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Rating:  - Great Training Tool
What I love about Fritz 11 is the Calculation Training function... this, in and of itself, makes Fritz 11 worth the purchase! The remainder of the program features have been to the greatest extent duplicated elsewhere. I've never seen anything on the market that resembles the Calculation Training function at all.
The video clips, though obviously promoting the full DVDs, are nice since they do give an entire game or entire training session. If they were to cut the game (or training session) off mid-stream, it would be a poor marketing ploy. The way it's set up is useful, as well as an excellent way to test drive other Chessbase DVDs.
Being able to set up a Tournament, using several different engines as well as allowing a human to participate, is an nice feature that I have yet to experiment with.
The only thing I really don't like about the program is the electronic eye that hovers above the 3D board, along with the thumbnail viewpoint of this E-eye, I find it to be annoying and have yet to find an option to make it disappear.
Rating:  - Not worth the money
While other chess apps like Shredder have better established engines and are true cross-platform apps, Fritz has always brought the glitz. Only problem with version 11 is that it's a chronological upgrade and not one built on new features. The other problem with Fritz is that it's limited to Windows only, and if you're running it on Vista, it's slower than normal. This devalues the software right from the start, since I use both operating systems. At best, this should be a x.2 update, not a full version upgrade. Save your money and wait for version 12.
Rating:  - same old same old
Not much different that Fritz 10. I get it for playing chess over the internet at chessgames.com for a year. The only thing of interest to me is the tactical "fight." But I wish they recorded the results to show improvement instead of a single record each time one used it.
Rating: - Funny! There is a good part but there is also outright [...]
First of all, if you look at my buying record, you will see that I have bought a lot of Chessbase products (and for the most part happy), but this latest effort is a serious insult to the customer's intelligence. Basically they advertise 14 hours of video that for the most part turns out to be selling clips for other products, thus of little value for the customer. I am very offended.
Good part: new training function for calculation training*** two thumbs up, this is great and what gives it the two stars! I am confident that this will improve my rating!
Updated opening book and game database: nice but that is also available in many software.
Puzzles: you can get free good puzzles, just try www.chessok.com
3D eye: still evaluating
Overall: Fritz 11 offers one very good addition, but at the same time there is false advertising (or very misleading advertising). I cannot figure out how to evaluate such a situation, it is almost as if your best friend helps you and also lies and cheats you at the same time.
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