Author: Scott Woods
Date: 05:28:15 02/20/01
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Is CM8K worth the money? Well that depends on what you want from your chess software. If you are really serious about chess, then something like the offerings from Chessbase ( Fritz etc )is what you are after. You can "bolt-on" the full Chessbase 8 product too. Chessbase software the tools of choice for GM's. - is that what you are needing? The quality of analysis that Fritz does is far superior to CM8K. It provides analysis to other lines that may be interesting - it also refers to other games in it's database. CM8K does have a "natural language advice" mode that gives guidance in plain English which is excellent for beginners up to club player level. Stronger players will not use this feature. This is definately an area for improvement in future releases. CM8K is a great tool for beginners and kids. A lot of thought has gone into the design, tuiton tools etc. The training material on CM8K is very good too. Regarding the number of CM8K posts on this site. There have been bugs with the original release, and the new patch should remedy these. ( I think there is a patch for the patch coming out soon too ! ) But there is nothing serious. Joking aside, John Merlino ( CM Spokesman ) is on this site almost every day, offering guidance and support to the CM community. By being here so much, of course he will get a lot of requests. So the customer service level in my view is very high. CM8K seems to get the strength of it's engine questioned on this site. I think the engine strength is up there with the others. It whoops my butt every time and probably 99% of the chess playing population too. So unless you are GM strength the engine will challenge you. I'm not one of the followers of "I want the strongest possible engine..." brigade. It doesn't help me become a better player. There are lots of preset personalities that can play at the strength you play at. ( There is nothing more demoralising than being beat the 50th time on the trot by a strong comp.) So CM8K will suit a novice upwards. The opening book is nowhere near as good as other PC packages ( some lines are only 3-4 moves! ) and CM8K does not allow AUTO232 interface to allow chess matches on 2 computers. Note: You can add to the opening book with PGN files and the CM team have created specific opening books if you want to learn specific openings. You can import lots of freeware engines like Crafty etc. This is a nice feature. I do have some major gripes about the software though. If you install the patch you will have to have the CD in at all times. This is pants if your cd drive is external ( laptop users note ) although there is a hack available on the net that will stop the CD check. The hack is not from the CM stable and most definately not approved but is a god-send for people who live in the real world. Perhaps those nice guys at CM will revert back to the periodic checks that were in CM7K. I could live with those. All in all - I think CM8K is a bargain. In the UK ( always always more expensive than the US ) CM8K can be had for around £30. This coupled with John Merlino's support on this site - you can't go wrong. However, if you are really serious about chess though - look at Chessbase products. There is not 1 product out there that is all things to all people. Just look for the one that best suits your needs. Enjoy! Scott
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