Hi, I just bought this game online like 2 days ago. Everything is working fine, I can play offline, I can login online. I can even watch games that are being played. However, I cannot play a game with someone else. I have never played online because of this problem. Im very unhappy with this. I dished out good money for this game and it doesnt even work online. Im I doing something wrong? by the way, i have version 1.2.0.0

Did you read Section 2 of the Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition FAQ?

First, check to make sure you have all the proper ports open. You didn't mention if you received any kind of error message... what happens when youu try to challenge someone or accept a challenge?

Keep in mind that you can't play a rated game against someone if difference in your ratings is more than 400 points.

I'd also suggest reading pages 31 - 36 of the Help file... it contains a lot of useful information about playing online.

no, i dont get any error messages. When i select a game, the join button is greyed out. if i right click and press aceept the callenge. nothing happens. In regards to the ports, your right i did not check that, however I assumed that they were all right since i could watch games. please help. M y rating is 1200. iv only played 1 offline game. should i play more, then try online?

Well, first check to make sure all the required ports are open.

If the Join button was diabled, then it means there were no available games (people were already playing)... try creating a game, then challenging someone in the Player List.

When I mentioned before that you couldn't play someone who had a ratings difference of 400+- only applies to Rated Games... If you're playing a unrated game, it doesn't matter.

I would still recommend reading the Online Play section of the Help file, as this area can be a bit confusing to neophytes (newcomers).

thnx for the advice, but its really weird. I finally managed to play a game (rated). however, its extremely rare. First, I did try creating a game and people cannot join. I tried this with my friends. second, i cannot even join unrated games. Third, the rating difference was not more than 400. four, the join button is greyed out, but when people are challenging (so they want a player, its not an ongoing game - its merely challenging) Its extremely weird. I did manage to play with this one player, very very fun. but its like 1 in 100 (im not kidding) i cant play with anyone else (rated or not) its very random. Have no clue what is going on) I can only play online when the servers feel like it (lol). not cool. I didnt pay retail price for this!

I'm having similar problems. I want to play with a friend. We both connect and can see each other in the lists, but we can not see any of the challenges we send to each other. I have seen challenges from others (yellow text "pop-up" with sound signal, but since we both were logged in, I did not accept becausw we wanted to play against each other). We even see each other's status as "challenging", but can't get to play with each other - there is no signal about the challenge. We can chat private, so it seems like firewall and ports is in order. Anyone have aclue about what this might be? I have read the manual, but cannot see what I'm missing... Are there any "hidden" rules about newcomers blocked from initiating the first game or something..? Sorry if I have missed something stupid...I usually manage to use all types of software and games with no trouble to figure it out after some trying, so I'm a bit put off by this..

You didn't mention if you created a game first...

Try creating a Private game, then click on your friend's name in the Player List to challenge him.

Exactly our experience. Can watch and play with other people but My son and I cannot play. We can chat. Both running 1.2.0 I have XP, he is on Vista. Please help !!

Another piece of info, I can play but my son cannot watch, is there some incompatability here ? Or an incorrect setting by one of us ?

Hmm... are you challenging him to an Expert (Rated) game or a Training (unrated) game?

Keep in mind that you can't play a Rated game against someone if the difference between you and your opponent's rating is greater than 400.

Hi again.

I try to create game, both game and cc game. Then challenge my father. My status changes to "challenging" but my father does not receive a yellow message, and does not have "accept challenge" as an option when right-clicking me in the player list. The games are unrated/training.

When other players challenges us, we both receive yellow message and have the possibility to accept challenge on right-clicking the challenging user.

You can, and I have played rated games when the ratings difference is greater than 400 points. A warning pops up stating that there will be no ratings change due to the 400 pint difference.

I have always liked Chessmaster, having owned various versions since DOS PC days, but my two gripes are:

(1) Bad implementation of on-line play, especially in CM11, and (2) not being able to seamlessly use UCI engines without adapter workarounds.

In my opinion the Chessmaster interface is one of the best around and I would love to be able to use it to play on other chess servers (that actually work.) UBI, are you listening? Just make CM12 compatible with other servers such as ICC or FICS and you can scrap your servers. There are reasons that other servers have thousands on line while CM's servers have between 0-20 people at most times. And I'm sure that a lot of those on the other servers own Chessmaster.

I don't think anyone would disagree that Chessmaster's Online Play is nowhere near the level it should be.

Not only that, Ubisoft should have considered making Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition's Online Play compatible with Chessmaster 10th Edition... the fact that it isn't made many existing customers angry.

While I am a big fan of Correspondence Chess, I'll admit that it's implementation wasn't as smooth as I would have liked (i.e., you shouldn't have to log on to Ubisoft's server to see if your opponent moved -- you should receive an e-mail).

I like your idea about having Chessmaster work with ICC or FICS; but there could be some sort of copyright/patent issue that prevents this.