Author: Komputer Korner
Date: 19:53:35 10/07/97
As you all know, I was a beta tester for Fritz 5 and it was a harrowing experience. There were many things that I reported that Matthias couldn't duplicate, but thank GOD, all the major things were caught. There are some minor bugs in Fritz 5 and until now, I felt that they were too minor to worry about. My opinion has changed since working with some different fbk books. I had reported this during the beta testing but see above regarding the response. Sometimes Fritz 5 will not show or acknowledge the book moves in a fbk book and you have to either change books or flip sides or use other drastic measures including takebacks to get the program to use the fbk book. If you are looking at a line in Fritz 5 and you want to see both sides of a Fritz 5 book, you have to switch sides and play the line from the other side, because Fritz 5 will not show the fbk books while in monitor mode. You actually have to play Fritz to see one side of the fbk books. Others have pointed out other minor flaws and I have collected around 30 of them and most of them I have found myself. It is impossible to find all the flaws in a beta test and even when you find them, the programmers have to duplicate the bug or it doesn't get caught. Sometimes reporting of a flaw doesn't do any good because it involves too much programming to meet the deadline for release. All of these excuses are at play here including beta test fatigue. Believe me all the beta testers spent a lot of hours. So where are we now? I believe that ChessBase has to address the red/green light problem and the disappearing book moves of the fbk books and the monitor mode not showing book moves problems. Another thing I found is that in the Power Book ctg tree, after the position, 1.e4c5 2.Nf3Nc6 3. Bb5e6 4.o-oNge7 5.Re1Nd4 6.Nxd4cxd4 7.c3Nc6 and after some takebacks and forwards the first time I was looking at the candidates for the 8th move, I noticed that the bottom candidate read 8.b3xN Huh! Where did the xN come from? After using takebacks and play forwards a couple of times the xN went away! Because of examples like the above and other minor things, I feel that a patch is warranted. Don't get me wrong. I love Fritz 5 and am calling it the Chess program of the year. It has won the most gold medals on the Komputer Korner Gold Medal list and has the most useful features for both the tournament chess player and novice alike, but it is time to fine tune the Mercedes Benz of Chess playing programs with a patch. Excuse the bad formatting but I simply copied my post from the r.g.c.c.
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.