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
