Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 72
 I Agree August 7, 2010
Robert Elliott
I bought this product because of the other reviews. I really like the tutorial. It's great to go back and review sections and be able to play through the examples. I don't have other chess programs to compare this software to. It beats reading a book in which you have to set up every example on the chess board while holding a book in the other hand etc. Bottom line is I am very glad I bought this program. I feel like when I am done I will have a very well rounded chess education. In the very least a very well rounded beginner chess education. I am not far enough along in the tutorials to give account as to whether the more advanced turorials will be helpful or not.
I personally really like how Josh approaches the game of chess. At times he talks about his personal experiences of playing chess. It's all very helpful.
A vast improvement over CM 9000 and prior June 28, 2010
John M. Sandora
I'll just start out by saying that Chessmaster-Grand Master Edition is a cut above Chessmaster 9000 and prior versions. I've read alot of people saying its not worth the upgrade. If you have CM10th Edition I would probably agree. But, from CM9000 and prior I would definitely upgrade for two chief reasons:
1) The Chess board can be zoomed, tilted or rotated to any angle. This important feature is missing from CM 9000 and prior versions. I use only the Classic Wood 3D board. But, its so much more entering playing with a 3D board that I can actually see and use. No more boring 2D.
2) Tournament mode did not work properly in CM9000 and prior. You would have to wait and watch the same 'simulated game' over and over for AI Matchups. In Grand Master Edition, you can just 'get a result' of the AI vs AI matchups.
Now, as for the other features. They are great. The one I love the most is the Auto-Annotation after a game. It will analysis your game and, in spoken language, will explain erros and missed opportunities from your games. Excellent!
The only negative is the 'all to too common' Knight for Pawn sacrifice at F2 (or F7). I just don't believe players do this as often as Chessmaster simulates it. It makes for an interesting game and totally messes up your King protection. But, it typically fails. So, I always feel its a cheap win.
This is the best chess game ever produced!
 Still fun a few years after it's release May 12, 2010
Bortz (usa)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The best part of this game are the tutorials by Josh Waitzkin. Such things as pins, forks, skewers and removing the defender, are topics covered. What get's a little annoying are Josh's plug for his movie, book and his constantly trying to tie chess into some zen type parallels about life. The end game is discussed thoroughly with examples of king pawn vs pawn and king rook vs king and many other variants. There are reviews of classic matches by Byrd, Waitzkin and others that I can't recall right now. The only problem with the tutorials is that in some sections, Josh's narrative pauses for seconds at a time,(software bug), making the user think it's okay to click the next button to advance, when in actuality, by doing so, you miss important parts. There's also a couple places in his narrative, where he asks you how to complete the next play and it won't let you move a chess piece. Minor annoyances for [...] I guess.
In user vs computer player mode, I tend to like the game play and it's level of realism. The problem with the game is right here. Once you play any computer opponent with a rating over 1000, the computer takes a good two minutes to make a move unless you use the pull down menu's "force move' option. In tournament mode vs the computer, you can't force the move and have to wait it out. To not build an option to bypass the wait time is inexcusable. I realize that the object was to probably simulate a real life wait period, but still...
I've used this product on both win xp and windows 7 operating systems. On win xp, I had some problems with the program hogging a lot of processing power. On win 7, it runs a lot better, in my experience anyways. In xp, it wouldn't always close down the game.exe file and I would have to use task manager to close it.
Although the software has a couple bugs and minor inconveniences, I think it's a great learning tool for beginning to intermediate players and for the price, you can't really go wrong.
 WARNING Causes shutdown on Vista 64 even after uninstall March 12, 2010
wet feet (Cardiff, Wales)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Caused my PC to do shutdown after a few minutes of playing, not a bsod but a clean shutdown without warning, which has never happened before.
I have uninstalled it and now my PC occasionally shuts down for no reason. I'm really really annoyed with Ubisoft.
My PC is less than 6 months old : Vista 64 Bit 12Ghz Quad Core, 8Gb RAM, 796MB GPX. I have emailed Ubisoft requesting advice.
Lockup Heaven Blunder Alert- March 8, 2010
T. R. Hall
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Non-API addressing has been rude software programming for at least a decade. I've owned Chessmaster since 5000 for Windows 95. I'd forgotten until reminded that process crashing was the reason I stopped using 7000. In my old age, I decided to stave off Alzheimer's by getting back into an old passion, Chess. I've apparently upgraded from that moderately irritating purgatory to interminable hardware lockup heaven despite doing everything recommended and more to try to mitigate this problem on a dual-processor system that far exceeds the system requirements. Perhaps it's the multiple raid arrays with other slaved raid servers being polled on the network. My computer technical expertise is very high, including the good sense from experience not to tear up my previously highly stable systems and network to try to pursue the last line left, four pieces down. Whatever the cause, the clear intent to disrespect the software-programming interface may serve as sufficient warning that this may not be a wise choice. Knowing what I now know, I wouldn't want a free copy of this program. If I need to build a dedicated system to run a Chess program, it won't be for this one. On principle. Fair blunder-alert warning delivered.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 72
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