Pocket Fritz 2.0
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Pocket Fritz 2.0
Reviewed on 01/07/03
Pocket Fritz’s name can be a little deceiving. The chess engine
employed by the program is actually Shredder, a very strong engine
that has won the World Microcomputer Championship a number of times.
This engine’s style tends to be very positional, and in my
opinion, tends to be very human-like. It is also extremely strong, and
is IMO, the strongest program available for the PocketPC.
Since the engine is so strong, handicapping options are important.
Pocket Fritz offers the ability to turn permanent brain on and off,
and offers six “easy” levels (which are untimed). Note
however, that the program does not contain sparring, ELO handicapping,
or friend modes, like Fritz on the PC. However, there is a coach
function, similar to Fritz, which warms you when you make a blunder
(usually by the time you are warned, it is a bit too late).
The user has a choice of game in X (with and without time increment),
tournament time controls, and average time per move. The program has
hash tables, which give it a decent endgame. In version 1.0 of the
program, hash sizes were not adjustable by the user. In this version
they are, and you can pick sizes from 1-16 MB. This option, and the
easy levels (which seem to be ply-based) are available for
handicapping the play of the engine. IMO, it would also be nice to see
some smaller hash sizes available, for players below 1900 ELO.
There are also some new options for controlling the play of the
engine. Among them are a new power saving mode, which reduced
Fritz’s playing strength somewhat, but allows for longer battery
life. There is also an option called Prefer open positions, that
biases the engine toward open positions. It seemed to me that this did
have a significant influence on the style of play.
I found the opening book to have just enough depth to make the program
fun to play against. The book itself is deeper and broader than any
other program on the Palm platform (although I am not sure about
Pocket PC programs). It should also be noted that owners of the
Chessbase version of Shredder for the PC can construct their own
opening books for use on Pocket Fritz. From the standpoint of look and
feel, Pocket Fritz does very well. The user has a choice of seven
boards, and four piece sets, which can be used in any combination.
Board colors can even be changed by the user, if so desired.
Database
The database module allows you to do header searches on local and
online databases. The program uses PGN, which is the universal
standard for chess data exchange. Games can be annotated by adding
variations, which can be simple or nested. While entering and playing
back games, you can enable the program’s infinite analysis
function, which will show engine calculations below the board.
My only complaint here is that there is a large amount of screen space
that is wasted when viewing a game in the small board view. There is a
large white space underneath the board that is reserved for showing
engine calculations - but it would also make a great spot to show
commentary, since so little can be read with the current setup.
While the previous version of Pocket Fritz had decent database
functions, this latest version goes farther in that area. For
instance, the search dialog has been improved, player names are now
presented in a drop-down list from which you can select - it is much
faster than typing in entries in the search mask. Note that positional
searches are not available for databases that reside locally on the
machine - they are only available for searches of the online database.
Tools for annotating games have greatly been improved. Variations are
now color-coded and annotation functions are probably the best
available, of any pocket PC program. The reason is a very simple,
intuitively laid out dialog for annotation, which allows you to add
move evaluations, diacritics, etc. The set of annotations available is
quite comprehensive, and constitutes what most players use 99% of the
time.
Another welcome improvement in this version is the ability to replace
games in PGN files. This is a feature that a number of people have
asked for, and it makes using the program as an analysis tool much
easier. I almost forgot to mention that you can search the online
Chessbase game database. If you have online connectivity with your
handheld, this may be a killer feature that makes the program a must
have. I don’t have a phone like this, so I did not give it a
try. However, it looks like you can do positional searches, and even
have access to Chessbase’s online opening tree.
Training
I found this simple little feature to be quite interesting and maybe
under-appreciated. Essentially, it presents training exercises in
random order for your solution. It uses a PGN database called
Tactics.pgn, which is located in the Pocket Fritz program directory.
It is the intent of Chessbase to make periodic downloads of this file
available on the internet.
Many of the exercises in Tactics.pgn are on the easy side. However, it
is a simple matter to create your own database of tactical exercises,
and replace the Tactics.pgn file with your own. I did just that with a
set of 6000 tactical test positions from Guenther Ossimitz’s
site. This function also has a small clock to keep track of your
solution time. Overall, this is a nice little addition to the program.
Conclusion
With this upgrade, Chessbase has made it clear that they want to
concentrate on improving the analysis capabilities of the program.
They have done so, and now Pocket Fritz is the best tool for game
annotation on this platform. It is also the strongest program
available on the PocketPC. If you want more information on Pocket
Fritz, then I would also suggest that you check out Steve
Lopez’s t-notes at Chessbase and Chessbase USA. Chessbase also
has a summary of the new features in this version on their website,
you can read it at: the Chessbase
shop.
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