Fritz 19: Steam Edition

Fritz 19: Steam Edition is a chess program for playing against simulated club-player personalities and training your game. Its six opponents make human-style moves and can make tactical mistakes, giving you chances to win with attacking play. You can use tips and support during a game or ignore them; with the tips, you will practically always beat the “strong club player” level, while playing without them is challenging for a player around Elo 2000.

Opponent personalities

The six characters are Allrounder, Aggressive, Positional, Swindler, Fearful and Endgame Expert. Allrounder is the strongest opponent across playing levels and develops the “Easy Game” from Fritz 18. Aggressive regularly attacks with a sharp opening repertoire, making this character suitable for practising defence as Black. Swindler focuses on the king, often overplays the position and can become dangerous despite usually allowing a material advantage.

Positional values a good pawn structure, a secure king and coordinated pieces. Fearful prefers crowded, safe positions and avoids complications, which often leads to weaker play. Endgame Expert aims to exchange pieces and simplify the game, often choosing an unambitious opening before becoming difficult to face in the endgame.

Opening and calculation training

You can play directly against databases, your own opening repertoire or an opening article from ChessBase Magazine, without converting it into an opening book. For an opening game, if the White player, Black player, tournament title or source begins with “White” or “Black”, Fritz plays only the moves assigned to that colour. Your repertoire can therefore be narrow for your own colour and broad for your opponent’s moves; one example is practising a Najdorf repertoire as Black against the Aggressive player.

Assisted calculation mode is available at any point during a game. It has no clock and lets you practise calculating positions you have played yourself. Calculation Training has also been extended, particularly in its preliminary query about candidate moves.

Engine and analysis

Fritz 19’s engine is the Computer Chess World Champion for 2023. The program also includes the Buddy Engine and annotated engine analysis from ChessBase 17, alongside improvements to the notation and interface. Tactical Analysis, which provides full commentary on your games, has also been improved.