playing engine (w/ many interesting personalities), plus some terrific analysis that you can do. Altho' I don't play too often against the program itself, I LOVE the analysis feature for games I have played over the board. It recommends stronger moves I cd've played and suggests the next 7 strongest moves in the continuation. There are also some excellent tutorials included by top-notch chess players and targeted to diff. levels of players, so they don't all go over the head of a beginning player. (Occasionally there are errors in these, but rarely.)
It's annoying that you can't play w/o having the CD-ROM in the disk drive and I could do w/o all the weird board and piece combos. Also counterintuitive is adding a new player (e.g., the name of a friend whom you just played w/). It's MUCH harder than in CM9, for some reason.
I love watching two diff. personalities play games against each other and then replaying them later w/ diff. variations. Like what wd a Ruy Lopez game between 2 excellent players look like? Ok, now what wd happen if Black had chosen Nc3 on move 5? Comparing these games is instructive. It's an amazing chess learning tool at a great price.

Game is great, packaging is misleading.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 03, 2008
Author: Amazon User

First, this is not a review of the game, just the packaging and contents. This "JC", or jewel case version, shows on the cover that it contains a DVD Rom and requires only 120MB of hard drive space. The package actually contained 3 CDs, the install routine copied about 1.6 GB worth of files onto the hard drive it and requires the CD to be inserted to play. This wouldn't have been a showstopper if it had been stated in the product description, but you may wish to look for a package with the DVD.

Computers have a new way of explaining things.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: January 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Fast. True. But I once memorized a whole game. 41 moves. Anyone have a comment about that. Either way Black or White. My move the same King right pawn two out!

Can anyone tell me how much overlap there is with 9000?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 17
Date: July 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Would there be any features that would make 9000 worthwhile to buy now in terms of tutoring, historical games or anything else that won't be in the 10th edition? Or should I just wait?

Thanks

I Don't Know

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 17
Date: February 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I order Chessmaster 10th Edition but I never revieved it so it can't write a review about it. You will have to tell me about Chessmaster 10th Edittion.

ChessMaster 10th edition

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 14
Date: September 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The technical aspects of the game is very strong as is the visiual and audio graphics.

Bugs Buggy

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 11
Date: November 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is the ChessBugster.

Normally Ubisoft games are boggus, like Silent Hunter etc but the
King of Bugs is ChessMaster... as a matter of fact once you buy
and run it and start playing the game ChessMaster launches another
program called TheKing.exe which sometimes gets confused and runs 3 4 5 times and kills your computer................

The King of Bugs

I am gonna try Fritz..... i hear is quite good

I managed to get Draws from Chess Master at the highest level it rated itself at 2890

what a joke.........

game freezes, rarely works

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: January 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Whenever we have played this game it freezes up on our computer and so it discourages my son from playing chess. I believe there is a bug in the program that prevents it from working properly. I don't recommend it.

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

Actions