Rating: 
Summary: Full of bugs
Review: The above reviewer who noted that Fritz 8 was full of bugs sure wasn't kidding. The chess play is all right, but if you want to do something simple like saving a game or a position, well, forget it. I've just spent two hours trying to save a few positions, and I've been directed all over the place, but I still haven't been able to save just 3 games. In the future I'll have to replay each game each time to get to an established position. The directions are unclear, incomplete, or just don't work. A simple process such as saving and retreiving games should be, well, simple and user-friendly. Either my copy is defective or you have to be a grandmaster in software to figure out how the $%@*^%* thing works.
Rating: 
Summary: Stronger than Deep Blue, and friendlier too!
Review: The Fritz program has been setting the standard for computer chess for over a decade now. It is, simply put, the greatest chess program ever written. World Champion Gary Kasparov himself admitts to using Fritz extensively for analysis. And why not? At an elo rating of, conservatively, 2720+, Fritz is the strongest grandmaster you're likely to meet and is in an elite club of chessplayers with only about twenty flesh-and-bones grandmasters in the world. In addition to its bona fides as perhaps the greatest silicon chessplayer in history, Fritz can teach you to improve your game. Fritz's fantastic "friend" mode determines the strength of your play and plays to your strengths and weaknesses gradually increasing the difficulty of play as you get stronger. Fritz's coach can watch you play and make suggestions, Fritz can rate your play, analyze your games or those of top grandmasters, and you can use Fritz to connect to chessbase's online playchess server and play with human opponents of all skill levels any time of day or night throughout the world! Imagine having a top chess grandmaster at your beck and call for lessons, friendly games, or game analysis all for a *one time* cost of under fifty dollars. Strong enough to take on the world's greatest *with success* (Fritz recently tied current world champion Vladimir Kramnik in an eight game match) yet patient enough to play with and teach your ten year old daughter when she comes home from school. Need I say more?
Rating:
Summary: A must if you want to increase your playing level
Review: The most impressive feature of this game is the friend mode. After you play a few games it automatically adjusts to your playing strength. As you improve, Fritz increases the playing strength so that it's always challenging but not overwhelmingly so. In addition, the friend mode is able to adjust to your level in a human-like manner. The mistakes that the program makes are similar to what you would expect from an actual human player. This is crucial, since it is probably the most frustrating problem with other programs...Other modes are also very useful, including the sparring mode, where the program makes intentional mistakes that provide strong tactical opportunities. If you miss them, the program warns you accordingly... Highly recommended without any reservations whatsoever
Rating: 
Summary: I am disapointed
Review: This is the first time I buy Fritz. The software is full of bugs. It's hard to install and to use. It crashed on my brand new computer! Chess Master is much better!
Rating: 
Summary: Worst User Interface Ever Designed!!
Review: This program has a lot of features, however, it's pretty close to impossible to figure out how to get the features to work. I've never in my life seen a program with such a non-discoverable, non-intuitive, obscure interface. What is truly amazing about this program, is you can read the manual and still not figure out how to use the features! I've just spent 2 hours (including studying the manual) trying to figure out how to load a PGN file of some games that I've played to use the analysis features of the program and I still have no clue how to do it. Unbelievable. I've used several other chess programs and never had to even open the manual. I've used 100's of windows programs and this is clearly the worst interface I've ever seen.
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