After buying a new computer pre-installed with Vista I tried to install CMX on it. Installation was fine, and the program runs fine with a few quirks. So far I've noticed:

- During startup right after the intro movie, the menu window opens but hangs without content a long time before initializing the swirling chessboard
- The name of the menus are invisible
- During long analysis (several minutes per move) the engine crashes
- The chessboard sometimes printed in the annotations look all broken down and jumbled up

I am not sure if any of these problems are general or caused by Vista.

Recently I have also discovered something else I find weird: Certain positions are evaluated as a draw for no apparent reason. I noticed a couple of times that after a solid win against some player I could check the game graph which is presented, and it was a steady climbing line except that one single move somewhere in there was evaluated as 0.00. At first I didn't think much more about it; Maybe I had blundered and given my opponent an opportunity to force a three repetition draw or something. Or maybe it was just a glitch in the interface. But yesterday, when I discovered another 0.00 move in a clearly winning game, I started to investigate.

Consider the following game:

[Event "Chessmaster 10th Edition Rated Game"]
[Site ""]
[Date "2007.11.7"]
[Round ""]
[White "sherekhan"]
[Black "Joey"]
[TimeControl "1200"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "oft"]

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Qh4 5.Nf3 Qe4+ 6.Qe2 c4 7.Qxe4 dxe4 8.Nfd2 e3 9.fxe3 Be7 10.Nxc4 Bh4+ 11.g3 Be7 12.Bg2 Nh6 13.Nbd2
Nf5 14.Ne4 b5 15.Ncd6+ Bxd6 16.Nxd6+ Kf8 17.Nxc8 Nc6 18.Nd6 Nxe5 19.Nxf5 exf5 20.Bxa8 Nd3+ 21.Kd2 g5 22.Kxd3 Kg7 23.Bc6 Rc8
24.Bxb5 a6 25.Bxa6 Rc6 26.Bc4 f4 27.exf4 h5 28.fxg5 f6 29.gxf6+ Rxf6 30.Bf4 Kg6 31.Rae1 h4 32.Re5 Rf5 33.Re6+ Kg7 34.Bh6+ Kh8
35.Bf4 Kg7 36.Re7+ Kg6 37.Bf7+ Rxf7 38.Rxf7 Kxf7 39.gxh4 Kg7 40.Ke4 Kf7 41.Kf5 Ke7 42.Re1+ Kd7 43.Re6 Kd8 44.Kf6 Kc8 45.Re7 Kd8
46.Ra7 Ke8 47.h5 Kd8 48.Ke6 Kc8 49.Bd6 Kd8 50.Ra8# 1-0

After my move 35 Chessmaster insists that Kg7 will give black a draw, evaluating the position to 0.00. I can agree that some of my moves around that period are less than stellar, but clearly they can't be bad enough to lose the grip I had over this game?

I think I am smelling the rat. It happened yet again, this time against Bogie. To me it seems that this glitch occurs whenever you move back, i.e. one side makes a move that makes the position exactly the same as it was two moves ago. Somehow some part of Chessmaster seems to be under the impression that there is a "draw by second repetition"-rule.