Rating: 
Summary: A Master's opinion:
Review: I don't own this version of chessmaster but I used to own Chessmaster 7000, the games annotated by IM Josh Waitzkin makes this a good buy but I wouldn't pay more than $35. The annotated games are basically chess lessons, which you would be paying $40-50 an hour for. You might want to check out a program called PowerChess its simple program based on calculating your position (nothing else will improve your chess quicker, you could prob buy it for $10 if its still available) and once you get good enough, buy Fritz to analyze.
Rating: 
Summary: Review by Class A chess player
Review: As a class "A" chess player rated at 1850, I can say that chessmaster is probably the best chess program available if you are serious about chess and want to improve your game. If you are looking for better graphics, it doesn't have a whole lot to offer (in fact, it doesn't even have my favorite "bird's eye" view like CM 5000). However, there are so many tutorials on every aspect of chess that it is almost certain that you will come across something you didn't already know. One could easily spend a month going through all the tutorials and annotated games it has.
Also, the skill level has increased to being on par with the world champions (appx. 2800). If you are a novice chess player, then you probably won't notice the increase in skill level (it will whip you like all other chess programs), but if you are an advanced player, then you CERTAINLY will notice the difference. I could at least make CM 5000 work for its victory, but CM 9000 freakin' demolished me! It has improved my game significantly, and renewed my interest in the game.
Rating:
Summary: CM 9000-- the perfect program?
Review: to all you sceptics: no, i didnt get paid to write this. this is my personal opinion. i run a pentium 4 2.4 ghz machine (windows xp 256 mb ram 80 gb in the hard drive- bout 67 left) and so all my programs are quite fast. for me, (call me a loser if you want) chess is an obsession. the promo vs larry christiansen didnt attract me, its the other stuff that i heard about. cons: the online play sucks. ive only gotten it to work once on my old computer and even then there were only like 7 people online... the database sort of sucks too. when was this game played? doesnt tell you. where? doesnt tell you. although its very large, the layout is horrid and i can find all the games i want on chesslab.com. another major con is that its missing a few of my favorite personalities :( cm 9000 does NOT have kasparov!! but for 22 bucks american its pretty damn good. comes with about 50 gm personalities (with 150 in total. 175 after ive been messing with test personalities. you guessed it. bored on a saturday) another major con is the analysis. i own both a junior 8 (chessbase) and cm 9000 (ubi soft). and although it isnt quite accurate... ("white now uses an outflanking maneuver in order to exploit the bishops position" sigh) junior does quite a good job. cm SUCKS for "full analysis of a game" the reason i have given 5(five) stars for this review is what it CAN do. the engine itself is so bloody human. its increadible. how does they do it. cm is great for preperation and analysis because i can simply set up a position, set a time control and play a grandmaster personality (or custom) to get the idea of my theories. the classrom is okay but lord i think i know enough already. good for beginners but mehhh... the library has some great games as well. you can even create your own opening books! chessbase seems to be the largest producer (and best... i havent seen one spot on ssdf top 10 for years that isnt chessbase computer) of chess stuff, and so its hard to decide really which is better my junior or cm... the analysis that junior has is much better... then again you get about 60+ true 3d boards in cm... the engine in cm is better (not stronger) and much more human like. i am not sure which is better in the way of strength. cm seems to KNOW more. it plays moves like a human. and the personalities really do play like the real players (although a bit of time was wasted. larry evans? kashdan i have never even heard of.) and a few times i have looked up famous games involving one of the cm personalities. i play the losing side and it duplicates all the moves. not sure if this is book or not! Conclusion: cm is the best engine for preperation because of all that you can customize. junior (when i refer to junior i am talking about all the engines... tiger shredder hiarcs fritz nimzo etc) has better analysis for clarity but if you are using mentor lines and thinking lines in cm i think it is slightly better. i have used as many as 33 personalities on a given position! the choice is yours. personally i would buy cm. if you have a good graphics card the 3d boards are amazing. also it costs like 20 dollars less in american so............ you can experiment. if you are super rich it doesnt matter. good luck with your shopping
Rating: 
Summary: Laptop users beware of this product
Review: UBI Soft uses some inane "CD Refresh" copy protection so that you have to keep the CD with you constantly. If you have travel with any frequency, it's just not worth the trouble to use their software.
Rating:
Summary: Intresting, quite intresting
Review: It tells you when you are blundering, but blunders every so ofen by itself. Even on the GM level. Im not that good, but it tries blundering for a mate that is easily preventable. Maybe I am that good, or (since it only has happened twice in 23 games...) im just experiencing it testing me out. Very good, told me how to improve my chess opening and closing. See Ya'll
Rating:
Summary: WARNING to all CDRW drive owners
Review: Look out folks, despite there being no warning on "some of" the boxes (according to UbiSoft tech support), UbiSoft has brilliantly decided to prevent installation from a CDRW drive. I have a Dell Inspiron 8500 that came standard with a Samsung CDRW/DVD drive, and I am unable to install. Called tech support, and before I even got going, he knew exactly what I was talking about, and claimed there is no workaround for it. I will simply have to return the game (even though I can't now that it's open) to the retailer and will not be able to play it until I buy a CD or DVD drive with no write/rewrite capacity just for this game. I don't know what genius at UbiSoft came up with this as a notion to prevent piracy, but I've got news for them, you're only hurting potential customers. Blocking CDRW use on the disc itself isn't going to slow down some game cracker. It's only going screw me up. So since there's no warning about this "feature" on Amazon, and as there's no warning about it on the box itself that I just today received from Amazon, I thought I'd come on here and let people know, lest they waste the purchase price as I did. These days, almost all laptops come standard with CDRW/DVD drives, why UbiSoft chose to cut off an entire slice of the market is beyond me. Apparently this "feature" is now on all of their PC games. So look out. I'm sure were I able to play it, it would deserve more than a single star. But because I can't, and because I feel UbiSoft effectively duped me into buying by 'forgetting' the warning, I can't give it higher than that. I'm not slamming the game itself, but rather their policy.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Chess...But Very Buggy !
Review: I received v1.0 of the program even though I ordered it in Jan. 2004. After many crashes and other wierd happenings I began looking for a patch. Installing the 1.02 patch from ubi web site was a must, It fixed some major problems but not all. The program is loaded with good stuff so I have learned to live with the bugs I enjoy the classroom sessions very much and play chess against one of the programs many personalities on a daily basis. As good as this program is I am very surprised it is not more stable.
Rating:
Summary: Good Tutor, Lousy Online Play
Review: I am a chess beginner. I have been playing around with Chessmaster 9000 for a little over a month now. I have found it to be a very good tutor. I am still in the beginner part. There are sections for intermediate and advanced. There are a lot of features I doubt I will ever advance to - like a library of famous games. The one feature that I would like to use is the online game playing. The online portion of this program is lousy. It is very confusing to use. You have install separate ubi.com software - that's ok, but then how the two programs work together is not that clear. I have gotten into a room, but have been able to actually play a game online. I will hate to have to pay more money to Yahoo or some other service to play online.
Rating:
Summary: Great product but lousy online play
Review: This produts is awesome. but as for the onlne playing, i would recomend USCL (US Chess Live). Also this Program works fine on my windos 2K except the audio on the game room stinks as well as the toutorials voices on the kids room (just the totourials, not the Joshs games) but u can use the classroom for that stuff anyway. overall this is a great buy.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent chess program!
Review: I'll start by saying I'm running XP on my machine, with a GeForce 4 64MB video card.
Now, having said that - this is the program to get. I've had a few others, but none of them could touch CM. The last version I had was 5000, and the only reason I even upgraded was because it couldn't run on an XP machine. The tutorials are tight, and I really liked the different levels of opponents. Haven't had the opportunity to play the monkey yet, but just for laughs, I'll be looking to. On the other side of the coin, from what I've read, there are some opponents that beat some of the best players in the world. Note to the gamer from SF who complained that this doesn't run on Win2000 - Win 2000 is not a gaming platform, it's used for businesses, and it runs on entirely different code from the Win9x platform. You'll run into the same problem with Win NT 4.0. XP is the beginning of the bridge between these two platforms, however. I'm a mid-beginner when it comes to chess (unrated), but am also a student of the game, and look forward to many hours of playing with this game!
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