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Fritz 5.32
English Instructions
ChessBase GmbH
Mexikoring 35
D-22204 Hamburg
http://www.chessbase.com
Tel: (49) 40 630 9060-0
Fax: (49) 40 630 1282
English Instructions
Fritz5.32 is the 32Bit version of the famous chess software Fritz5. The program preserves the
unique dynamic playing style of Fritz5 while profiting from the 32Bit environment to gain
playing strength. Porting to 32Bit has made the graphical interface faster and leaner as well.
Finally Fritz5.32 profits from the accelerated 32Bit database access of ChessBase 7.0.
This leaflet describes the new functions and is an add-on to the main Fritz5 manual. New in
comparison with Fritz5.00:
1. Improved 32Bit engine by Frans Morsch ***** 2. 32Bit integration and long file name support. ***** 3. 32Bit Engines Comet, Crafty, Doctor? 3.0 and EXchess included. ***** 4. Historic Fritz engines and opening books included (e.g. Hongkong) **** 5. Improved opening book. **** 6. Automatic engine tournaments. **** 7. �Pondering� in engine matches on dual processor boards. **** 8. Full elo management with start list generation, and GM/IM norms. **** 9. Cross table display. **** 10. Spy function for beginners. **** 11. Compare analysis of different engines (uses colored variations). **** 12. Human time bonus in Blitz and Fischer mode. *** 13. Printing in colour. *** 14. Next best move. *** 15. Improved correspondence analysis. *** 16. Material balance display in notation. *** 17. Game minimum for book lines. *** 18. Test suite management: Delete single engine results, paste results into Excel. *** 19. Node speed display. *** 20. Elapsed move time display. *** 21. Contempt value, aggressivity and selectivy configurable in Fritz5.32 engine *** 22. Lock analysis engine/goto lock position. *** 23. Coloured variations in notation *** 24. New notation format (ChessBase7.0 style) *** 25. Support of ChessBase 7.0 database text functions *** 26. Unlimited copying of games *** 27. New mate engine with heuristic search *** 28. Scroll main line: every new variation/only new moves. *** 29. Two line best variation display (full history) *** 30. Variation board. *** 31. Search games with board position by one click in notation. *** 32. Search for annotations. *** 33. Doubling in rated games. *** 34. New true type fonts. *** 35. Improved PGN conversion **
36. Clip analysis. ** 37. Fast engine switch in watch mode. ** 38. Truncate game/delete remaining moves. ** 39. Delete all commentary/delete thinking time and evaluationcommentary. ** 40. Set annotation medals. ** 41. Set annotations before moves. ** 42. Improved engine loading and hash table configuration. ** 43. Endgame database QQ-Q added (less evaluation errors from EGRom) ** 44. Faster start up of program ** 45. Color coding of rising/falling evaluation in variation display ** 46. Online registration. ** 47. Engine logos ** 48. Append games to database. ** 49. Configurable resigning * 50. Change notation/game list/search info font * 51. Show clocks in analysis. * 52. Configurable print header. * 53. Windows background colours in notation, game list and search info display. * 54. Enter machine name in user dialog for test sets, engine matches, etc. * 55. Auto232 support for all engines * 56. Import EPD. * The CD furthermore includes the original programs Fritz3(DOS) and Fritz5(16BitWindows).
Installation
Please run Setup.exe from the Fritz CD.
Fritz5.32 and other ChessBase programs use several common files (e.g. for the
engines). Please install Fritz5.32 in a folder ChessBase. Example:
C:\Program files\ChessBase\Fritz532.
The installation will then create an external engine folder
C:\Program files\ChessBase\Engines
Playing and Fun
Human time bonus in Blitz games If you play Blitz against Fritz, you can give yourself more time than the program. This
makes sense: You play in a competitive setting with time control, the engine is not
handicapped but nevertheless leaves you the chance to achieve something by
concentrated play:
In the above example, the engine gets five minutes per game, while the human bonus
is ten minutes, adding up to a total of 15 minutes. Furthermore you can give yourself a
Fischer-style bonus for each move.
Spy Menu Coach. The spy indicates with a red arrow what Fritz is planning to do with his
next move. A very useful feature for beginners to avoid dropping pieces.
�Doubling� in rated games Did you ever play chess for money? Than you know what �doubling� means: You
leave your opponent the choice between resigning or continuing at double stake. In the
beginning, each side may double. After that, doubling goes alternate. If your opponent
doubles and you accept, only you may double again, now offering to play for the
fourfold sum.
Control resigning In menu Setup � General Options, you can specify the resigning behaviour of the
engine: The choice is Never � late � early. Sometimes you may prefer to mate the
bastard. In engine matches/tournaments, early resigning saves a lot of time. The
engine gives up when its evaluation is worse than -4.5 three times in a row.
Analysis
Improved correspondence analysis The correspondence analysis is meant for in-depth investigation of a single position
which is of course not limited to correspondence chess. There are now two parameters
in addition to Fritz5:
Extra time at root. If you want the engine to analyse the first move longer than the
others, add a value here. Say you set a time of 3,600 secs. This will cause the analysis
to search each move for one hour. The overall analysis would then take 24h,
depending on your branching and variation length. Now add e.g. 14,000 secs for the
root, extending the whole analysis by another four hours or so.
Extra depth at root. If you work with search depths rather than times, this is the
analogous parameter.
Branching: White, Black, Both
You can limit the branching to white or black moves. Say you want to find the optimal
line for white and you are not interested to look at alternatives, that is you want to
�prove� something in the position. Then you select branching = Black. If you want to
explore White�s possibilities but for the purpose of clarity you would like to see only
the best answer of Black, you select branching = White.
Next best move In Watch mode, click right in the search info window and chose next best move. This
forces the engine to suppress the currently analysed move and to look at the next best.
This feature is only supported by the engines Fritz3, 4, 5, and 5.32.
Opening Book
The standard opening book of Fritz has been enhanced: Many lines are longer, while
new material from 1997 and 1998 was added. It is compiled exclusively from games
played in human tournaments. There are no engine-specific variations or weights
because it is intended for use with all Fritz engines which don�t have an own book,
e.g. Comet, Crafty, Doctor? and EXchess. Therefore the book is now called
GENERAL.CTG.
The engine will leave the book if less than a certain number of non-won games have
been played with the current variation. You can change this value under Book Options
(F4). The default value of Game Minimum is two. This means that Fritz will by default
not follow a line which has been played only once in a human game � unless the game
was won for the side in question.
Engine Research Operating System (EROS)
Many functions in Fritz5.32 constitute a kind of operating system for researching the
strength and playing characteristics of chess engines:
a) Play matches and tournaments
b) Automatically maintain elo lists
c) Compare general analysis
d) Measure and compare solving times in test positions
e) Publish your research data: Paste test set results, elo lists and tournament tables
into spread sheets like Excel.
Fritz 5.32 comes with ten different engines. There are additional top engines available
at moderate prices, e.g. Hiarcs, Junior and Nimzo.
Engines in the Fritz5.32 package: • Fritz5.32 (32Bit) by Frans Morsch
• Comet A96 (32Bit) by Dr. Ulrich Türke
• Crafty 15-20 (32Bit) by Prof. Robert Hyatt
• Doctor? 3.0 (32Bit) by Dr. Hans-Joachim Kraas and Dr. Günter Schrüfer
• Doctor? 2.0 (16Bit) by Dr. Hans-Joachim Kraas and Dr. Günter Schrüfer
• EXChess 2.50 (32Bit) by Dan Homan
• Fritz5 (16Bit) by Frans Morsch
• Fritz4.01 (16Bit) by Frans Morsch
• Fritz3.10 (16Bit) by Frans Morsch
• Fritz1.20 (16Bit) by Frans Morsch
16Bit engines do not run under Windows NT. Furthermore Fritz is prepared for the
Hiarcs6 engine. If you own Hiarcs6, please copy the file Hiarcs6.dll from your
Hiarcs6 disk into C:\Program files\ChessBase\Engines. If you installed
Fritz to a different folder, look for the engines folder there.
Note: the old Fritz engines and the 16Bit Doctor? 2.0 are not automatically installed. If
you want to use them, please select them in the custom installation or copy them from
the folder History on the CD. Here you will also find all original books (Fritz1.fbk,
Fritz3.fbk, Fritz4.fbk) and the never-published book which Fritz3 used when winning
the World Championship in Hongkong ahead of Deep Blue.
Do not copy the old file Hiarcs6.eng into the new engines folder. It is not
compatible to Fritz5.32.
Engine tournaments The previous Fritz versions supported matches between two engines. However there is
a peculiar effect in computer chess: Program A might do very well against B but score
badly against C who loses regularly against B, something nearly impossible with
human players. To estimate playing strength, one has to match a program against a
wide variety of opponents. So the optimal way to rank chess engines is to play round
robin tournaments.
Fritz5.32 does this fully automatic. You invite some engines with opening books to a
tournament, set a time control and leave the computer alone. If you need the machine,
a tournament can be interrupted and continued later.
Select New Tournament in the Engine Research menu:
Press Invite Engine to add a new engine. Specify hash size and an openings book. You
can modify the settings of an engine by clicking Edit. To set one opening book or one
hash size for all participants, click Unify book and Unify hash. Tournaments will
always be round robin. Cycles means the number of games an engine will play against
another. A standard tournament has one cycle � more cycles take more time but
decrease the statistical fluctuations.
If you would like to take part yourself, click Invite human. When you have time to
play a game, open the tournament and click Next human game. Or press Ctrl-Shift-H
in the main screen.
In case you maintain an elo list for your engines (see Elo management, page 14), click
Link elo list. This will set all elo numbers for the engines to their ratings in this list.
Whenever your computer is free to play games from the tournament, call Open
tournament from the Engine Research menu and click Run/continue.
Compare analysis This function is useful both for �normal� chess interest and engine research. You have
a game (or position) and let it get analysed by different engines. Each engine annotates
each move with its own variation and search parameters. This highlights differences
between engines. This means also a valuable analysis tool because the different
engines open new perspectives for understanding a game.
In engine research it is interesting to compare two versions of one engine. In the above
example Fritz5.00 and Fritz5.32 are chosen. Direct version comparison is best done
with a fixed search depth, rather than time. If you try this yourself, you will find that
the evaluation of those two engines are in general quite similar while the search itself
often works differently. Activate node count to see how many positions the engine has
searched for the current version. If you add a new engine, you can specify a Variation
color to distinguish its analysis from the other engines.
Support for dual processor boards under NT Engine matches on a standard computer lack one interesting aspect: Pondering
(thinking in the opponents time) is not possible since the single processor is busy with
the other engine. However on a Windows NT dual processor board you can play
engine matches with pondering enabled. Each engine will simply get its own
processor.
Node speed If you have a higher screen resolution (1024*768) or if you select a small chess board
the info window will display a node counter. Click on the counter field to switch
between node speed display (positions per second) or total count. A value of 200kN/s
means that the engine looks at 200,000 positions per second. Node speed is not a
criterion for playing strength � the very strong and very slow Hiarcs is the best counter
example.
Fast switch between different analysis engines If you load more than one engine (Levels � Load engine) in analysis mode, you can
quickly switch between the engines by clicking on the name of the current engine (or
the name of the current book) in the search info window. Keyboard shortcut: Alt-F3.
Auto232 device driver You can connect two Fritzes on different computers with a serial cable (null modem)
to play against each other. Call Load device in Setup (Shift-Alt-J). Activate the
Auto232 driver and specify the COM port for your serial cable. Do the same on the
other computer.
To start a game, call Engine vs. device (Levels � Computer chess) or press Ctrl-Alt-J.
You need the original Fritz5 CD in your CD drive for Auto232 games.
Historical note: The CD contains the old engines Fritz1, 3 and 4 with their original
openings books. You can use those engines for autoplaying as well.
Engine parameters of the Fritz5.32 engine
Contempt value (default = 15)
A positive contempt value lets the program prefer a bad position over a draw
by repetition of moves. A negative contempt value lets the program show
respect. It assumes a strong opponent and accepts a draw by repetition of
moves even in a better position. The contempt value is measured in 1/100
pawns.
Aggressiveness (default = 0)
Influences the playing style. Negative aggressiveness will lead to passive play.
Selectivity (default = 2)
Denotes the number of plies reduced by the null-move. A value of zero means
that the null-move is switched off. Higher selectivity tends to inflict tactical
blindness. A value of three should give about the same playing strength but
will considerably change the playing characteristics.
Engine parameters of the Crafty 15-20 engine
No tricks
Activates code to evade typical horizon attacking tricks of human players. This
evolved out of Bob Hyatts year-long experience with grandmasters who played
Crafty on the internet chess servers. A typical human attacking scheme would
be the opening of the h-file by 1.Ng5 h6 2.h4! Switch off when playing
computers.
Computer opponent
Deactivates the draw evasion strategies of Crafty. Switch on when playing
computers.
Enhanced User Interface
Search info window Click with the right mouse button into the search info window in analysis mode. The
search info window contains the calculated lines. This opens a menu:
Lock
A locked engine continues to analyse its current position when the board
position changes. An unlocked engine would start analysing the new position.
Goto lock position
Jumps to the position where the engine has been locked.
More/less lines
Increases/decreases the number of best variations an engine looks at in
analysis.
Next best move
Calculates the next best move in single-line mode (only supported by the Fritz
engines).
Threat
Calculates the threat (or the threats if in multivariation mode).
Clip analysis
Copies the lines in the search info window to the windows clipboard so that
they might get pasted into a text document.
Scroll main line
If activated, the best line is displayed as a scrolling list. If the evaluation rises
or drops continuously, the best line is displayed in green (rising) or red (falling
evaluation).
Scroll new moves
Scrolls the main line only if the best move changes. This is the most instructive
setting.
Variation board
Displays the end position of the current best variation in a small diagram
besides the variation window.
Extra search info
Switches the scrolling main line to two-line display. The second line contains
evaluation, current search depth, time spent and Kilonodes (positions
calculated in 1000�s).
The engines Fritz5.00 and Fritz5.32 show the current load of the hash tables. Most
other engines do not support this. They display the elapsed move time instead.
Notation window Click right in the notation window to open a menu with annotation and other
functions:
Search games
Searches in the current database for all games containing the position after the
move you clicked on.
Promote line
Promotes a variation to main variation.
Delete line
Deletes the line you clicked on.
Delete remaining moves
Deletes all moves after the clicked one.
Truncate moves
Deletes all moves before the current position which now becomes the starting
position.
Delete all commentary
Deletes all variations and comments.
Delete thinking time/evaluations.
Removes the thinking time and evaluation/search depth commentary which
Fritz stores in the game notation (if set in General config).
Text before move
Multilingual text annotation before the clicked move.
Text after move
Multilingual text annotation after the clicked move.
Variation color
Sets a highlight color for the current variation and all its subvariations.
Set mark
Annotate a move with �!�, etc.
Set evaluation
Evaluate the position with �=�, �+=�, etc.
Diagram (print)
Set a diagram marker. If you print this game, a diagram will be embedded for
this position.
Material
Activates the material balance display.
Font
Select a notation font. Fritz comes with two new sets of TrueType fonts:
FigurineCB AriesSP and FigurineCB TimeSP.
Clocks in analysis If you prefer to see the clock in analysis mode, uncheck Hide clock in analysis in
Setup � Screen layout. Normally the clock just wastes space which is better used for
the game notation. If you examine the engine in test position you might however be
interested to see how much time has elapsed.
Printing
Call menu Setup � Print parameter to select printing of game notations in colour or to
specify header lines for the print outs.
Database functions
Search for annotations Since many Fritz functions put annotations into games, the search mask now supports
filtering out of games with certain annotations. You could e.g. look for all �??� (set by
the blunder check annotation) or all critical middlegame positions (set in an engine
match at strongly differing evaluations). Or you could find training questions inserted
by the natural language analysis.
Copying games The 16Bit limitations of Fritz5 have been overcome. You can now select and copy an
arbitrary number of games with Shift-Cursor-Down in the database window.
Append games Click right in the database window to call Append games. Select a database and all
games from this database will be added to the current game list.
Cross tables Click on the first game of a tournament in the game list. Then click right and select
Cross table. Fritz generates a cross table for the tournament. Also useful for engine
tournaments and matches.
Import EPD The EPD format is a historic format used to store test positions for chess programs. If
you have never heard about it, you may safely ignore it � the PGN format is much
more flexible as an independent format between different chess programs. This
function imports all positions of an EPD file and appends them to the current database.
Database window font Click right on the game list to change the font. Fritz comes with two new sets of
TrueType fonts: FigurineCB AriesSP and FigurineCB TimeSP.
Elo management
Elo numbers express the playing strength of chess players. Matches and tournaments
played between chess engines require elo evaluation to produce ranking lists. Fritz5.32
contains a complete elo list management. If you have an existing elo list, you can
evaluate a tournament on its basis and the list will be updated accordingly. IM and GM
norms are automatically detected and titles awarded. The question is: How to get an
elo list?
Creating an elo start list Unix father and computer chess pioneer Ken Thompson suggested an algorithm to
create an elo list out of an arbitrary games database. Treat the database as one huge
tournament: Each player gets the same starting elo (e.g. 2400) which enables the
calculation of a tournament performance for everybody. In the next step one puts in
this performance value as starting value to create new and more exact performances.
After a couple of rounds the elo numbers converge to stable values.
The absolute values of the elo numbers thus gained depend on the start values and are
not determined by the algorithm. One therefore has to gauge the list, i.e. to add or
substract a single constant value to everybody. If you do it for humans, take a stable
player like Dr. John Nunn. Add an offset to your list so that John Nunn gets his usual
2600.
Elo management in Fritz is motivated by the engine tournaments, however you can
easily process human results as well. It is e.g. quite exciting to create elo lists for
historical game data. However correct and unified spelling of player names is
absolutely crucial for this. So elo lists will work only with the high-quality databases
from ChessBase (e.g. MegaDatabase99), because most other databases contain player
names of very different spellings. Moreover game selections which do not contain
complete tournaments distort ratings.
For engines, a good start list should be based on 300-500 games at time controls not
faster than 25� Blitz on a 233MMX. Errors in the start list are no big problem because
after a few tournaments the engines will approach their correct values.
To create an elo start list, select the games in the database window which should be
used for calculation. If you want to take the whole database, press CTRL-A. Click
right and call Create elo start list. Note: The start list needs a minimum number of
games per player. If the density is not high enough (database too small or too many
players), creation will fail.
The program will ask you for a file name. If you take an existing elo list, its contents
will be overwritten. After the calculation, you have to gauge the list. The algorithm
assumes that the average elo of the players in the database is 2400. If this is not the
case, the elos numberst will all be too low or too high. Click on Gauge and enter a
correction offset.
Immediately after creation of a start list, the number of games processed per player is
shown. As soon as you gauge the list or start adding tournaments, this figure is
replaced by the number of games from new tournaments (initially zero).
Viewing an existing elo list (Ctrl-Shift-V) In the menu Engine Research, select View elo list:
Click Clip to copy the whole list in tabbed format to the Windows clipboard. You
could then e.g. paste it into a spread sheet. Use Shift/Ctrl-Click to select players and
press Delete, to remove them from the list.
Click Tournaments to open an inventory of all tournaments evaluated for this list.
With a fresh start list, this will be empty.
For elo calculation, tournaments are processed in chronologically weighted order:
More recent tournaments weigh heavier than older ones. You can enable/disable
selected tournaments temporarily to see their influence on the total list. A disabled
tournament will not be used for rating calculation.
Elo evaluating new games To rate the games of a tournament or match, select them in the list. Click right and call
Add to elo list. You can rate single games. For GM and IM norms a minimum of six
rated games per tournament is required. If a player scores three norms, a title is noted
in the main list.
Fritz Engine for ChessBase 7.0
For CB7 older than October 1998, please copy the file
Fritz532.eng
from ChessBase\Engines
into the folder ChessBase\CB70\Engines.
If your CB7 is younger than October 1998, it will automatically detect the engine
folder ChessBase\Engines created by Fritz5.32 and use the engines from this
folder. If you now miss an engine in CB7 which was available before the installation
of Fritz (=before switching to the new engine folder), please copy it manually from
ChessBase\CB70\Engines to ChessBase\Engines. This is usually the case
for the Cdrom400.eng (Access of endgame databases).
