Shredder 7

Shredder 7

02/06/03

By now, most of the chess playing public is aware of Chessbase's multiple engine concept. Chessbase uses a common GUI, and packages it with different engines. Shredder 7 is one such example. It takes the latest Fritz 8 GUI, and bundles it with the latest Shredder engine. This allows Chessbase to keep the cost of new engines fairly low.

The are several differences between this program and Fritz 8. For one thing, the chess engine itself is totally different, having been written by Stefan-Meyer Kahlen. I have written in some depth previously about this engine, and you can find the details here. It plays a fairly solid, conservative game of chess (for a computer). It remains one of my favorite analysis engines. Whether you choose to use the Fritz GUI, or the Shredder Classic GUI (more on this in the next paragraph), you get a wide choice of engine settings to tweak.

There are also some other minor differences between the two programs. For instance, Fritz 8 comes with a chatter CD that contains wisecracks that can be played during the game. If you play any slow games, it can kind of give you the illusion of a real opponent, sans the smoke getting blown in your face ;-). Also, as I mentioned in my Fritz 8 review, there is a new 3-D board. Shredder also includes a couple of additional piece sets that can be used in the new 3-D view.

Another important difference is that the Shredder CD contains yet another chess playing GUI (based on Shredder 6, and coded entirely by the engine author), which is a stand-alone playing program that is UCI compatible. Owners of other chess playing GUIs (like Arena and Chess Assistant) can use this version of Shredder to analyze or play against.

 The so-called "Classic Shredder" that I just mentioned is called alternatively "Shredder 6 classic" and "Shredder 6.1". So the question is whether the engine is version 7 or not. When the classic GUI is started, it does show that the Shredder 7 engine is being used, so I can only assume this is the case. I did try the engine in a couple of UCI compatible interfaces, and it seems to work fine.

Copy Protection

Occasional Refueling from original CD is necessary