English Chess Forum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_%28chess%29

A while ago I bought a copy of Fritz 13, and I used it; then my computer (it runs on Windows 8 ) needed to be reformatted and reloaded, and I cannot find my Fritz 13 disk to reload my Fritz from, so I went to buy another Fritz 13.

http://www.chessbase-shop.com/en/categories/49

But that page says that the €49.90 Fritz 13 (English and French and Italian) are unavailable. What is happening? I have an ordinary PC computer with one CPU, so I cannot get any advantage from buying Deep Fritz. Has it got serious bugs? Or what? If it is merely out of stock, why can't I order it to download it? Must I wait (how long?) for ordinary Fritz 14 to come out?Or what?

What is the difference between Fritz for Fun and ordinary Fritz?

Hi Anthony, I think al these questions would be better answered by Chessbase themselves.

Anthony Appleyard wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_%28chess%29

A while ago I bought a copy of Fritz 13, and I used it; then my computer (it runs on Windows 8 ) needed to be reformatted and reloaded, and I cannot find my Fritz 13 disk to reload my Fritz from, so I went to buy another Fritz 13.

http://www.chessbase-shop.com/en/categories/49

But that page says that the €49.90 Fritz 13 (English and French and Italian) are unavailable. What is happening? I have an ordinary PC computer with one CPU, so I cannot get any advantage from buying Deep Fritz. Has it got serious bugs? Or what? If it is merely out of stock, why can't I order it to download it? Must I wait (how long?) for ordinary Fritz 14 to come out?Or what?

What is the difference between Fritz for Fun and ordinary Fritz?

I thought I saw that they were only releasing Deep Fritz from now on - most people must have dual-core processors now I suppose.

Hi Anthony,

"But that page says that the €49.90 Fritz 13 (English and French and Italian) are unavailable."

It never existed. Thay are always advertsing stuff that does not exist.
They then bring out an updated more expensive version.
(which infact was the original version but they make more money this way)

It was them who broke into your house and stole your original Fritz 13 disc.
(they then sold it back to you!)

If you go to their site they will insist to run their software you need to buy a special ChessBase computer.
These things cost £10,000 and are the same size as a small car.

Anthony, you could do worse than consider buying HIARCS, which is now available for both the Windows and MacIntosh platforms. I personally find it better than Fritz. I am way too tired and it is far too late for me to go into details. However, I shall in a future blog write a piece which compares the two.

... or you could download Arena, a GUI for chess engines, and Stockfish 4, a chess engine, both for free.
Arena is available from http://www.playwitharena.com/.
Stockfish 4 is available from http://stockfishchess.org/download/.

Or don't encourage this market at all and help boycott the continued production of super strong chess engines - they never did any good for the game!

Way back when all computers were so big that they needed a room to fit in, I wrote a draughts playing program in machine code for the computer where I worked (an IBM or a CDC). In draughts, you must capture if you can, which cut down the amount of tree analysis.

Today it's cheap to buy a dual CPU computer, ideal for chess. This one costs £149.99 (refurbished). I bought it myself. It has a separate graphics card (GPU) as well. (But one must keep pressing the start button for a while each time, I do not know why). It is silent and takes up only little place. Today, one can buy a new gaming computer at a huge cost, but with a powerful GPU, which isn't needful, and a huge HDD of several terabytes, etc. Take responsibility for the environment instead, and buy yourself a second-hand computer. 4 GB of RAM should be enough for most chess players. The latest Fritz should work on this, I believe.

"FAST HP 6.8Ghz (2x3.4 GHz) DUAL CORE 4GB WINDOWS 7 DESKTOP PC TOWER SFF COMPUTER NEW ATI GFX"
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FAST-HP-6-8Gh ... 5d3c1cabef

M. Winther

I have found my Fritz 13 again while tidying the room.

Phew!!!