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ChessBase (or NIC-Base) - any users?

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John Richards

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Jun 20, 1990, 5:07:03 AM6/20/90
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I've recently bought ChessBase and am delighted with it. (For those who
don't know: ChessBase is a chess database. It can be used to store
thousands of games which can be indexed by player or opening variation. The
games can be played through on screen and variations explored. NIC-Base is
a very similar product from 'New In Chess'.)

Are there any other users out there reading this? I would be interested to
hear other people's experiences and views, and any related news. If people
have interesting non-copyrighted databases, it might be possible to set up
some form of distribution via e-mail or news.

So if you're out there and using ChessBase or NIC-Base, make yourself
known. If there are too few of us to justify filling up this newsgroup, we
can always shift to e-mail.

--
John Richards

Venkatachalam Baladhandapani

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Jun 22, 1990, 2:01:29 PM6/22/90
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Hi Guys!

In article <51...@newton.praxis.co.uk>, jo...@praxis.co.uk (John Richards) writes:
> I've recently bought ChessBase and am delighted with it. (For those who
> don't know: ChessBase is a chess database. It can be used to store
> thousands of games which can be indexed by player or opening variation. The
> games can be played through on screen and variations explored. NIC-Base is
> a very similar product from 'New In Chess'.)
>

I would like to know a related info. I have heard that the
chess base and the NIC-base are also published in book form,
and are available. I do not know who publishes them and
whom to contact to get them.

Can anybody help me in this regard? Any info. will be
very much appreciated.

Thank You,
-Bala.

M Valvo

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Jun 22, 1990, 10:11:59 AM6/22/90
to

I am a user and have been for a couple of years. I also subscribe to the
quick service from NIC which provides about 500 games 20 times a years for
both ChessBase and NIC-Base.

This is probably a good time to compare these two products as well as
Bookup7. I can't really talk about NIC-Base since I don't own it, but it
has some interesting features that I noticed when it was demo-ed to me.

I'll start off the comparison by injecting my own subjective comments:

1. ChessBase is clearly the dominemt product among the three.
Especially in price. ChessBase runs about $260, while NIC-Base
costs $130. I don't know Bookup7's price, but I think it falls
into the under $100 category.

2. Duplicate games are a big headache for both ChessBase and NIC-Base,
especially if you share games with friends. There are several
duplicate killers in existence, but I have not heard of one that
is close to 100% effective. There are several algorithyms: Some use
external information and/or exact same moves. If you have the exact
same game that originated from the same source, it will be found.
If two different sources provide the games, you will find that their
naming conventions differ considerably. AND (big surprise!), the
game's moves often differ both by game length and moves made.

Bookup7 has no such problem. It is a true database that picks up
all transpositions. It pays a big price in space, though. If I
recall correctly from a comment from Mike Leahy, it requires about
40 bytes per move. ChessBase and NIC-Base are around one byte per
move.

3. ChessBase does not (version 2.1) currently accept ASCII data. This
is a big pain in the neck. Bookup7 does, but has limitations: It
will not import comments nor will it accept variations (ChessBase
style) in a single game.

4. ChessBase goes to great pains to protect game databases. If, for
example, you get Informata games from someone else, they will
appear as 'alien data' when you attempt to load that game. That is
because Informata games are sold with your ChessBase serial number
embedded in the game score. I believe Freidel, the owner of ChessBase
told me they were going to get away from protecting games in future
releases.

5. I have an interest in publishing books that incorporate one or more
of these programs. At the present time, Bookup7 comes the closest
of the three to be viable as an instruction tool. They identify
every position, so it is possible to tell someone to go to the
position in question. Also, you can create quizes by making the
choices as invisible alternatives that come alive when the user
tries the move. It has an extensive commentary area (must be about
5000 bytes per move; ChessBase supports 4 lines).

6. ChessBase will be getting into desk top publishing in a big way in
its next release. Bookup7 has an interesting relationship with
Zarkov that will do diagrams in a fancy way.

7. Bookup7 in combination with Zarkov allows you to peruse your
database and then switch to Zarkov to analyze the position. You
have to exit Bookup7 to do this. I hope we will see windowing
capability in the future that will permit concurrent activity.

In my setup, I use ChessBase for inputting of information because it has
such a good user interface. It automatically will guess the moves when you
use a mouse, so about 30% of the time you only need to click the from
square. The rest of the time, you must drag and release (i. e. click). Then
I export games and use ChessBase's ability to convert games to ASCII. The
pain here is entering comments into Bookup7, which has a dreadful user
inputting interface.

Statistics:

1. It is claimed by some that 150,000 games are in computer readable
form.

2. I personally have about 80,000 games (including duplicates which
numbered about 30% before I ran John Nunn's ChessBase utility and
I guess are now still about 5% more).

3. Games by years that I have:

1990 - 2000 games
1989 - 18000 games
1988 - 14000 games
1960-1987 about 30,000 games

The rest I have yet to organize.

--Mike Valvo

John Richards

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Jun 26, 1990, 4:22:11 AM6/26/90
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In article <12...@granjon.UUCP> m...@granjon.UUCP (M Valvo) writes:
>
>3. ChessBase does not (version 2.1) currently accept ASCII data. This
> is a big pain in the neck.

Nor does ChessBase 2.3. It is definitely a pain in the neck. However,
there is one possibility: ChessBase has an option for accepting data
from a Saitek chess computer with sensory board. The board plugs into
the serial port and you move the pieces around which somehow sends data
to ChessBase. (I don't know if this is new in version 2.3).

I've never tried it but, if you knew what the protocol was, you might be
able to rig something up which pretended to be a Saitek board and pumped
ASCII data up the line. Does anyone know whether this is possible?

--
John Richards

Jarmo Sorvari

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Jul 5, 1990, 4:17:15 PM7/5/90
to

In article <12...@granjon.UUCP> m...@granjon.UUCP (M Valvo) writes:

I am a user and have been for a couple of years. I also subscribe to the
quick service from NIC which provides about 500 games 20 times a years for
both ChessBase and NIC-Base.

This is probably a good time to compare these two products as well as
Bookup7. I can't really talk about NIC-Base since I don't own it, but it
has some interesting features that I noticed when it was demo-ed to me.

.
.
.

I would like to get more information on Bookup 7. I have Bookup 1.3
for the Macintosh, and it is very different from ChessBase and NICbase
in at least one respect: there is only one search key, namely
position. It cannot do things like: "Give me a list of games that
start with moves xxx...", "Give me a list of games played by xxx...",
etc. Things I would like very much, but cannot have, since there is
no version of ChessBase nor of NICbase for the Macintosh.

Bookup 1.3 for the Macintosh can only do "Given this position, give me
all the moves that were played in it". It does not have many bells
and whistles, as they say.

Is Bookup 7 (apparently for the PC) different? Does it have more
search keys? Are there versions newer than 1.3 for the Macintosh? Do
they have more features?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
! Jarmo Sorvari Control Engineering Laboratory !
! ja...@tut.fi Tampere University of Technology !
--------------------------------------- BOX 527, 33101 Tampere, Finland -----
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
! Jarmo Sorvari Control Engineering Laboratory !
! ja...@tut.fi Tampere University of Technology !
--------------------------------------- BOX 527, 33101 Tampere, Finland -----

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