Cheap Chessmaster 7000 (Software) (Windows 95, Windows 98) Price

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Customer Reviews of Chessmaster 7000

Excellent application that could use some improvement
I've owned and used all the Chessmaster programs beginning with Chessmaster 2100 including Chessmaster 3000 for the Mac. The program has gradually become stronger and stronger, from perhaps something like a clueless class D player to something like a grandmaster. The engine in this program on today's fast machines can play five-minute chess as well as all but the top grandmasters, and at whatever time limit as well as an international master. However the ratings given for the various personalities need to be taken with a grain of salt and some understanding. I'll get to that in a bit.

First there are still in the program some annoying bugs and some plainly bad programming practices. Most annoying to me is the fact that the games are not automatically saved; worse yet, you are not even asked if you want to save the current game. This is contrary to standard practice in virtually all applications that I am familiar with, and I wish that Chessmaster would do something about it. Next, when you do save a game under a name you choose, should you need to save it again after some further moves, you are given as the default not the name you chose and are using, but the regular CM default (players and date). If you play two games on the same date with the same players and same colors, CM will suggest the name of the first game when you try to save the second game. If you don't intervene, you will overwrite the first game. Not good!

The database is not as well constructed as it might be. You can only view the games directly in the database mode from the White side on a small board. Also there is a bug that sometimes skips a move when you hit the "forward a move" button. Nonetheless, a database of almost half a million games (with some repetitions) is an invaluable resource. By the way, I have played over many of the games and so far have found only a couple of obvious errors. There are others I'm missing of course. Some of the Fischer games that were adjourned I noticed are scored as not completed when in fact one of the players (usually not Fischer!) resigned without resuming play.

The rated games format allows one to adjourn a game and then later delete that game and thereby "cheat." If you are clearly lost in a rated game, you can adjourn it and then never call the game up again and avoid the rating point loss. You can even delete the file. (Just a tip to those who like to cheat at solitaire, and a warning to take anyone's rating against Chessmaster with a grain of salt.) The rated game feature might be better if no adjourned games were allowed, or if allowed, require that they be finished by some date (as in the old real world of chess) or rated as lost.

A nice improvement from earlier editions is that the Think Lines window shows the moves in figurine notation and they are numbered so it is much easier to read them. A further readability improvement would be to put commas in the number of positions that Chessmaster has considered.

The personalities (one of CM7000's best features) are still a work in progress. The ratings are derived from play against the machine and not against human players, which is why they are a little weird. Still, just because the personality makes weak moves on occasion, moves so bad logically and positionally that even a "C" player would never make them, doesn't mean that the personality isn't stronger than a "C" player or even an "A" player. This is because even though it makes silly moves it more than compensates by seldom making any tactically blunders. In fact, the "strangeness" of the personalities stems from the fact that CM has not really worked out how to weaken the personalities in a humanoid way. Most human players tend to overlook a two-move tactical point from time to time. (Less than expert players probably do it on average at least once a game.) And few human players below the master level go through a game without making a tactical error somewhere along the way that loses at least the equivalent of a pawn. What the CM program needs to do is program their personalities to make human-like tactical errors and fewer positional monstrosities.

I also think that CM ought to allow a personality or even itself to resign when it is clearly beaten. Chess programs typically do not resign, of course, no matter how bleak the outlook. Why? I'm not sure, but I think one reason is that it's impossible for the program to know when the situation really is hopeless. Since humans are always prone to error (even grandmasters have allowed mates in winning positions) and since the program never gets tired, why resign? But "resigns" is a gentlemanly way to end a game. Note that in games against grandmasters, the programmers resign for the program when it is hopeless.

One way to incorporate "resigns" into the CM's vocabulary would be to allow the user to set a criterium of futility, say two and a half pawns. (Complexity of position could also be considered.) Or CM could take into account the rating or previous play of the player and make an assessment.

Despite these suggestions for improvement, the bottom line as far as I am concerned is that CM7000 is a great application, a source of entertainment, competition and instruction that chess players just a few years ago could only dream about.

Good program, lousy compatibility
The program itself is quite good for an intermediate player like myself. However, it does not run on my Win2K machine at all. I loaded it on my Windows XP machine, but this isn't much better. The game runs, but has a habit of locking up the PC unexpectedly and randomly in the middle of games. I plan to ask for my money back.