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Chess Combination and ChessBase

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Mike Valvo

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Jan 8, 1990, 9:55:27 AM1/8/90
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(1-203-367-1555 Al Henderson) for two years and I am reasonably
satisfied. I received their magazine for one year, NIC Yearbooks
for two years, and their service of 500 games twenty times a year
over this past year.

I have had two problems, both of which were corrected through a phone
call to the above number (which I got via the USCF).

1. Yearbook 10 games were unreadable. Henderson sent
me a replacement copy.

2. Games service #19 was in NIC format (which I do not
have and NOT in ChessBase format). The following
issue (#20) had ChessBase #19 games (I suppose a
lot of people had this problem).

I do have minor complaints. Some games were slopply entered. There
are obvious mistakes any reasonable chess player would spot (hanging
pieces, clear entry mistakes of other kinds). Also I received some
disks in ChessBase I format instead of ChessBase II and had to convert
them (a minor inconvience).

All in all, I am happy.

ChessBase 2.3 is (to me) clearly the best chess database (?) around.
True, it is not a real database. They should be able to do some of
the things Bookup 7 does (picking up transpositions). But I can get
at the information I want and presumably things will get better.

The thing that kills me though, is their copy protection. I have two
copies of ChessBase 2.24 (CGA for my Laptop and Hercules for my 386),
and I was unable to install either on my hard disk. Supposedly it
works by reading the oscillator on the mother board making measurements.
Max Dlugy told me he can't get his to install either (T3200). As a
result, I have to keep use a floppy (key disk approach) every time I
want to use the system.

Another problem people are going to run into is duplicate games.
Chess Base can't recognize them. I have a copy of John Nunn's utility
which can be used to get rid of them. I know of other utilities, but
I don't know of any that are commercially available.

--Mike Valvo

jupak...@cc.helsinki.fi

unread,
Jan 10, 1990, 4:01:43 PM1/10/90
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>
> ChessBase 2.3 is (to me) clearly the best chess database (?) around.
> True, it is not a real database. They should be able to do some of
> the things Bookup 7 does (picking up transpositions). But I can get
> at the information I want and presumably things will get better.
> want to use the system.

..deleted...

>
> Another problem people are going to run into is duplicate games.
> Chess Base can't recognize them. I have a copy of John Nunn's utility
> which can be used to get rid of them. I know of other utilities, but
> I don't know of any that are commercially available.
>
> --Mike Valvo

Unfortunately there seems to be lots of bugs in the 2.3, and i mean
SERIOUS bugs which will usually HALT your system completely, and
because of the stupid file handling you can easily lost your
whole base. Also the dublicate games can be quite a headache, since
the Nunn utilities for some reason cant recognize them all.

The NICBase maybe isn't as versatile as ChessBase but it's much
easier to operate AND especially easier to maintain. Also if you
have big (20000 ->) base you can benefit from the Complete NIC key
which has over 10 000 classified positions, ChessBases biggest
keyfile, Informator IV only has about yhe half of it.

Jukka Pakkanen

ps. Also the price difference
is remarkable !

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