Overtom's weblog

FRITZ FRAY  (4 february 2004)

It must have been in 1991 that a very strong chess program appeared on the market. You could buy it on a (single-density) floppy disc. Its size was about 400Kb. It had been programmed by Frans Morsch.

Frans Morsch

For less than a hundred guilders (= 45 euros) you had a program that could only be beaten by strong club players.

Since 1991, new editions of Fritz have appeared every twenty months or so. And now version 8 is so strong that quite a few chess clubs have no members who can beat it.

In 1991, I bought a diskette with Fritz 1.  There can't be any doubt that it was too strong for me. With every computer I bought the program became stronger. So I never had any reason to buy a stronger program.

If you want to see how well the 'old' Fritz still performs, here are two games Fritz 1 played against Chess Tiger (a program that features in the weblogs of 2 and 9 January.

Fritz - Chess Tiger

Chess Tiger - Fritz

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