Fritz 13 - Chess Playing and Analysis Program (PC-DVD): London Chess Centre

Fritz is the world’s most popular chess program, developed by ChessBase, “the world's leading chess software company” (Washington Post). Whether you are a beginner, club player or professional – Fritz has everything that chess players could want: automatically adjusting playing strength, handicap and coaching functions, explanation of positions, coloured danger warnings, openings statistics, automatic game analysis, trainings modules for openings, tactics, endgames, and a database of one million games. Fritz continues to fascinate the chess world. It has beaten a reigning World Champion in the battle of man vs machine, and it has worked with World Champions as a clever training partner (Garry Kasparov: “I regularly analyse with Fritz”) which will entertain you with fresh and humorous verbal comments.

“Let’s Check” is a world first, it is the innovation with which Fritz 13 will have the chess world holding its breath

It is with the help of this new function that Fritz 13 users world-wide will create a gigantic database of knowledge. No matter which position you happen to be analysing, should you wish to Fritz 13 will send the evaluation of your engine totally automatically to the “Let’s Check” server. The best analyses will be included in the database of chess knowledge. And best of all: after a short time you will find for almost every position (and without having to spend time calculating) high level analysis produced by a strong chess program or even several analyses produced by various programs for you to compare. And in live broadcasts on playchess.com there will be several hundred computers following world class games simultaneously and feeding the “Let’s check” database with profound analysis. Well, if your analysis goes deeper you can actually gain more positions from other players and see your name enter the roll of honour for “Let’s Check”.

Make certain positions your own. No matter whether you are a beginner, a club player or a grandmaster, thanks to “Let’s Check” every chess player is able to contribute to the creation of this database of knowledge. And what is particularly good fun: if you have your computer analyse a position which is not yet known, then in a flash you have made that position your own and the analysis is made available to the entire world of chess players linked to your name. Who has made the greatest number of positions his or her own? Well, if your analysis goes deeper you can actually gain more positions from other players and see your name enter the roll of honour for “Let’s Check”.

All opening theory to back you up. Even if you are not an openings expert, you can be right up there among the best of them with “Let’s Check”. Because Fritz 13 provides you all of opening theory in a statistical tree structure. The “Live Book” shows you for every position not only the complete statistics based on the weekly updated ChessBase Online Database (over 5 million games) but also how often any specific continuation has already been accessed in the “Let’s Check” database and just how much in fashion it is.*

Other Innovations
Improved database management with direct choice, improved user interface in Windows Office 2010 style, and the new strong Fritz13 engine.

Fritz 13 package includes:

Fritz 13 playing and analysis program

Database with 1.5 million games

10 hours of Fritztrainer videos with Garry Kasparov, Vishy Anand and many others

6 months premium membership of playchess.com.

System requirements: Minimum:
Pentium III 1 GHz, 1 GB RAM, Windows Vista, XP (Service Pack 3), DirectX9 Graphics card with 256 MB RAM, DVD-ROM drive, Windows-Media Player 9 and internet access to activate the program, playchess.com, Let’s Check and Updates.

* Access to “Let’s Check” database till 31.12.2014

IN STOCK NOW! - save £5! (RRP £44.99)

Customer review

Fritz 13, like those previous is easy to use and the Database has been improved to Windows Office 2010 standard. This is important as I want database management to be as quick and easy as possible. I log all of my games into my own personal database so I can bring them up, print them off, analyse them, use them in training etc whenever I want. It's just so darned useful. When I was at school in the late seventies I was besotted with chess to the detriment of some of my other learning but I never believed that we would have access to this sort of chess material. How things change - and in this case for the better.

Other features on Fritz 13 include an improved engine, excellent board graphics in 2D and 3D, coaching functions and adjustable playing strength, automatic analysis of games (a really great function), a database of 1.5 million games and ten hours of private video instruction by those GM's I was talking about. Finally - and the real winner for me is a FREE six months premium membership to the world's largest chess server, Playchess.com.

Should you buy it? Well, let me put this in perspective. For around £40 you get all of the above which will, I guarantee give every chess player enjoyment and improve their game if they use it properly. I just bought a round of drinks for some friends and it cost me nearly £40. I topped up my car with fuel and that was over £60 and I bought just a few items of food groceries that cost me £50. None of these will last but Fritz 13 certainly will. It boils down to ones definition of 'need'. If I want to improve my game and have hours of fun playing the game I love above any other then I need Fritz 13. Without it I would feel a little empty. It may 'only' be a computer program but it's been a great companion in the wee small hours of many an evening.
I rate this software as ***** Highly recommended.