I purchased Fritz 15 during a steam sale, thinking is was the perfect opportunity to step up from the free alternatives I was using. I had heard that Fritz, and it's big brother Chessbase, were the gold standard of chess programs. I thought that I would finally be able to use just one program for all my chess needs.

24 hours later I had received my refund for this terrible, dated, and underveloped mess. It is in fact several seperate programs, which are not tied together in any significant way. Just a nasty flash launcher, most of which just sends you to a webpage. And when I compare each peice of this "program" to the free programs I was using before, Each one is worse. The UI of Fritz is especially awful. Lucas Chess is free and better for training and analysis. SCID is every bit as good as the database software found here. And Chessbase may claim that their catalog of mastergames is worth something, but these games dont belong to them, they are available for free online.

Perhaps most annoyingly, most of the "features" of the software are actually just a 6 month subscription to the subpar playchess.com. Just like every other part of Fritz, there are better and cheaper options out there like lichess or chess.com

Do not support this lazy developer thats been cranking out the same software for many years. There are better tools and better engines available.

I purchased Fritz 15 during a steam sale, thinking is was the perfect opportunity to step up from the free alternatives I was using. I had heard that Fritz, and it's big brother Chessbase, were the gold standard of chess programs. I thought that I would finally be able to use just one program for all my chess needs. 24 hours later I had received my refund for this terrible, dated, and underveloped mess. It is in fact several seperate programs, which are not tied together in any significant way. Just a nasty flash launcher, most of which just sends you to a webpage. And when I compare each peice of this "program" to the free programs I was using before, Each one is worse. The UI of Fritz is especially awful. Lucas Chess is free and better for training and analysis. SCID is every bit as good as the database software found here. And Chessbase may claim that their catalog of mastergames is worth something, but these games dont belong to them, they are available for free online. Perhaps most annoyingly, most of the "features" of the software are actually just a 6 month subscription to the subpar playchess.com. Just like every other part of Fritz, there are better and cheaper options out there like lichess or chess.com Do not support this lazy developer thats been cranking out the same software for many years. There are better tools and better engines available.