Fritz 15.0

[rcmaddox]

I've just installed Fritz 15. A few minor observations ...

The Fritz/Rybka engine appears to be portable, after installation.

The engine does not have "normal" tablebase parameter settings so it's not clear how the engine will use tablebases in other GUI's, e.g. Arena.

The friend mode has indeed been revamped and the "fun" settings are gone, though you can replicate these in friend mode.

Tournament setup has a new look.

[rcmaddox]

What I just said about TB's is wrong. Got them working in Arena.

[fern]

Which is your general impression, Bob?
It deserves the bucks?

Fern

[rcmaddox]

Which is your general impression, Bob?
It deserves the bucks?

Fern

It's still Fritz. For me it's worth the bucks, but I'm abnormal (like a lot of people in this hobby). It will take a little time to know for sure ...

It's early, but so far I'm happy with the purchase.

EXCEPT: The website says it comes with "a database with 2 million games." The database link I got was for a database of a little more than 600,000 games, so either the website is mistaken or they sent me the wrong link.

[MikeB]

Which is your general impression, Bob?
It deserves the bucks?

Fern

You didn't ask me , but for the US price of $62 (thx to the strong dollar) , you get a lot for your money. besides Rybka 5, access to playchess. com for 6 months and db(# of games)?) on HD :

- unlimited access to CB comprehensive database with training videos on every aspect of the royal game, recorded shows, interviews etc.
- access the ChessBase online database with 8 million games.
- access to 34,000 training modules
– access CB analysis database with over 200 million deeply analyzed positions

good value for the $.

dB was advertised as 1.5M games - but like Bob said it's just over 600,000 games. Need to ask about that.

[MikeB]

also works fine under Mac OS under xBoard using wine - select the 32 bit engine, use winebottler to make an "app" and the select the startwine as your engine, your config file will have an entry that looks like this


"Fritz 15 x86-32" -fcp "/Applications/Rybka5.app/Contents/MacOS/startwine" -fd "/Applications/Rybka5.app/Contents/MacOS" -fn "Fritz 15 x86-32" -fUCI

actually sees a mate score for this position in 23 seconds on my mac:

[d]8/1p3pp1/7p/5P1P/2k3P1/8/2K2P2/8 w - - 0 1

[John Conway]

Fritz 15 is obviously a new engine which Vas wrote from scratch after carefully studying Rybka 4.1 source code for 4 years.

That would be foolish to write from scratch. Rybka has a very good SMP implementation. Vas is obviously a very talented programmer and it is good to see him move on and put Rybka behind him. Wish him all the best.

He is moving on by helping Chessbase sell a clone of his own engine?

Not get hung on semantics , but a clone would be a exact copy of his own engine - we already know it's not. A better choice might be a derivative of his own engine - which happens all the time - so what's your point?

I agree it is not an EXACT copy. Anyway this is not the forum to discuss what it is derived from.

My point is that selling Rybka under a different name is not moving on.

[MikeB]

Fritz 15 is obviously a new engine which Vas wrote from scratch after carefully studying Rybka 4.1 source code for 4 years.

That would be foolish to write from scratch. Rybka has a very good SMP implementation. Vas is obviously a very talented programmer and it is good to see him move on and put Rybka behind him. Wish him all the best.

He is moving on by helping Chessbase sell a clone of his own engine?

Not get hung on semantics , but a clone would be a exact copy of his own engine - we already know it's not. A better choice might be a derivative of his own engine - which happens all the time - so what's your point?

I agree it is not an EXACT copy. Anyway this is not the forum to discuss what it is derived from.

My point is that selling Rybka under a different name is not moving on.

Well first off , it is complete conjecture on our part to say it is or it is not a derivative of Rybka at this point. We simply do not have enough information. Furthermore, nobody is calling it "Rybka" except us - Chessbase calls it "Fritz 15" - so you tell me, what he is supposed to do. You don't want to him use Rybka and you don't want Chessbase to call it Fritz 15 . He already got banned for life from the ICGA - geez - give the guy a break. What is he supposed to do, crawl under a rock and die? Glad to see you are living the perfect life.

[Terry McCracken]

Fritz 15 is obviously a new engine which Vas wrote from scratch after carefully studying Rybka 4.1 source code for 4 years.

That would be foolish to write from scratch. Rybka has a very good SMP implementation. Vas is obviously a very talented programmer and it is good to see him move on and put Rybka behind him. Wish him all the best.

He is moving on by helping Chessbase sell a clone of his own engine?

Not get hung on semantics , but a clone would be a exact copy of his own engine - we already know it's not. A better choice might be a derivative of his own engine - which happens all the time - so what's your point?

I agree it is not an EXACT copy. Anyway this is not the forum to discuss what it is derived from.

My point is that selling Rybka under a different name is not moving on.

Well first off , it is complete conjecture on our part to say it is or it is not a derivative of Rybka at this point. We simply do not have enough information. Furthermore, nobody is calling it "Rybka" except us - Chessbase calls it "Fritz 15" - so you tell me, what he is supposed to do. You don't want to him use Rybka and you don't want Chessbase to call it Fritz 15 . He already got banned for life from the ICGA - geez - give the guy a break. What is he supposed to do, crawl under a rock and die? Glad to see you are living the perfect life.

Computer chess people are a strange lot.

[fern]

Thank you Michael. I am almost tempted.... problem is I just expended 300 buck purchasing the new dedicated unit, Millenium genius.

Fern