Rybka

A club member asked me recently whether he should buy Fritz 10 to upgrade from Fritz 8. I suggested that he would get more bang for the buck by purchasing instead another engine: either Shredder or Rybka (both of which will work in your familiar ChessBase interface). You can get Rybka either from the Rybkachess website or from Convekta (likely elsewhere as well); it is widely recommended as the best chess engine.

Peter Doggers recently posted a commentary on just how superior Rybka is (it's rated at least 100 points higher than its nearest competitor). He includes a brilliant Shredder-Rybka game to illustrate its ability to see material sacrifices. You can see a great illustration of its endgame technique in the game Rybka-Christiansen at Goran's website. And more of Rybka's games can be seen at Chessgames.com.

I think I know another present I want from Santa....