Hi All

I have always been interested in Chess but have played very little over the years as none of my circle of friends share my interest.

My game is a very low level and I recently decided it might be fun to venture online, both for the opportunity to play more as well as attempt to raise my game.

I am visiting these forums specifically because I am considering "CM11" as my portal into the world of online Chess. But I have to be honest and say that having read the FAQ here, as well as some of the posts, the program seems to have issues both in terms of "bugs" and even the ease of playing online in the first place, neither of which I would have expected to see at this point in such a long running series.

I'm afraid I'm not very computer literate and I want to buy a program which allows me to play the game, without forcing me into tinkering with my PC, a task for which I am both reluctant and ill prepared.

As resident experts and doubtless users of more than one program, would you say that "CM11" is a suitable purchase for my requirements, or would you recommend one of its competitors?

Many thanks for any advice

Badger

Hi UKBadger,

First, welcome to the Chessmaster forums!

It may seem that negative posts outnumber the positive ones, but that's the nature of the forums. White Chessmaster does have some issues, it is relatively stable. There are many people playing online who have no problems at all.

One of Chessmaster's important features is its tutorials -- they are very helpful in improving your game. This is where Chessmaster really outdoes its competitors.

If your machine meets the system requirements and you follow the suggestions in the Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition FAQ, you shouldn't have any problems at all.

All that being said, I would heartily recommend Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition.

Do not purchase Chessmaster for online playing. In fact do not purchase any program for online playing - there are many servers where you can play for free.


Nevertheless Chessmaster is worth purchasing for the learning material that it has. It's designed specially for people like you who know the rules and how pieces move, but don't know much about strategy and principles.


I think you won't regret if you purchase Chessmaster, but for online playing you will have to figure out something else.

A couple of free chess servers:

http://www.freechess.org/ (recommended)

http://games.yahoo.com/games/front (look on the left side for the list of games. Chess is 17th I think. Currently at least.


I do think chess master 11 was well worth it for me. It has hours of chess tutorials which are clear and simple, and more fun that a book. So its great for beginners but it can be very useful to people above a beginner level as well. plus you get the added opening book, as well as some nice shiny chess sets and some mini games. I think I covered the main attractions to buying the game, except on line play which you already know about obviously.

I haven't used it on line, since I use FreeChess.org or elsewhere. The on line play seems to be one of the main complaints.

Disconsidering the online play (here I would go for a free server with a real board on my side), I will tell you something from the point of view of someone who was exactly in your situation when I first got chessmaster: I didn't have a lot of friends to play with, had no notion of strategy and tactics and wasn't willing to read tons of books on chess.

If you are really decided to buy a chess software for helping you learning the game, don't pay attention to discussions of the kind Fritz vs Chessmaster... let them to the pros.

The point is that Chessmaster makes you feel as actually playing a game, with good ambiance, nice 3d boards (it could be better, but other chess softwares don't come close to it), nice and easy to use interface. But the high point are the tutorials; you can really learn how to play with them; they are very well done, with voice and graphic representation on the board and will really give a boost to your game.
Chessmaster is the only serious chess software in which you feel like playing a game, not making some scientific research on a game.

quote:

Originally posted by Damezzi:
Chessmaster is the only serious chess software in which you feel like playing a game, not making some scientific research on a game.

Fantastic point!

Thank you for the quick replies folks.

As luck would have it somebody at the wifes office just gave me "CM9000", so as online play using the CM brand would appear to be problematic in any case, I guess it renders moot the question of whether or not to buy CM11... I'll just play this instead.

I'll also check out "http://www.freechess.org" per EternallyIgnora's suggestion... or at least I will once I get a little nerve up.

Thanks for all the help

Badger

Yes, I don't think online play for CM 9000 is available anymore.

However, for those just getting back into chess, I wouldn't recommend going straight into online play, no matter what program you use... in my experience, many people want to play blitz, which is rather overwhelming.

CM 9000 is still good for someone in your situation. Just make sure you download all the patches:

Chessmaster 9000 Patches

Hope this helps!

CM9000 is not avaible to play online anymore. I first bought CM9000 because on the back of the package it states that you need dail up or broadband to play online. So when it wouldn't work, I sent in a support ticket to Ubisoft and they got back to me the next day saying it was no longer supported online.

They really do need to remove this from the packaging. I took mine back to Best Buy the next day and bought Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition because I specifically wanted to play family members as well as others online to leaarn the game.

The next day the family member bought a copy and we just got theirs working because of the adding a person to the friend kept us from playing each other in a match.

DO NOT get Chessmaster 9000 if you want to play online. If you don't care about playing online than it is $10.00 cheaper in this area.

Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition-$19.99

CM9000-$9.99

Even if I did not want to play online I would get Chessmaster Grand Edition personally.

To expect Ubisoft to recall and re-package a product that has been out for years (at least since 2003) is ridiculous. They dropped the price from $39.99 to $9.99. At that price, it's still a good deal for someone who is getting back into chess.

In comparison, if you're a beginning piano student, you're not going to go out and buy a grand piano just to play 'chopsticks'...

I meant only for the new shipments of the CM9000 game that get sent from the manufacturer. Unless there are no more. And in that case it's the customer that has to deal with the retail store. Of course it is rare that a retail store will take back software that has been open, Even if you are mislead by the packaging. A simple sticker over that part would be fine. They could even get retail stores to do that. Not recall the ones already out there. Just let the customer know that it is not what it says it is.

There are no new shipments of CM 9000... why would Ubisoft keep making an old, outdated product?

Putting a decal on the box isn't practical -- retail stores have to drop the price in order to clear the outdated inventory... a decal would draw attention to the fact that CM 9000 is outdated, and fewer people would buy it, despite the lower price. Not to mention, they're not going to throw more money away to pay for decals, then pay for someone to spend time putting decals on boxes...

I understand what you're saying, but at some point, Caveat emptor ("Let the buyer beware").