I have to admit my inner chess geek got a bit excited when I heard Chessmaster is coming to Xbox Live.  I naturally downloaded the demo and after playing a couple matches decided to buy the game for $10 or 800 MS points.  I'd have to say the games is not as feature rich as the chessmaster games I played as a kid but has a few puzzle modes, typical AI vs mode with a lot of opponents and then there is Xbox Live support for online matches.

Last night I just played a couple matches against the computer.  I've never really played matches where you had to complete your moves in a set amount of time so I lost my first match on time even though I was dominating my opponent.  Going forward I adjusted the time so that I didn't have to worry about being rushed.

There seems to be tons of AI opponents in the game ranging in skill from absolute novice to of course Chessmaster.  Still I think there might have been around 100 different AI opponents all with different styles.  They also all have a picture next to them so you can see someone.  It was kind of funny because my wife came down and thought I was playing chess against a little girl.

So far I've played four matches and only lost one because of time.  I ended up spending an couple hours playing chess last night after the debate.  It even made me forget about Assassin's Creed for a little while.

Note:  This is now the 99th game I've played on my Xbox 360 in just under 2 years.  A whole lot of those are XBLA demos but I'd bet over half of them are retail games I've played.  My gamerscore is sitting just under 30,000 right now and I should break that barrier this weekend when I complete Assassin's Creed.