Fritz is the world’s most popular chess program, developed by ChessBase, “the world's leading chess software company” (Washington Post). Whether you are a beginner, club player or professional – Fritz has everything that chess players could want: automatically adjusting playing strength, handicap and coaching functions, explanation of positions, coloured danger warnings, openings statistics, automatic game analysis, trainings modules for openings, tactics, endgames, and a database of one million games. Fritz continues to fascinate the chess world. It has beaten a reigning World Champion in the battle of man vs machine, and it has worked with World Champions as a clever training partner (Garry Kasparov: “I regularly analyse with Fritz”) which will entertain you with fresh and humorous verbal comments.

NEW: FRITZ is now even faster. The completely redesigned ergonomic interface gives you instant access to all the most important functions. This means more comfort and clearer controls. Never before has it been so easy and fast to play with Fritz.

FRITZ prepares you for serious encounters over the chessboard. Have you ever trained with a human grandmaster? Fritz provides you with twelve hours of video lessons for every level of play. Enjoy the instructive analysis of master games, the discussion of clever openings traps, deadly combinations to solve. The video material introduces you to world class grandmasters like Alexei Shirov, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Vladimir Kramnik, Vishy Anand, even chess legend Garry Kasparov. And if you cannot play chess Fritz will teach you the rules of the games – within an hour you will be playing your first game of chess.

FRITZ helps you to find friends. It includes a full year’s subscription to Playchess.com, the world’s biggest chess server. Every day you have thousands of players logged into this virtual chess club. You will always find an opponent that matches your playing strength. Or you can simply watch top tournaments and the games of world-class grandmasters played live on the server.

NEW: FRITZ gives you Premium Membership to Playchess. Without further costs or obligations you will be able to listen to the audio commentary during major events, you can receive live training, play in simultaneous exhibitions against top GMs, watch the TV ChessBase shows and play in league tournaments.

NEW IN FRITZ 12:

FRITZ is now even faster. The completely redesigned ergonomic interface, compliant with Microsoft’s “Fluent UI” standard, gives you instant access to all the most important functions of the program. For instance board selection or challenges and formula on Playchess. The rearrangement of windows has been improved and is more intuitive; new clock and arrows in the board display; improved, faster 3D graphics with a new playing room and opponents. Never before has it been so easy and fast to play with Fritz.

The program:

• Rated games with a more precise, real-world rating system.
• Dial display for how sharp a position is (“hotness”) plus a special “Mate-O-Meter”.
• Improved “spy” function shows clear refutations and only direct threats.
• Analysis + openings classification revised and improved.
• Calculation training improved.
• Improved engine management: >4 GB memory for 64-Bit UCI engines, CPU display and simple settings for multi engines.
• Evaluation profile optionally as non-linear display (as at the Chess Classic in Mainz).

Playchess.com

• Twelve months premium membership on Playchess.com
• Games grouped together under headings (tournaments or time controls), making it easier to find the ones you want.
• Fast search in the players list
• Friends and titled players are displayed with desktop alerts.
• Multi-watch with many new functions, e.g. time difference display.
• Separate formulas for humans and computers.
• A series of games against the same opponent is displayed as a match in the chat window.
• The games list display includes number of moves (for games and broadcasts).
• Evaluation profile available in the machine room while playing and watching.

Engine, database and multimedia

• New Fritz engine: even stronger!
• New openings book by Alex Kure
• Twelve hours chess tutorial videos with international trainers and world class players
• Updated database of 1.5 million games from 1625 to 2009

System requirements: Minimum: Pentium III 1 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Windows Vista, XP (Service Pack 3), DirectX9 graphics card with 256 MB RAM, DVD-ROM drive, Windows-Media Player 9, internet access (playchess.com, updates and activation). Recommended: PC Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4 GHz, 3 GB RAM, Windows Vista or Windows 7, DirectX10 graphics card (or compatible) with 512 MB RAM or more, 100% DirectX10 compatible sound card, Windows Media Player 11, DVD ROM drive and internet access (playchess.com, updates and activation).