It’s worth pausing for a moment to appreciate the remarkable development Fritz has undergone in its twenty versions – from an initially easily beaten DOS program, to a match opponent for world champions. From the simplest game management tool to an effective and humorous all-round trainer. Always supported by drastic improvements in hardware, operating systems, development tools, know-how, and the internet.
The new opponents
Adjusting new personalities
The “human” playing concept introduced with Fritz 19 has been further developed in Fritz 20. The program is tactically less precise overall and, for example, punishes mistakes less frequently – but it impresses with a more positional style of play. Fritz 20 offers new opponent types: Hypermodern, Configurable and the VIPs.
Hypermodern plays flank openings like Reti and controls the center with pieces instead of pawns.
The configurable opponent is a real eye-catcher: Here, you can set the characteristics familiar from the style report from ChessBase 18 and thus replicate common player types. The selection dialog offers a number of presets such as “Fischer,” “Tal,” “Karpov,” or “Lasker.” Of course, the program also plays the openings of its great role models.
This is what it feels like to play against Bobby Fischer [click to enlarge]
Bullet Training
The game against human opponents now runs on a clock. Fritz realistically allocates his time. You can also set the program to play slowly or quickly, allowing you to, for example, win the game on time in long endgames with a poor position. Fritz’s timing is realistic so that it allows you to optimize your bullet technique without stress and without affecting your rating:
Practice beating a strong Fritz on time, or train against an opponent who plays inaccurately but very quickly.
AI Chat
The rapid development of artificial intelligence finds an original application in Fritz. The program can, upon request, speak during the game. With the exception of the greeting (“Hey chess friend, is everything OK?”), all comments are chess-related and situation-specific to the game. There are 170 (!) different chess themes recognized on the board and commented on. The advantage of AI commentary is that they are constantly being recreated and thus remain varied. Available in all languages, of course. Furthermore, each opponent type has its own voice that reflects its personality. Sometimes the AI likes to rhyme:
- Quick win - big grin!
- That rook you gave, so bold, so brave.
- No win, no hate - it is stalemate.
- In chess we scheme, in chess we dream—just don’t get caught in a checkmate theme!
In rare cases it even talks in limericks:
There once was a game, nice and bright,
But I saw I was losing the fight.
So with grace I resign,
This result is all thine --
Well played, you outshone me tonight!
Engine
Frank Schneider’s new Fritz Engine is over 100 Elo points stronger than Fritz 19. At the 2024 Computer Chess World Championship in Santiago de Compostela, it shared first place among nine participants in the software category. With neural network evaluation, the Fritz Engine meets today’s standards in chess programming, yet contrasts with the ubiquitous Stockfish, allowing, for example, analysis with two engines in ChessBase to frequently yield alternative move suggestions.
New look
ChessBase 18 led the way, and Fritz is following suit: All user interface buttons have been redesigned to offer a modern and consistent appearance. And here are two examples of the many new fully animated 3D boards [click to enlarge]:
(Available from Monday, May 19)
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