Fritz 13 and "Let's Check" – a beginner's guide

Fritz 13 is our latest flagship chess program, which offers chess players everything they need to study and train: professional board graphics, engine management, adjustable playing strength, coach functions, move explanation, automatic game analysis and commentary, training modules for openings, tactics and endgames, professional printing of games and diagrams, and much more. It comes with a database of 1.5 million games and ten hours of private video instructions by strong grandmasters. And the icing on the cake: six months of free premium membership to the world’s largest chess server: Playchess.com.

The biggest new feature of Fritz 13, the elephant in the living room, is "Let's Check", a revolutionary function that will change the chess world. With it Fritz 13 users can join a world-wide community that are putting together a giant knowledge base for chess.

Let's Check at the Women's World Championship

By Frederic Friedel

Before we come to the instructional videos here is a little story from the Women's World Championship that ended in Tirana yesterday. I spent the first week of the match in Albania and came to the championship bearing gifts: Fritz 13 for both players, as well as for some of the key people present at the event. But there was a problem: do you want to really disrupt the routine of the players in the middle of such an important event? Do you go to the two contestants in the Wimbledon finals, tell them about the new racket you have developed and offer it to them for use in the next set? No, independent of how good the new racket is, it may cause more damage than good.

So the deal was as follows: I'll give you a copy of Fritz 13 now, but you must start using it after the championship. Whatever you do, do not start spending a lot of time experimenting with the program. Your second may do that, but you must not change your routine. Okay?

However: this did not prevent the two players from taking a peek. Immediately after he first game, still in the playing hall, Humpy came over to me – someone many hundreds of points weaker than her in chess – and asked poignantly: "I couldn't win, could I? There was no clear way to win this game, was there?" "Not really," I replied. "Can we check it, please?"

So up we went to my room, where Humpy ran through the game with "Let's Check" switched on, searching for a win she might have missed. There were some moments – one moment – but going down the alternate line revealed that it was not compelling. Humpy was astonished to see many of the lines she was looking at already had Let's Check evaluations. How was it possible that she was getting 30-ply analysis for moves immediately after entering them? "While the game was in progress spectators with big machines were analysing different lines, and their analysis was going into the Let's Check cloud," I explained. Wow, and all of this is available minutes after the game? Of course.

Soon after Humpy left came a phone call: "Frederic? This is Yifan. Can I come check the game?" The 17-year-old super-talent had a very nice gift for me – placemats and chopsticks – but quickly perched herself in front of my computer.

Naturally Yifan has a computer in her room, one of the biggest and heaviest "notebooks" I have seen in a long time. it is fairly powerful and can be used very nicely to analyse the game. But of course it takes minutes to go down 30+ ply, for each position, while Let's Check delivers the same results instantly.

And that is the point of the system: you don't get to see secret analysis by other players, or the "junk analysis of some 1900 patzer," as one top player (named Vladimir) assumed. In any position you get to see, instantly, the evaluation and best move that the chess engine on your computer will come up with if you let it run for many minutes. Of course that assumes that somebody somewhere in the world has run an engine sufficiently long on that position. But that is almost always the case when you analyse top games that have been broadcast on Playchess. There hundreds of spectators, many equipped with super-fast machines and top engines, are watching the games, while Let's Check collects the best of these analyses and uploads them to the cloud.

Yifan analysing late in the evening – without the bounce flash

A word to the old and new world champion Hou Yifan: this girl shows a depth of understanding and an enthusiasm for the game that I have not seen in a long time. She is going places. I predict that she will duplicate the career of Judit Polgar and before long be battling there in the top ranks of men's tournaments.

Video tutorials by Nick Murphy

If you are not already familiar with the

Click on the "full screen" button on the bottom right of the video to see the details more clearly

Got it all? ... No? You can watch more Nick Murphy videos explaining the new Fritz 13 function "Let's Check" in his video tutorials here. We will be pointing to them in an upcoming article to make sure you do not forget.

Order Fritz 13 here Price: 49.90€, shipping immediately, per download or on DVD. When you click on the "To Cart" button you will get a choice of ordering the program on DVD to be delivered by post or whether you want it right away as a download from the shop.

Steve Lopez: How to set up an account for download products

Previous articles on Fritz 13 and Let's Check

Fritz 13 and Let's Check – Lesson one: getting started 31.10.2011 – You have ordered Fritz 13, on DVD or as a download in the ChessBase Shop. And you have heard a lot about the new Let's Check function. How do you get started? In our tutorial series we begin with some very basic instructions on how to activate the program and then take a few initial steps into the world of cloud computing. Too daunting? Take a look – it's easier than you think.

Hoogeveen: Kramnik beats Polgar, leads by a full point 20.10.2011 – In round two Vladimir Kramnik beat Judit Polgar – as usual, we are tempted to say. In twenty classical encounters Judit still has to win a single one. At the end of this game Fritz 13 surprised people on Playchess by announcing mate in 45 moves – on a super-fast spectator machine. In rounds three and four all games were drawn, but some of them quite interesting. Report and commentary.

Fritz 13 is now available – let's check who needs it! 13.10.2011 – “Success very often is the enemy of future success," Garry Kasparov warned us some months ago. Changing the world once is not enough, he said, we needed to do it again. Well, we are trying. Today we launch Fritz 13, which incorporates a tantalizing new feature: "Let's Check", which provides communal analysis in the cloud. You can order it now or download it for instant access.