CMXI -- First Impressions??

Originally posted by Chipotle
I'm not sure about today, but a couple of years ago the strongest engine v. engine programs were not the strongest vs. human GMs. It seems odd, but the best engines vs. humans have to have enough opening DB or positional understanding to rip open a position in their favor, where in an engine vs engine game, there isn't any hiding behind walls of pawns in a closed game.

That may be true, and I'm sure there are a lot of interesting issues there. I'm not saying engine performance is exactly the same vs. engines as vs. humans--I just don't think it's *radically* different, and certainly not enough to make a difference in the context of this discussion.

For whatever it's worth, I seem to notice on ICC that when the same engine is set up to accept matches only vs. humans, or to accept matches against both humans and engines, the one that plays only vs. humans always seems to have a higher rating.

But in any case, the original discussion was about Chessmaster. I'm sure there are plenty of valid criticisms you can lodge against Chessmaster, but the engine being too weak is not a very good one IMO. Anyone who needs an engine stronger than Chessmaster is pretty sophisticated and probably already knows exactly what they're doing. For just about anyone who would consider buying CM, the included engine is fine.

Originally posted by incandenza
Heh... no offense, but, you "glanced at the box"? Talk about an informed review. Maybe you'll have time to post an in-depth update if you get the chance to actually read the text on the box.

I have been using Chessmaster software for 18 years, and have put in thousnads of hours with their software. I've logged over 200 hours with Chessmaster 10. Compared to other chess software, Chessmaster 10 is well priced at $20 and horribly overpriced at $40. When Chessmaster implements the changes it needs to make it competitive with Fritz, it will advertise these in words on the front of the box that are larger than the name of the program. Hence, reading the front of the box is all I need to do an informed review.

Chessmaster X was completely redesigned from the previous versions. The contents are almost the same, but access to those contents became much less user friendly in my experience. I advocated Chessmaster as user friendly, and especially well suited for kids until I started using Chessmaster X.