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Brain-damaged program

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 16
Date: May 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Other reviews have noted that the interface is confusing. I agree with this. I am also not thrilled that the program requires you to continually produce the original CD, although I can live with this. What really ticks me off is that you cannot run this program (in Windows XP) from an account that does not have administrative privileges. What's the point of an administrator account?? To *administer*. If you set up a machine to have an administrator and you want your kids to have limited accounts, they will not be able to run Chessmaster 9000 unless they're logged in as you.

Give me a break.

Great tutor, lousy interface.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: April 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The previous reviewer who called this an excellent tutorial with a chess program on the side nailed it best. The interactive teaching aids on this program are very helpful--even the chess puzzle you get on the login screen every time you fire the program up is fun, though at first I found it annoying. (You can skip it and just get to a game.) The database of games is terrific and Josh's annotated games are highly informative--it's fun to have a master sitting next to you, so to speak, explaining his every thought. But where the program falls short of other software on the market is in the GUI. Perhaps to appeal to as large a market as possible, the Chessmaster people have cluttered the screen with all sorts of meaningless (but "cool-looking") windows, graphics, sound effects, etc. Many of them can be cleaned up, but the fact remains it's hard to create a setup that displays much *meaningful* information during a game, and does it cleanly. I am running this on a 21" monitor and I still feel like my screen is cluttered and cramped every time I have this program up. Compared to the GUIs in the Chessbase software (Fritz, Hiarcs, Shredder, etc.), Chessmaster 9000, along with 8000, 7000, 6000 and so on, leaves a lot to be desired.

The "analysis" feature is particularly ineffective, not because the engine is weak but because the graphic interface makes it hard to get a lot out of the analysis. The Chessbase programs analyze in English (or German if you wish) and print the results after the move, much like you read in a chess book. Chessmaster is "fancier," but less useful: it talks to you while animations of what it is saying zip around the board very rapidly, as in "The Chessmaster recommends Bishop to e5. You move your Bishop to e5. Black responds with Knight to a7. You counter with Queen to h1. Black responds with pawn to d6. You move your Rook to f1. Black responds with Bishop to G7. You move your Knight to c4. Black responds with pawn to a5. You move your king to f1. Black responds with Rook to e8. You move your queen to d2. Black reponds with..." And on it goes, while pieces whiz around the board. Then it's over and the original position reappears. When you think about it, that's not very helpful. Fritz less automatic, click through the moves yourself and read the text next to each move, is far more helpful, though less "cool."

The engine is, of course, incredibly strong at the highest levels--don't listen to anyone who claims this isn't a "really good" chess engine as some people seem to think. At its highest settings I'm confident it can slaughter just about anyone reading this review unless you're a Grandmaster. And there are more than 100 "personalities" you can play against, which are just the engine with different parameters tweaked. These really do result in different-feeling games, however; you have the uncanny feeling you are playing a good cross section of players in a club. Virtual opponents range from Grandmaster caliber to small child just learning how to move pieces, so the game can educate everyone. This is also a great program even if you don't know how to play chess, for it can teach you. There's even a special "Kids Room" that caters to even the youngest players and would-be players, though, again, some of the graphics are annoying and the "kiddie" chess sets are virtually useless, in my opinion, and are probably just eye-candy for the back of the box.

The major weakness is the GUI. If only the Chessmaster people would cut out the cutsey fonts, fancy (but distracting) backgrounds and colors and textures and sounds, and the many windows you need have open to get just a small amount of game info, this would be a great program. As it is, I can't recommend it over the comparably-priced Chessbase programs, unless you're far on the beginner side of the game and need tutoring more than anything else.

[Note later: After playing this program more, and rereading this review, I have upped my rating from 3.5 to 4 stars. I still think the interface is lousy, but the virtues outweigh the limitations more than I originally indicated. The gallery of simulated opponents in particular is a great reason to get Chessmaster. I still recommend supplementing it with one of the Chessbase programs (Fritz, Hiarcs) for analysis, however.]

Git you some chess learnin'

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: September 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I love this game.

I took Majestic Chess (Sierra) back to the store and collected my well-earned refund and purchased this product. I haven't played chess since high school which was many, many years ago, and this game has renewed my interest. I don't know my ranking, but I would estimate it to be around -2, so I'm going through all the tutorials from the most simple and basic ones. If you are a beginner, you might find these big fun. After each brief lesson, there are lots of practice quizzes. If I had any criticism at all it would be that if you miss a move on the quiz, it doesn't tell you why your move is incorrect, it just lets you try something else.

As far as all of the other features, I doubt that I'll be using them any time soon since I still get beaten by the beginner player in the Hoyle chess game from the Bicycle Board Games.

My computer is a Toshiba laptop running XP Home. I have had no problems with Chessmaster locking up yet, and the screen resolution problem that Sierra products can't seem to overcome doesn't seem to be present here.

I love this game.

Keep looking

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: November 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This product is ok, but I rcommend Fritz. There are significant problems with both the interface and gameplay:

INTERFACE PROBLEMS:
-Nonstandard window background (I hope you like fake woodgrain)
-No docking windows (dialogs floating everywhere)
-No ClearType support (ClearType makes text HOT pink)

GAMEPLAY PROBLEMS:
-Takeback causes erratic play (serious flaw)
-Minimizing causes the thinking lines to be reset
-Computer never resigns

Furthermore, UBI doesn't have plans to fix any of this before releasing ChessMaster 10000 (no free upgrade).

Fun and Educational, No major problem on Win 2K

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: October 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I ran it on two Windows 2000 Professional desktops and one Windows 2000 laptop. The installation is a simple walk . Note that since Windows 2K already has directx 8.x , I chose not to install them from CM

Except for some very minor glitches, the
program have been running without any problem for me.

The glitches are: sometimes, the take back item from the menu became unavailable for no reason . (But I could just use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-T or simpy click on the game status window to
backtrack 1 or more moves). Very insignificant.

Once in the laptop, there was error message (smthg like: thread error .. ) for which I clicked OK and moved on. In the context that I kept the program running on my laptop continuously for the last 2 months and this happened only once, this is really insignificant.

---------------

On 1 desktop, I restarted the program every day for the last 2 months. I don't see it asking for CD refreshing at all.

It's fun for all ages. My children enjoy it , too. It's tutorial, Drills , lectures etc are very educational and fun.
The dbase is huge, searchable, extendable. The classic games is good.

The blunder alert is good. But overdependence on this (or the
sister feature "Quick Hint" ) will form
bad habit .

I'd like the copy n paste across window. Very nice. I could copy an endgame from "Classic Games" to game room and continue the game with me playing one side with CM9000.

I like the opening book reference: it has annotations for moves
as well.

I didn't try the online feature.

----

I had CM9000 from amazon.com ....
This product is way worth the money and guarantees me a long and
entertaining gym for the mind till the next release !

------------

Some suggestions for future releases :

1. The drills sometimes take answers don't make sense , eg,
acceptable solution for finding capturing
includes the move
by which the mating piece is prone to be captured
2. will be nice to start a tutorial from any page
3. the "Score" tab in game analysis window: it's good if
we could "play" the move sequence there
4. In "Classroom Curriculum":
CM should not expand the tree every time I
back to the room. After finishing an item, I collapse the
tree of that lesson on purpose. But next time I go back
back to the "Curriculum" window, the tree expands again.
5. It's nice if the game analysis could work with just a
portion of a game. Right now, after I start the game
analysis, I have to wait until it's done.
I'd like to either: specify the start and end move within
that range I'd like the analysis to be done
or click cancel at any point and have the analysis up to
that point available to me (eg, the game analysis runs
for 1 hour, works up to move no. 15, 50% complete; now
I'd like to stop the analysis here and hence have the
results up to that move no. 15.
Currently, if I stop the analysis, all results are lost)
6. It is nice if in Annotation window: user puts cursor
at a specific point, then click "Play" , the play will
start from that exactly point (as opposed to always start
from the beginning as now)
7. A lot more tactical training puzzles : sort of like
1001 of Fred Reinfeld
8. The analysis annotation sometimes don't make sense to
beginner like myself (rated 1200). I guess for
beginners,
the annotations are just too complicated to understand !
I wish if CM can have another level of annotation for
beginners or intermediate players.

--------------

Good with a few irritating flaws

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: November 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

3.5 stars.

First the great: Chessmaster 9000 has already significantly improved my game, and is about as full-featured as I could hope (disclaimer: I've only used about half the features so far). You can easily switch from 'room' to 'room', each with their own configurable board and window settings. eg. you can easily flick between a game in progress in the Game Room (there's a "Pause" option) to the Classroom or Library to look something up.

The flaws: My taskbar is at the top of the screen. CM9000 will sit UNDERNEATH the taskbar when maximised, which makes it very fiddly to access. CM9000 is the only program I have that does this.

More importantly, the drills can be lacking in feedback. They typically take the form "Make the next move", and give the equivalent responses to "Nope. Nope. Nope. Yup, that's it". To be fair, the vast majority of the time this is sufficient (sometimes it even reinforces the lesson by requiring you to find the rationale yourself). But sometimes it's just not clear and a "Why?" button is needed.

The tutorials also aren't very 'revisit-friendly'. Some of them are the better half of a hundred pages long and you have to navigate them with 'next' and 'back' buttons.

All in all, I found the "Classroom" side of CM9000 informative, but overly rigid in its interface.

CM9000 comes with a number of True-3D chessboards, but I never use this as I find the old 'paper cutout' style clearer to use. Your mileage may vary.

Overall: Worth the $$$, but could be a more 'friendly' teacher.

Fantastic Game (Except for the feature I bought it for)

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: December 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I am an advanced-beginner (not quite intermediate). I bought this game so that I could play rated games against real players online. However, I cannot connect (even though I have DSL). The computer personalities are fun to play with, and the tutorials are awesome. Most of the features are really cool. The 3-D however is misleading. It is 3-D graphics, however there is no way to move the board around... so if that pawn is in front of your queen, it is really hard to see. Therefore, I use the 2-D boards most of the time.

So.. great game, good tutorials, good game play. No Internet Connectivity, 3-D sucks, AND NO SUPPORT. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!? NO ONLINE SUPPORT THAT COVERS CONNECTIVITY! NO EMAIL SUPPORT TO GET HELP! NO SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION OPTIONS!

US Chess Great Larry Christiansen got beat by this Prog.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: May 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

use this program to help you better your chess. this computer program defeated a legend in the sport, a person by the name of Larry Christiansen,(hails from riverside california.) He is a player with an elo rating of 2500+

this chess program is recommended; as it will upgrade your defensive skills. the software also functions for windows XP.

Chessmaster 9000 has big bugs!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: December 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Pros and cons:
Pros are that it has a good game engine, plays well, has numerous player-selected settings (but some don't work).

Cons are that it is overly complex in its organization because it has a number of less than useful functions and poorly-defined screens, has several big bugs that make it crash (it will not let me enter Library and Tournament rooms, crashing the program and locking up the computer).

Two CDs are included in this package but the documentation does not mention two CDs. The Read Me file on the CD states that this software was not throughly tested prior to release.

John Clark

great chess training

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: April 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is excellent. It has many, many games and levels of play, so beginners can advance and advanced players will still be challenged. The "players" have real personalities, which makes the game seem more real and interesting, but they are all "over-rated," so that my son, rating 830, can easily challenge someone with a rating of 1400, which doesn't happen in real play. The (human) player can record games, for study after. The clock is easy to over-ride, for beginners. Great, 3-D graphics, with multiple views available. The chess-players in my family love this game.

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