English Chess Forum

Good evening everyone

I am yet a damsel is distress again!

One of my book customers, Martin, who is a very keen and intermediate-advanced chess player has asked me to help him out again.

Does anyone have any old versions of chess software apart from Fritz 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, (Fritz 14 special edition), Fritz Extreme Chess, Fritz Grandmaster Challenge II, CT-Art 5.0, PC CD Rom Chess Secrets of the Grandmasters, Chess Commander Strategy Game, Chess Nalimov 3,4,5 pieces endgames, Chessmaster 10th edition, Chessmaster 8000, Chess Tactics Training CD Lessons Tutorial Opening Endgame Strategy PC Software and Houdini 4, that can be played without having internet access/e-mail facility.

The reason for this is that Martin has a laptop computer for which he would just like to install the chess software without too much difficulty which would be compatible with Windows.

Unfortunately, to activate the recent chess software i.e. Fritz 15, Komodo 9, and HIARCS, you have to have internet access/e-mail set up.

Shredder appears to be only available as a downloadable version.

Martin would consider any older version of Fritz 4 or 5, Shredder or Junior chess software, provided that it does not require internet access/e-mail facilities to activate the programme.

Can anyone help me out with this?

With kind regards.

Hi Sue

I feel for you here. It's a tricky problem. Just a suggestion I'm sure there are other ways of tackling this but you could go to Ebay on behalf of your customer or get them to do it themselves. I found the following on a very cursory search, I'm sure there a more items matching other ones that you listed

ChessMaster 5000 CD-ROM £2.49 free postage, item in the UK.
FRITZ CHESS 10 PC CD £8.89 free postage, item in the UK.
Chessmaster 8000 pre-owned PC CD ROM Excellent Condition 2 CD Set chess, £9.99 (buy now or make offer). free postage item in the uk.

Another option would be for your customer to get friend to download Stockfish and Arena (both free) on a memory stick and install it on his machine.

Another option is that your customer could invest in a smartphone or tablet and download free a myriad of great chess playing apps.

Just a few suggestions there, hope it helps.

Wouldn’t he be better off taking his laptop to somewhere with Wifi access and installing a current version?

I don’t know how old his laptop is, but a lot of those earlier versions of Fritz won’t work on Windows 10 (we’re lucky the latest one does!).

Try this free software:
http://www.playwitharena.com/
Free to download and use, no need of internet access for use.
It comes with some reasonably strong engines, however if you are not happy with those you can easily add stockfish from http://stockfishchess.org/ that is one of the strongest chess engines at the moment, and still completely free to download and use.