Often times I see this (Mate opportunites: #) and sometimes the number is as high as 12. It makes me feel kind of slow, and I'd like to know exactly where those opportunities were and how I could have seized them, as I'd like to improve my game. Is there some way I can have Chessmaster go over this for me?

I apologize if this is in the manual, but I have the downloaded version and while it was installing it couldn't find the manual.

Thanks.

I'm glad you asked this. I often see a high number too . Anytime I see '2' I feel a bit better about myself! So far I haven't done any game analyzing, eventually I might. And this area would be a really easy one to get into, if it's possible.

When you're in Training Mode, check the box marked 'Check moves' in the Chess Coach... you'll see thin purple arrows showing checks, thick purple arrows showing checkmates.

By the way, have you located the user manual? It should be in C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition.

Hope this helps!

Ah so there is nothing you can use for post-game stuff, like when playing ranked?

Well, after the ranked game is finished, you could go to Training Mode, and copy the ranked game from Ranked Play (go to the Edit menu, and choose 'Copy Game From'). Then turn on 'Check moves' in the Chess Coach, and step through all the moves in the game.

There might be another way to do this, though.

When the game is finished "Analyze game" and it will tell you where you went wrong (not only the mates, but other moves too).

yes that is the best way, analyze the game after. then as you play through it in the annotation box it will say something like -

White is asleep and doesn't see the forced MATE IN 13....

I wouldn't feel too bad.. i'm sure human masters don't always see a mate in 12 or 13..

but the Chessmaster is very strict

Thank you all so very much.

The manual still isn't there.. it said it had an error while installing.
I tried opening it from the game and it said it couldn't be found, and I tried browsing the game directory. Thanks, though.

Is there some way that I can have it do the analysis without waiting for it to go thru each move with a given amount of seconds? Say, just go straight to the text analysis?

How do you suppose computer can tell you anything about a position without calculating it through???

One last question; does giving the computer more time to analyze each move offer a more in-depth analysis of the game? Or is the time function simply for player review?

If the depth of the analysis is affected by the time variable, in what way does it do further analyzing?

Of course, more time - better analysis (not verbally better, but better moves).

What's a good amount of time for the computer to spend analyzing each move before it gets to be overkill? The standard is "10 seconds", is 60 seconds - 6x better and so on?

My rule of thumb is to give it at least the same ammount of time that players had for each move in the game.


For example a game was played at Fischer time controls: 15 minutes + 5 seconds increment and lasted for 50 moves


That makes (15x60+50x5)/50=23 seconds per move

It's always good to give more than less, so let's make it 30 seconds per move for this example.