Fritz 8

Fritz 8 is identical to the one that fascinated the world in the man vs Machine duel against the human world champion. Millions of chess fans watched the games live on the Internet - the match ended in a 4:4 tie. "Deep Fritz is stronger than Deep Blue," said world champion Vladimir Kramnik, who had carefully studied the program. But don’t be afraid, Fritz is not just a chess playing monster. It is a friendly chess partner for beginners and amateurs. It will teach you to play chess from scratch, and can automatically adjust its playing strength to suit your needs. It will warn you when you go wrong in a game, giving you hints on how to play better. In any position it will explain all possible continuations to you in plain language, and it will display all pieces that are attacked, defended or "hanging". Afterwards it will analyse your games and point out mistakes and blunders. It has many handicap and friendly levels. In the sparring level the program will actually set up tactics for you to discover, teaching you to keep a lookout for opportunities throughout the game. Fritz has a photo-realistic 3D chessboard and will chatter humorously during the game. It has a giant openings book with a very wide repertoire and full statistics on every move. It has a built-in database with half a million top-quality games and is the companion and analytical partner of top players all over the world. Even Garry Kasparov admits: "I use Fritz regularly for my analysis." Fritz is also the only chess program that has been in space. In April 1999 it was transported to the space station Mir to entertain the cosmonauts who were spending many months in orbit. Fritz is also your key to a completely different world of chess. The program has a no-hassle connection to the Internet chess server Playchess.com where you can play with chess enthusiasts all over the world. You will find hundreds of opponents, day and night, you can start a blitz game, play a tournament or simply watch and chat. You can also find the latest chess news, live coverage of international tournaments and online training sessions. This is what chess is all about.

System requirements: Pentium PC, 32 MB RAM, Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP, CD-ROM drive, mouse