Why I buy this one ?
- Chess teacher, mentor, and ultimate opponent with intuitive user interface
- Chessmaster Academy teaches the basics, plus a variety of simple strategies
- Animated chess sets; whimsical 3D sets; simple and efficient learning tools
- Full-featured online chess module; comprehensive chess engine
- Intermediate and advanced player options; for ages 6 and older

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What our customer's say!

"Errors even a 1300 can see", Our "instructor" Josh Waitzkin shows us the following position in his "Chess Mastery" Quiz:

8/8/8/7k/R7/8/2K5/1R6 w - -

The text reads: Here white has a mate in four. What's the first move?

The problem is... this is a mate in two! Silly IM. I even saw this and I suck at chess.

1. Rg1 Kh6 (forced)
2. Rh4#

I believe he's trying to make this a problem geared for someone who's never mated with two rooks, but the problems should still be accurate. All he had to do was put the white king on c1. This would interfere with the rook's access to g1. That would be a real mate in four problem.

The VERY NEXT program gives this position:
K7/8/1R6/6k1/8/8/8/5R2 b - -

Waitkin calls it a "mate in five". It's a mate in four.

There's a few different ways to mate in four from this position. Here's one:
1. Rf1 Kg4
2. Rg6+ Kh5
3. Rg8 Kh4
4. Rh1#

Finally, on his second "monster knight" skill building exercise (page 38 of 82) he gives this position:
3K4/bq6/2r5/kb1p4/1p1n3n/2p1pn2/p3p1p1/6N1 w - -

The only difference is I put a White King on d8 so it would load into normal chess programs. I saw the sequence: e2, c3, a2, b4, d5, e3, g2, h4, f3, d4, b5, a7, c6, d8, b7, a5, which picks up all the dark pieces. After playing c3, Josh says "No, that's not quite it.". Sorry Josh, it is. Strike three.

It's kind of hard to rely on anything this guy says after such elementary errors. I do remember some of the other Waitzkin lessons being decent tho, but I'm really not in a good position to judge them, except for the obvious errors outlined above.

Personally I MUCH prefer "Deep Shredder" http://www.shredderchess.com/ (I have Version 10, but Version 11 is available now). The nice thing about this program is that you can turn down its ELO rating and it plays pretty much like a person would at that rating. You can do this with Chessmaster 10th also, I just like the game you get with Shredder better.

Finally, if I hear "Don't move until you see it" just one more time....


"Great program w/ small annoyances", This is a great program on so many levels. It's a very strong chess-playing engine (w/ many interesting personalities), plus some terrific analysis that you can do. Altho' I don't play too often against the program itself, I LOVE the analysis feature for games I have played over the board. It recommends stronger moves I cd've played and suggests the next 7 strongest moves in the continuation. There are also some excellent tutorials included by top-notch chess players and targeted to diff. levels of players, so they don't all go over the head of a beginning player. (Occasionally there are errors in these, but rarely.)
It's annoying that you can't play w/o having the CD-ROM in the disk drive and I could do w/o all the weird board and piece combos. Also counterintuitive is adding a new player (e.g., the name of a friend whom you just played w/). It's MUCH harder than in CM9, for some reason.
I love watching two diff. personalities play games against each other and then replaying them later w/ diff. variations. Like what wd a Ruy Lopez game between 2 excellent players look like? Ok, now what wd happen if Black had chosen Nc3 on move 5? Comparing these games is instructive. It's an amazing chess learning tool at a great price.

"chess buyer", easy, smart, good to use from me up to my brothers. It is cheap too. Something bad: Always one CD needed to run.

"Computers have a new way of explaining things.", Fast. True. But I once memorized a whole game. 41 moves. Anyone have a comment about that. Either way Black or White. My move the same King right pawn two out!

"CM10 is a fairly good program with flaws (does run on Vista)", This is a pretty good chess program for beginners & intermediate players, has a lot that helps you learn, including of course not-too-bad player simulation. It's not perfect, but I would recommend it if you're looking for something for anyone who wants to learn or get better.

There is a long list under "how this program could have been better". See some of the other reviews, but my top 3 gripes are: (1) dumb programming that chews up the CPU even when the program is supposed to be idle; (2) bugs, especially a "hang" problem on single-cpu/single-core machines, where the game program just gets stuck somewhere (looks like a race condition; solution is to temporarily lower the priority of the TheKing processes by using TaskManager); (3) explanations of bad moves, or recommendations of good moves, provide detail but not the big picture.

Finally, it does appear to run fine in Vista: I installed it normally and have been playing it without problems. (I haven't seen the hang problem, but since I have a dual-core machine now I don't expect the race condition to occur.)

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Great Tool For Aspiring Chess Greats", Chessmaster, in my opinion, is one of the tools needed to become a great chess player. I prefer this game because it has great lessons by an International Master. So it can be used by kids and adults alike. It also has a Fun Mode where you can learn the VERY basics without any pain.
One of the greater things about this is that it has so many opponents that it will always give you a challenge. Be warned that some of the opponents do not play in proportion to their rating. In Play/Training mode it readies you to face people to up your rating in Play/Rating mode. In this mode it's do or die. Basically if you win your rating goes up and if you lose it goes down. This game can help any type of player in some way. You will see your playing get better and better each time you play

"Great tool to learn chess.", Chessmaster is a very useful tool if you are thinking of learning chess. The academy section makes learning chess fun and easy. It teaches you the basic movements and then it builds up and teaches you about pawn structure and strategy. Very useful exercises that will make you think, instead of making mechanical movements. My complaints are that I wish there were more endgame exercises. Also, it teaches one how to mate with rook and queen, but neglects to teach how to mate with two bishops and bishop and knight. It is difficult to mate with bishop and knight and it would have been a BIG plus if they had a section about that. Overall though this is a very good buy. You will learn a lot and it is not that expensive.

"Good for playing, not so good for serious training", It all depends on your level of playing and your seriousness about chess. For a beginner the many features it has are great to make you like the game. Training modes, Graphics, Tutor, Chess Academy, Different players of different strengths.

If you are more serious about chess however, Chess master alone may not be the solution, I would get Fritz as well. Not because of playing strength because I'm sure Chess Master is still a very strong chess engine, but Fritz seems to have features more geared toward Analysis and Training as well as the fact that its engine is definitely stronger.

The nice features about the product are:

1- Visually appealing
2- Training materials for beginners and various nice training options
3- Large database of games with position search (however the Internet makes this really not needed) and they are not annotated.
4- Chess puzzles

But what I personally like most are:
5- So many players of so many different levels and strengths specified by their ELO rating which Chess Master claims it is close to real and they got it from playing real human opponents.
6- You can hold tournaments between you and other computer players at your level
7- You level evolves as you play more and your accurate ranking is computed after 20 games.
8- The Price!!

Now what I don't like most about the program is:
1- Had to put the CD to play, until I learned about the patch that you can get from ubisoft or [...] Great annoyance has been solved and downloading the patch is nothing it's less than 4MB.

but the most personally annoying is:
2- Players at a low level do non-human like stupid blunders. You are in the middle of a strong game with threats here and there and then your opponent makes the most stupid (and disappointing) move that makes you win the easy way. I don't know if this happens per level or it's just the personality you play cuz that didn't happen with everyone. On the other hand Fritz has the "friend" mode which it claims it just plays weak moves not straight blunders.
3- The analysis feature is lacking. Fritz has more powerful analysis with variations and possibility to try different lines and play your own line in the middle of a position.

I have both products, Chess Master for playing, and Fritz for Analysis.
If you are a beginner or intermediate or even a strong player who wants to play from time to time then this is a good software. If you are serious about chess and care about game analysis and a strong engine to continue from certain positions, etc, then couple that with Fritz or get Fritz and play online. You will miss however all the bells and whistles and visually appealing features of Chess Master. Under $20, I would give it a try.

"CHESS MASTER", I WAS NOT ABLE TO USE IT WITH MY COMPUTER BECAUSE IT REQUIRES TOO MUCH MEMORY USE. YOU HAVE TO INSTALL 3 OR 4 C/D'S INTO YOUR COMPUTER. I HAVE A 2 G/B COMPUTER THAT I JUST GOT AND MORE THAN HALF OF MY MEMORY WAS USED BECAUSE OF THIS GAME. IT GAVE ME WARNING ABOUT THE MEMORY SO I UNINSTALLED. I AM GOING TO HAVE TO BUY EXTERNAL MEMORY FOR THIS ONE.

"Don't believe the ratings", Chessmaster is one of those pieces of software that you probably are familiar with, it's been around for quite awhile, the engine is rated high enough to beat 99.9% of all users but you can pick from opponents that are closer to your own rating.

While I like Chessmaster I don't use it to play against, I use Chessmaster for the lessons by Larry Christiansen and Josh Waitzkin, both are accomplished players (Larry is a GM and Josh an IM) in the Chess world and you can pick up some pointers by watching their lessons, also included are chess puzzles by GM John Nunn, an endgame quiz by GM Larry Evans and Bruce Pandolfini filling in other areas.

For those wanting to practice their Openings, that's included although the program just touches on them.

There is a feature that allows you to play online chess against other Chessmaster users but when I tried there was only a handfull of players online, your much better off going with the Fritz software or sign up with ICC or FICS if your looking for online play.

It does have a significant database of chess games, there again your alot better off buying Chessbase as it contains just as many games and offers just a ton of additional features that are out of the scope of Chessmaster.

I highly recommend Chessmaster 10th Edition for those rated under 1700 as the lessons are worth the price for what you will get out of it.