Re: Chess Fritz Powerbook 2013 648 Mb Utorrent
Vinnie Breidenthal
The Hiarcs Tournament Book is stronger. It combines the best of games from GMs,Computer Play, & strong correspondence games. It is an annual subscription service which updates the book quarterly. There are very strong titled players who rely upon this service in their study and preparation. The Fritz Powerbook consists of only games from strong humans.
The Fritz Powerbook 2022 contains 25 millions opening positions, derived from 1,7 million high class tournament games. Hiarcs15dBook (April 2022) contains 32'736'668 positions and 2'002'736 variations. In my opinion they are very similar. Both are based on high quality human games. Both Hiarcs and Chessbase have other books, stronger ones, that are based only on GM games. And if you want a book to make the engine work easier, then you need an opening book based on engine games. Such books are very strong, but not suitable for practicing chess openings.
@Ekrabin, these books are based on the same games. Therefore, there are no big differences. Hiarcs book contains slightly more positions, but this does not mean that those additional positions are very strong.
The Hiarcs powerbook is a Combination of strong human games, computer games, and correspondence games according to GM Kaufman in his review of the product. He wrote the resulting tree info is not the same as featured in the Chessbase Powerbook. I am quoting Kaufman, who is besides a GM an authority on computer chess and opening books. Also examine the HanSchut blog for Hiarcs Pro wherein he discusses the superiority of the Hiarcs Books. The blog is available for review here at chess.com
Not true with respect to the Hiarcs book. It is updated as a subscription service quarterly. If you go in chess.com to the blog by Hanshut he details this. My comments are based upon what I have read from Kaufman and Schut. And truthfully the importance of a powerbook in general is in relation to the strength of the player. Below say 2000 honestly it doesn't matter a lot imo.
That said, now that I got one, finally, I have a question about Chessbase and Fritz "stuff". Specifically, what exactly are Powerbases and Powerbooks? It looks like there are about a dozen openings per year. Items like the following:
Just to name a few. What is the purpose of these? What is the difference between a powerbase and a powerbook? Are they meant to work together in tandem? Are they nothing more than databases of unannotated games of a specific opening that you could find in any database?
Anybody that has used these before - are they useful? Are they worth paying for? Are they beginner level and meant for openings you are learning for the first time? Or are they more meant to be for players that already know the opening like the back of their hand and is advanced level additional study material?
Powerbook. It's a much larger opening book which isn't "tuned" to favor the way a computer program plays chess. If you load Powerbook as your chess program's default opening book, you're going to see your chess engine play a much wider array of openings than it plays with its normal opening book which comes with the program.
Powerbooks are only pure opening books that show moves and win percentages (like the opening explorerer here on chess.com). High level human and engine games are included. I guess that can be interesting for serious correspondence players or engine matches, but you can simply create similar books on your own. Just download games for free and convert them to the book format.
Powerbases are databases with only human games (2300+ or whatever) played in that opening. Mostly unannotated but a few hundred will be annotated. The same games that are also annotated in the normal Mega Database.
Thanks for the thorough response. Definitely interesting. It does sound like those programs are a bit of a waste. I mean, with the mega database or big database, it is not hard to search for McCutchen games. Search C12-C12. Winawer? C15-C19. Etc.
What is in Chessbase 15 that is not in Fritz other than the Mega Database (if I understand correctly, does Fritz 17 not come with the Big Database (all unannotated)? I think I also read that it has a bunch of structured repertoires and you can build your own.
The big difference and only advantage of the Fritz 17 software is that you can play against the computer. In chessbase you can't. Beside that the Fritz 17 software is like a lite version of Chessbase.
I don't have Fritz 17 so I can't tell the exact differences and it's possible that Fritz 17 offers enough for you, but chessbase definitely offers more tools for working with databases, analyzing, prep, repertoires.
In case you decide for chessbase, I'd recommend to wait a bit. If covid didn't change things, new Chessbase 16 should be released Nov 2020 and usually the chessbase online shop offers a 25% discount on the release day.
So if I were to wait until November, do the Fritz Trainer programs include Chessbase Lite like it did back in 2010? That way, you can still view the 2000 or so game database and the 2 to 8 hour video? Like say, if you got a play 1.d4 Download/DVD with the included 200 dame database or whatever it is? Basically to use until I got CB16?
besides the (general) Fritz Powerbook 2021 there are several individual Powerbooks for specific openings ( ). Those individual Powerbooks contain substantial more material for the respective specific opening than the (general) Fritz Powerbook 2021. From my point of view thus it should be useful to merge the Fritz Powerbook 2021 with some / all of the individual Powerbooks to gain a stronger and broader "Superbook". Did anyone here tried this before (if so, what about the results?) or can recommend such mergers (I am thinking only about merging with other Powerbooks from ChessBase, not opening books from other companies, e.g. Hiarcs)?
@thrillerfan , I would prefer to go with powerbases with limited collection of databases of particular openings. In mega databases they also includes the games played by below rated players, and looks like a collection of games. Here you also get some annotated games in powerbases. Powerbook is like an opening tree, with winning and losing percentages of moves which i dont prefer to use.
Featuring all current openings theory with 1.5 million games, Fritz Powerbook 2011 contains 23 millions opening positions, derived from only high class tournament games. In addition the DVD has a small but very exclusive book with the strongest GM games (ELO = 2550) from the past 100 years (2 million positions).
Are you talking about using the TWIC updates to stay current with how pro chess players are playing various openings? In ChessBase, I clicked on "Get TWIC", and TWIC 876 and 877 were downloaded to my computer just now.
I am not having much success against an ICC computer opponent when faced with the Petroff after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.d4 d5 6.Bd3. It gets real tricky after that. I have tried 3.Nc3, in attempt to get the computer opponent to transpose into a four knights, but even that results in complications. I don't know why, but the Petroff is difficult to play against.
Here's a 2011 game played with the Petroff Defense that I got from a new TWIC update.
The Powerbooks (there is Fritz Powerbook as well as powerbooks for individual openings) basically let you play through moves and give you statistics about moves played, based on the games of strong players (I forget what ChessBase's definition of "strong" is, but I would assume that in each game used at least one player is rated 2400+). Personally, I'm not a big fan of the powerbooks: I just use ChessBase 11, keep my MegaBase updated (buying the MegaBase gives you free updates for a year), and click the "Reference" tab when looking at positions. I usually do want to see only the games of strong players, so I simply sort by Elo of the color I'm interested, or sometimes average Elo. If the line is really topical, I will first sort by year and then some Elo combination. I'm far from a professional, but I know several semi-pros who tell me that my opening preparation is better than theirs.
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