I played against FRITZ 10 with reduced strength of about 2000ELO. Two games I played as white were finished pretty quickly and machine won both of them fairly quickly. I was kind of surprised that 2000 ELO Fritz plays on master’s level. To check how good is “handicapped” 2000 Fritz 10 really is I set up a game Chessmaster 10^th  (2200) vs.  Fritz 10 (2000). And guess what, FRITZ dominated the game but later it did a mistake and following position occurred:

ChessMaster10 (2200) - FRITZ 10 (2026)

                           BLACK TO MOVE

The funny thing is that even though Fritz (black) is like 10 points up it is a dead draw since there is no way for black king to escape from white rook’s checks without capturing it. But if it does it’s a stalemate because white king has nowhere to go. I was shocked that Chessmaster tricked Fritz 10 this way; Fritz looked far more superior during the whole game.  The result: DRAW. After I watched that game I decided to play 1800 Fritz myself and won it with confidence. Here is the endgame position we had:

Yury Markushin (1601) - FRITZ 10 (1800)

                              white to move

I (white) queened first and after the queen exchange I was 2 pawns up and won easily.  I will play 1900 Fritz tomorrow.