Video Games : Chessmaster 10th Edition

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from: Ubisoft

: Chessmaster 10th Edition
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List Price: $19.99
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Amazon Maximum Age: 20 years
Amazon Minimum Age: 60 months
Binding: CD-ROM
Brand: UBI Soft
EAN: 9780439799690
ESRB Age Rating: Everyone
ISBN: 0439799694
Label: Ubisoft
Manufacturer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release Date: August 10, 2004
Sales Rank: 1780
Studio: Ubisoft

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Product Description:
ChessMaster 10th Edition is designed to improve your game, regardless of your level of experience. All-new feature upgrades and updated graphics make this a must-have for those who'd like to learn or master chess.



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Errors even a 1300 can see
Our "instructor" Josh Waitzkin shows us the following position in his "Chess Mastery" Quiz:

8/8/8/7k/R7/8/2K5/1R6 w - -

The text reads: Here white has a mate in four. What's the first move?

The problem is... this is a mate in two! Silly IM. I even saw this and I suck at chess.

1. Rg1 Kh6 (forced)
2. Rh4#

I believe he's trying to make this a problem geared for someone who's never mated with two rooks, but the problems should still be accurate. All he had to do was put the white king on c1. This would interfere with the rook's access to g1. That would be a real mate in four problem.

The VERY NEXT program gives this position:
K7/8/1R6/6k1/8/8/8/5R2 b - -

Waitkin calls it a "mate in five". It's a mate in four.

There's a few different ways to mate in four from this position. Here's one:
1. Rf1 Kg4
2. Rg6+ Kh5
3. Rg8 Kh4
4. Rh1#

Finally, on his second "monster knight" skill building exercise (page 38 of 82) he gives this position:
3K4/bq6/2r5/kb1p4/1p1n3n/2p1pn2/p3p1p1/6N1 w - -

The only difference is I put a White King on d8 so it would load into normal chess programs. I saw the sequence: e2, c3, a2, b4, d5, e3, g2, h4, f3, d4, b5, a7, c6, d8, b7, a5, which picks up all the dark pieces. After playing c3, Josh says "No, that's not quite it.". Sorry Josh, it is. Strike three.

It's kind of hard to rely on anything this guy says after such elementary errors. I do remember some of the other Waitzkin lessons being decent tho, but I'm really not in a good position to judge them, except for the obvious errors outlined above.

Personally I MUCH prefer "Deep Shredder" http://www.shredderchess.com/ (I have Version 10, but Version 11 is available now). The nice thing about this program is that you can turn down its ELO rating and it plays pretty much like a person would at that rating. You can do this with Chessmaster 10th also, I just like the game you get with Shredder better.

Finally, if I hear "Don't move until you see it" just one more time....



Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Great program w/ small annoyances
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.


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - chess buyer
easy, smart, good to use from me up to my brothers. It is cheap too. Something bad: Always one CD needed to run.


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Computers have a new way of explaining things.
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!


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - CM10 is a fairly good program with flaws (does run on Vista)
This is a pretty good chess program for beginners & intermediate players, has a lot that helps you learn, including of course not-too-bad player simulation. It's not perfect, but I would recommend it if you're looking for something for anyone who wants to learn or get better.

There is a long list under "how this program could have been better". See some of the other reviews, but my top 3 gripes are: (1) dumb programming that chews up the CPU even when the program is supposed to be idle; (2) bugs, especially a "hang" problem on single-cpu/single-core machines, where the game program just gets stuck somewhere (looks like a race condition; solution is to temporarily lower the priority of the TheKing processes by using TaskManager); (3) explanations of bad moves, or recommendations of good moves, provide detail but not the big picture.

Finally, it does appear to run fine in Vista: I installed it normally and have been playing it without problems. (I haven't seen the hang problem, but since I have a dual-core machine now I don't expect the race condition to occur.)


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