Something you need to know about Fritz is that it hardly belongs in the games category. Think of it less as a fancy chess game and more of an analysis tool for chess enthusiasts.

Every single bad review you'll see for this program is due, not to some defect or bug, but because this is a bloody complex application and it's rather hard to intuit what it is you want to do. Reading through the manual, especially if something doesn't seem to make sense, is highly, *highly* recommended. If you just want to play chess, and nothing else, you'd be better served by the pack-in games that come with your operating system. The Fritz engine that comes with this software has a low end rating in the 1400s and is absolutely /not/ for beginners!

So what can you use this for? The killer feature for me is the ability to load up PGN-formatted games (I usually annotate them on my phone) and have the engine go through your game and note where and how you messed up. What you could have done better, and so on, using plain english.

This is starting to sound like a sales pitch, but in short, I recommend this whole-heartedly if you have more than a passing interest in chess.

For context, Fritz Chess 14 is my first foray into a chess application with such a rich feature set.

Fritz Chess is a tremendously deep chess program capable of world class play whose creation dates back to the early 1990's and whose lineage includes computer chess wins over IBM's Deep Blue prototype. The engine itself is separated from the interface which allows for custom engines including cloud based engines[www.engine-cloud.com] (accessible from within the program). The included engines are Fritz 11 SE and Fritz 14 (default). The programs capabilities are wide ranging and far too numerous to completely enumerate here and depending on your expertise you may not exercise many of the features accessible through the interface which brings us to the question, is Fritz Chess worth the price tag?

The Steam version of Fritz Chess, "Fritz 14", is a single core application as opposed to "Deep Fritz 14" which is multi-core and more expensive. Therefore, for the price Fritz Chess 14 provides a welcome nominal discount as most non-advanced users will not require nor miss the multi-core support. The Steam version has single core support but leverages 64 bit Windows natively and thereby provides an optimal experience.

Opening Fritz Chess for the first time, especially if you have not been exposed to such a chess program before and no Chessmaster does not count, can be overwhelming. As soon as the interface is displayed the player can instantly derive that Fritz Chess is a feature rich, high value chess application. I'll enumerate the features available just on the "Home" tab. The other tabs being File, Insert, Board, Training, Analysis, Engine , View and of course everyone's favourite; "Help", which you'll be in dire need of if you ratchet the difficulty too high.

"Home" consists of: Paste Game, Paste Position, Copy Game, Copy Position, New Game, Cancel Move, Replay Move, Move Now, Resign, Offer Draw, Stop Clocks, Infinite Analysis, Blitz Game, Long Game, Levels, Hint, Suggestion, Threat, Coach is Watching, Database, Edit Game Data, Load Next Game, Load Previous Game. The feature set can be overwhelming to new users though a help file is just a click away, however there is no manual available via the Steam download nor on the store page. An oversight which should be fast tracked and corrected.

Casual players are in for a real treat as Fritz Chess will no doubt help you improve your game. Under the Training tab there are a wealth of training options such as but not limited to Opening and Endgame Training though I would like to elaborate on two additional modes. The first, Handicap and Fun which is essentially as the name implies, a handicap mode. This mode consists of many sliders such as Playing Strength but more importantly Fritz Chess comes equipped with a multitude of pre-sets ranging from Careless and Moron to the upper tier opponent skills known in the program as Steam Roller and Assassin (misspelled in the program's interface as Assasin). These pre-sets can be individually fine tuned allowing the player enormous flexibility.

The second option, Friend Mode is more of an adaptive artificial intelligence that consistently always plays just somewhat better than the player. Combine these modes (or just plain old New Game) with the ability to turn on the program's help system allowing for the display of recommended moves (and moves not to make) plus a comprehensive database of more than 1.5 million games and you have an extraordinary learning tool.

To answer my opening question, yes, Fritz Chess is a good value and Fritz Chess is not only a tool that you can learn from but given it's engine customization features it is a tool that will grow with you as well.

Edit: Sept 22, 2014 - The multiprocessor engine is now available as dlc.

While not a strong player, (I not played chess in years) my main experience of chess programs have been chessmaster and some free programs. While Frtiz 14 program on steam has had its fair share of issues, they seem to be mostly fixed now, so what do you get with the steam version of fritz 14?

You get Fritz 14 GUI
Fritz 14 (single core engine)
fritz 11 SE (also single core)
crafty 23.05 (multi core engine)
Video beginner courses
Fritz 14 opening book (weighing in at 449 mb (not sure how many openings)
2013 database weighing in at 809mb and has nearly 3 million games
lets check database (subscription based)
and 6 months access to Premium membership to Playchess.com,

So for those wondering the difference between this version on steam and deep fritz, well the engine on the steam version is single core only, (apart from crafty) hence the lower price, otherwise I think there is no difference.

One thing I should point out is, while I do recommend the software, I don't recommend it for those new to chess, learning the basics, there are better ways to learn chess, Fritz is aimed at those that already have skill with the game, and want to go farther. So if you are a rank beginner and hope that Fritz will teach you the basics,, basic tactics and want good tutorials, I would look else where.

While Fritz does have training modes like Friends mode (which auto adept to your strength and play style), Handicap and fun, some opening and end game tutorials (as well as a few others) sparring mode that you can set the level 1400 up to 2480 and handicap position (removes pieces from the board) there are a few other modes too.

there are a few visual help options like spy, opening hints and so on.

Then we have a very powerful features of Frtiz, Full analysis mode and blunder check, (also have a infinity analysis mode too)

Two feature I just noticed, Fritz can also play chess 960 (where the chess pieces are randomly placed and with some extra rules) and givaway chess, (you are forced to capture any attacked pieces) these modes can be fun and access by the little down arrow on new game in the home tab)

You have a lot of options, so describing them all would take a lot of work. I'm only really covering the main features.

One thing I must mention is the extremely poor help file, it's just plain horrible, and doesn't really explain all the features of Fritz that well, even the PDF file seems to be more cut and paste from help file or vice versa, so some features (or many) might leave you head scratching on their purpose. So when you do start using the program, I highly suggest you check out videos done by Steve Lopez, as his videos have allowed me to understand a lot of features which would otherwise be unexplained or never used.

another aspect I will mention, Fritz does support UCI (Universal Chess Interface) engines, (free and commercial) so you can easy add more engines of your choice, (stockfish for example (which is free)

I think I will wrap it up by saying, I think the program deserves an 8 /10, but you should only get it if you know chess pretty well, but you also should only get this version if you not got a recent version of Fritz, as you may not see that many differences, (feedback from other players who have owned Fritz 13)

so after that, I don't think I have much else to add.

The user interface or engine is somewhat buggy but has potential. Fritz 11 SE seems to be the only engine included. The advertised Fritz 14 engine appear to be missing.
I know Chessbase since 20+ years and expect them to fix the problem.
For now, view this as Early Access.

Update: Looks like the Fritz 14 engine is now available though it did not install automatically.

ok so here's the deal. having fritz on steam is pretty awesome. but there's some things to consider:
if you already own fritz there's not much (if any) difference between this and the last few versions.
there is however a larger database so i'm assuming that's been updated from the previous version.
you're not getting deep fritz here so no multi core engine (atleast not fritz engine) if you want
multicore engines they can be used without a problem. so the real question is, is it worth it?
well that depends. do you already own fritz and have an active premium account for playchess.com?
if you do then this probably isn't a great option. however, if you don't already own fritz it's great!
if you do own fritz and your playchess premium account is about to expire, you're getting a serious
discount on extending the service. also, if you do have a previous version of fritz installed on your pc
it integrates very nicely and everything you had set up before is imported.

edit: deep fritz has been released as DLC but fritz trainer stuff seems intentionally broken for some reason cuz it works in fritz for fun.

I first met Fritz many years ago when it was the talking chess program and was mentioned together with Kasparov in New in Chess - Yes he was actually playing back then.

User interface is a bit nicer but really no major improvements. Included multimedia is aimed at beginners. Some more games commented by a stong player would be nice (remember the Karpov comments with (I think) chessmaster 3000?). The engine is still terribly strong for a measely human like me.

It's still just Fritz - a strong program with nice database options - both for reference and for storing your own games.

Is it a good buy? Well if you just want a chess program and a database then you should probably look at free options on the internet. But if you want to play at Playchess.com and use their material then it looks like a good deal because of the 6 months included membership. Should you consider upgrading with the DLC for 'Deep Fritz'? - well are you a superstrong chess player? I'm not so I wont. In fact I'm very happy with the chance to get Fritz+playchess for a good price and I dont miss 'Deep multicore etc.' options.

For reference I'm a "hobby" player with an Elo rating around 1900.

This is a great software to run engines in, as well as the three engines included. This is also the only chess software that is available through Steam that takes itself seriously. So you don't have many options anyways. I bought this on Steam sale when it was $19.99 and $9.99 for "64 bit dlc".

You probably would only use the latest Fritz 14 engine, so basically you get one good engine and two old ones. There is a ton of included games from history from all the famous players. They can be searched by all criteria like years, last names, etc. There are many analysis options. You can see suggested moves on the go or analyse the whole game. One nice feature is intentionally vaguely worded hints. They give enough descriptive advice but don't directly give you the best move. You have an option for exact moves though.

While the core of the game is pretty good. But it is really puzzling how a known chess software maker can make a good engine and not take the effort to include more options in its main selling point which is the 2D and 3D representation of the chess board. You get very few options for the 2d chess board. There are nice wooden texture and tones included, but there are just five total! It doesn't even have the green and white traditional vinyl board colors that many players are used to. Doesn't have solid color options. You get too few chess graphics as well, and only 3 out of 5 are any good. The other two are abstract designs no one would use.

The 3d chess board graphics look nice but they look like they've been made very lazily. For example you get a number of options for traditional 3d pieces and boards but they can only be combined with solid color background. You can adjust something as insignificant as lighitng and reflection, but don't get many texture options for the background. The themed 3d graphics with backgrounds are pretty good, but they're mainly for novice players. In my opinion the experienced players would not bother running these nice looking 3d graphics since they are used to plain 2d diagram.

So basically I'd give it a 7 out of 10. You get lots of advanced options but not enough color and graphics variation. I'd even be willing to purchase additional ones as DLC if they were available. But there aren't any. Seems like such a missed opportunity to simply add more colors and graphics options. The only explanation I can think of is lazyness.

Amazingly detailed Chess software. AI is pretty brutal. Even once you figure out how to turn it down it can still be rough. Casual Chess players might get more out of the free program WinBoard, but for serious Chess players, this is where it's at. If you are considering joining an orginization like the US Chess Federation, or any kind of club player status, owning this software can be a major tool for analyzing past games you have played.

Again, if you just want to play a bit of computer Chess, this may be a bit too beefy for you.

I had this uninstalled for a while and decided to come back to again.
Serial number? What? For a game I've owned for years?
Googling, I see this:

"A valid serial number allows you to unlock an account only once. When the serial number has been used for an activation, its useful life is over and thus the serial number can no longer be used for further activations!"

Wasted my money. Buyer beware. One activation allowed, only. One star. I'd give it zero if I could for this kind of greed and horrible treatment of a customer who bought the product.

In its current form, this software seems unfinished and unpolished.

• Everytime I start the software, It launches a setup for Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 x64 Redistributable Maintenance. It's already installed so I just cancel the setup and the game starts just fine.
  
• I bought the game just to play against a strong player with handicap. But I am not able to do so as I want. When I play agains the engine with "queen+move"-handicap, it plays fine, but when I castle, the engine expects white to play two moves in a row. After that, It's impossible to move pieces and I need to restart the game. Castling is only a issue in handicap-mode as it seems.

The analysis works fine and you are able to include other engines easily.

When the bugs are removed, I will update this review as well.