Among chess players, "Fritz" is a name to be spoken with respect and perhaps fear. No, the world champion is not a German--that's Vladimir Kramnik, a Russian. "Fritz" is a computer program, and it's one that plays at grandmaster strength. The PC version of Fritz was capable of drawing a recent 8-game match with Kramnik. Just imagine what it would do to you.
Pocket Fritz 2 by ChessBase (www.chessbase.com) is the latest Pocket PC version of this software, a scaled-down version of its elder PC brother. How good is it? To answer this question, let us use the venerable and highly accurate numerical system of ranking levels of chess skill, which is determined by the competitive record of a player. The average tournament player is rated around 1300, a master is at least 2200, a grandmaster is over 2500, and the highest-rated human players are a bit over 2800. While the most powerful Fritz version, known as "Deep Fritz," has a grandmaster rating of 2760, Pocket Fritz probably plays closer to a 2450 level--still, that is an awesome level of chess mastery to be carrying around in your pocket. Your Pocket PC can be among the best hundred chess players in the U.S.
Screen 1. Normal screen, without analysis displayed. I'm White and after
eighteen moves I'm still in the game! (Of course, I wouldn't be if Pocket Fritz
hadn't let me take back half a dozen moves.)
Screen 2: Pocket Fritz does not much like Deep Junior's stunning sacrifice of its Black bishop in Game 5 of the Kasparov-Deep Junior match. At the time, no humans thought it could work either. However, you can see by "Eval=+0.58"
that Pocket Fritz gives only a slight edge to White in the position; it sees
that Black will get compensation for the sacrifice (or else White's evaluation
would be much higher). In fact, the game ended in a draw.
With my lowly 1421 rating I cannot come close to beating Pocket Fritz, but I can be taught by him. As the game progresses, Pocket Fritz tells me what my best next move is (if I ask). By selecting the analysis view I can watch him calculating variations, thinking progressively farther ahead (ten moves or more) and looking for the best continuation. I can load games that I or somebody else has played and ask Pocket Fritz to render his opinion on the relative merits of each move.
How Pocket Fritz works
Pocket Fritz and many other computer chess games analyze chess positions according to a scheme that gives a positive number when White has the advantage and a negative one when Black has the advantage. The material advantage of having an extra pawn is reckoned as one point, but a favorable position will also be reckoned into the evaluation. For example, an evaluation of -2.97 would mean that Black has an advantage equivalent to about three pawns, whether that be in terms of material or position.
This is incredibly useful in game analysis as you can try out moves and find out on the spot how good they are, relatively speaking. If you are playing with Pocket Fritz and you make a move that is significantly inferior to the "best move" that it has determined for you, it will ask you if you want to take it back. Or, as you see the numerical evaluation of the move, you may decide to do so yourself.
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