Fritz is a German

chess program In computer chess, a chess engine is a computer program that analyzes chess or chess variant positions, and generates a move or list of moves that it regards as strongest. A chess engine is usually a back end with a command-line interface wit ...

originally developed for Chessbase by Frans Morsch based on his Quest program, ported to DOS, and then Windows by Mathias Feist. With version 13, Morsch retired, and his engine was first replaced by Gyula Horvath's Pandix, and then with Fritz 15,

Vasik Rajlich Vasik Rajlich (born 1971 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an International Master in chess and the author of Rybka, previously one of the strongest chess playing programs in the world. Rajlich is a dual Czechoslovakian-American citizen by birth; he was bor ...

Rybka Rybka is a computer chess engine designed by International Master Vasik Rajlich. Around 2011, Rybka was one of the top-rated engines on chess engine rating lists and won many computer chess tournaments. After Rybka won four consecutive World ...

. The latest version of the consumer product is Fritz 18 Neuronal. This version supports 64-bit hardware and multiprocessing by default.

History

In 1991, the German company ChessBase approached the Dutch chess programmer Frans Morsch about writing a chess engine to add to the database program which they sold. Morsch adapted his ''Quest'' program, and ChessBase released it for sale that year as ''Knightstalker'' in the U.S. and Fritz throughout the rest of the world. In 1995, ''Fritz 3'' won the

World Computer Chess Championship World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) is an event held periodically since 1974 where computer chess engines compete against each other. The event is organized by the International Computer Games Association. It is often held in conjunction with ...

in Hong Kong, beating an early version of ''

Deep Blue Deep Blue may refer to: Film * ''Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads'', a 1992 documentary film about Mississippi Delta blues music * Deep Blue (2001 film), ''Deep Blue'' (2001 film), a film by Dwight H. Little * Deep Blue (2003 ...

''. This was the first time that a program running on a consumer-level microcomputer defeated the mainframes that had previously dominated this event. In 1998, Fritz 5 was released including a Friend mode which would cause the engine to adjust its strength of play over the course of a game based on the level the opponent appeared to be playing. Fritz 5.32 was released soon after replacing the 16-bit architecture with a 32-bit one. In 2002, ''Deep Fritz'' drew the Brains in Bahrain match against

Vladimir Kramnik Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik (russian: Влади́мир Бори́сович Кра́мник; born 25 June 1975) is a Russian chess grandmaster. He was the Classical World Chess Champion from 2000 to 2006, and the undisputed World Chess Cha ...

4–4. Fritz 7, which was released that year, included the ability to play on the

Playchess Playchess is a commercial Internet chess server managed by ChessBase devoted to the play and discussion of chess and chess variants. As of February 2011, Playchess has over 31,000 players online, including many internationally titled players who ...

server. In November 2003, ''

X3D Fritz X3D Fritz was a version of the Fritz chess program, which in November 2003 played a four-game human–computer chess match against world number one Grandmaster Garry Kasparov. The match was tied 2–2, with X3D Fritz winning game 2, Kasparov win ...

'', a version of Deep Fritz with a 3D interface, drew a four-game match against

Garry Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born 13 April 1963) is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist and commentator. His peak rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by ...

. Fritz 8, which appeared around this time, provided a 3D Spanish room setting for games to take place. Fritz 9 added a 3D virtual opponent, the Turk. In 2004, Fritz 8 added a Handicap and Fun mode, allowing players to choose the Elo rating and style that the engine will use. Chessbase native engines can use the Handicap feature:

Chess Tiger Chess Tiger is a strong chess program developed by Christophe Théron which achieved a number of tournament successes between 2000-2002. Although still commercially available, the Windows version has not been developed recently so has largely hist ...

Crafty Crafty is a chess program written by UAB professor Dr. Robert Hyatt, with continual development and assistance from Michael Byrne, Tracy Riegle, and Peter Skinner. It is directly derived from Cray Blitz, winner of the 1983 and 1986 World Compu ...

, the Fritz engine, Hiarcs,

Houdini Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician ...

Junior Junior or Juniors may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * ''Junior'' (Junior Mance album), 1959 * ''Junior'' (Röyksopp album), 2009 * ''Junior'' (Kaki King album), 2010 * ''Junior'' (LaFontaines album), 2019 Films * ''Junior'' (1994 ...

, Shredder and Zappa. Some UCI engines can also make use of Handicap, eg.

Fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particu ...

and

Stockfish Stockfish is unsalted fish, especially cod, dried by cold air and wind on wooden racks (which are called "hjell" in Norway) on the foreshore. The drying of food is the world's oldest known preservation method, and dried fish has a storage lif ...

. On June 23, 2005, in the ABC Times Square studios, the ''AI

Accoona Accoona was an Dot-com company, internet company with offices in Jersey City, New Jersey, and Shanghai, China. Their main product was a search engine that claimed to use artificial intelligence to better understand searches. On June 23, 2005, in ...

Toolbar'', driven by a Fritz 9 prototype, drew against the then FIDE World Champion

Rustam Kasimdzhanov Rustam Kasimdzhanov; russian: Рустам Касымджанов (born 5 December 1979) is an Uzbek chess grandmaster and former FIDE World Champion (2004-05). He was Asian champion in 1998. In addition to his tournament play, Kasimdzhan ...

. From November 25 to December 5, 2006 ''Deep Fritz'' played a six-game match against Kramnik in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

. Fritz was able to win 4–2. In this match, Kramnik blundered away game 2, allowing a mate in one. On SSDF's September 2010 rating list, ''Deep Fritz 12'' placed sixth with a

rating A rating is an evaluation or assessment of something, in terms of quality, quantity, or some combination of both. Rating or ratings may also refer to: Business and economics * Credit rating, estimating the credit worthiness of an individual, c ...

of 3110, 135 points higher than Deep Junior 10.1, and 103 points lower than no. 1 ranked Deep Rybka 3 x64. ''Deep Fritz 11'' is eighth on the same list, with a rating of 3073. On the December 2010 edition of the CCRL rating list, ''Deep Fritz 12'' placed sixth with an Elo rating of 3088, 29 points higher than Deep Junior 11.1a x64, and 174 points lower than no. 1 ranked Deep Rybka 4 x64. ''Deep Fritz 11'' is also sixth on the same list, with a rating of 3097. Fritz has not kept up with modern advances, attaining only 14th on the 2013 CCRL rating list and not participating in any world championships since 2004. The 2013 release of Deep Fritz 14 switched engines from the original author Frans Morsch's to Pandix, written by Gyula Horváth. A long-time participant in world computer championships since 1984, Pandix was substantially rewritten in 2009, and has been a strong contender since then. Fritz 15 was released on November 25, 2015 with new features, including switching to Vasik Rajlich's famous

engine. Handicap and Fun mode was dropped, but there is now a function for pawn and piece handicaps (e.g. ceding pawn and move). Fritz 16 was released on November 12, 2017 with a new Easy game mode which provides for assisted calculation marking good moves with a green circle and bad moves with a red one. This version again uses the Rybka engine. Fritz 17 was released on November 12, 2019, and uses the Ginkgo engine. Fritz 18 was released on November 16, 2021. On March 30, 2022, Fritz 18 Neuronal was released that supplemented Fritz's handcrafted evaluation with a

efficiently updatable neural network An efficiently updatable neural network (NNUE, a Japanese wordplay on Nue, sometimes stylised as ƎUИИ) is a neural network-based evaluation function whose inputs are piece-square tables, or variants thereof like the king-piece-square table. NN ...

. In July 2021, the developers of the

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

chess engine filed a lawsuit against Chessbase alleging that Fat Fritz 2.0 is a derivative of Stockfish and is in violation of a "central obligation" of Stockfish's

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

. In November 2022, a settlement was reached in which was agreed that the license obligations of the GPL-3.0 for the products Fat Fritz 2 and Houdini 6 have not been complied with. In the future, Chessbase will comply with the license terms and to adequately inform the public about the use of the Stockfish software in its products.

The Fritz engine in other companies

The American company

Viva Media Encore Software, LLC ("Encore") is a Delaware limited liability company focused on software sales, distribution and software development. In November 2008, Encore announced an expanded license with Riverdeep. Under the terms of the agreement Encor ...

, now a division of

Encore, Inc. Encore Software, LLC ("Encore") is a Delaware limited liability company focused on software sales, distribution and software development. In November 2008, Encore announced an expanded license with Riverdeep. Under the terms of the agreement Encor ...

has been licensed to sell many versions of the Fritz engine and GUI combination. British game publisher Eidos Interactive (now part of

Square Enix Europe Square Enix Limited (formerly Domark Limited and Eidos Interactive Limited) is a British subsidiary of the Japanese video game company Square Enix, acting as their European publishing arm. The company formerly owned ''Tomb Raider'', which was in ...

) published Fritz 6 and 7. In 1998, the German company

Data Becker Data Becker GmbH & Co. KG was a German publisher of computer books and a company for software and computer accessories based in Düsseldorf. The company ceased operations in March 2014. History It was founded in Düsseldorf on January 7, 1981, ...

released the program 3D Schach Genie, containing the Shredder engine and Fritz interface. The German company Purple Hills sold Fritz 6 through 12 as Profi Schach 1 through 7. British Excalibur Publishing has published Fritz 9 through 14. American book publisher

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publ ...

featured the Fritz engine in their Extreme Chess program, as have German game publisher

TopWare Interactive TopWare Interactive – AC Enterprises e.K. is a German video game publisher based in Karlsruhe. The company is best known for publishing the '' Two Worlds'' series developed by its Reality Pump Studios division. History TopWare Interactive w ...

in their Battle vs. Chess game.

Fritz and Chesster

Fritz and Chesster is a series of introductory

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

programs based on the Fritz engine. Each program provides basic tutorials and games based on one aspect of chess, allowing children to learn the basic rules easily without overwhelming them with too many options at once. Games follow Prince Fritz, the son of

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

White, and his cousin Bianca, as Chesster the rat (among others) teaches them the fundamentals of chess so that they can defeat King Black. There are three programs available in the series: * ''Learn To Play Chess With Fritz and Chesster'' covers all the rules of chess, from basic moves to

castling Castling is a move in chess. It consists of moving the king two squares toward a rook on the same and then moving the rook to the square that the king passed over. Castling is permitted only if neither the king nor the rook has previously moved ...

and

stalemate Stalemate is a situation in the game of chess where the player whose turn it is to move is not in check and has no legal move. Stalemate results in a draw. During the endgame, stalemate is a resource that can enable the player with the inferior ...

. * ''Learn To Play Chess With Fritz and Chesster 2: Chess in the Black Castle'' covers

chess strategy Chess strategy is the aspect of chess play concerned with evaluation of chess positions and setting of goals and long-term plans for future play. While evaluating a position strategically, a player must take into account such factors as the relat ...

and

tactics Tactic(s) or Tactical may refer to: * Tactic (method), a conceptual action implemented as one or more specific tasks ** Military tactics, the disposition and maneuver of units on a particular sea or battlefield ** Chess tactics ** Political tact ...

chess opening A chess opening or simply an opening is the initial stage of a chess game. It usually consists of established theory; the other phases are the middlegame and the endgame. Many opening sequences have standard names such as the "Sicilian Defens ...

s, and endgames. * ''Learn To Play Chess With Fritz and Chesster, part 3: Chess for Winners'' contains opening schemes, tactics, recognizing

checkmate Checkmate (often shortened to mate) is any game position in chess and other chess-like games in which a player's king is in check (threatened with ) and there is no possible escape. Checkmating the opponent wins the game. In chess, the king is ...

s, endgame training, and

key square In chess, particularly in endgames, a key square (also known as a ''critical square'') is a square such that if a player's king can occupy it, he can force some gain such as the promotion of a pawn or the capture of an opponent's pawn. Key squar ...

Reception

The editors of ''

Computer Games Magazine ''Computer Games Magazine'' was a monthly computer and console gaming print magazine, founded in October 1988 as the United Kingdom publication ''Games International''. During its history, it was known variously as ''Strategy Plus'' (October 1 ...

'' nominated ''Fritz 6'' for their 2000 "Classic Game of the Year" award.

References

External links