Chess Assistant Vs Chessbase

[Gunilla]

there is a free data base called jose which might serve you well.it does not have the opening tables like chess assistant but can be had with about 3 million games and comes with 2 strong engines for analysis or playing against.

I have ChessBase, which I've opened more than 2500 times (the software congratulated me when I hit this milestone). I lack the time to list all the features. If you can think of it, CB probably can do it.

Let's say that I want to study the Gruenfeld Defence. I can find all the Gruenfeld games played since 1950 in which Black was rated 2350 or higher and use these to create an ECO style table that I can take along with my chess set to the local bistro for a study session. (Of course, I'll need to narrow this topic a bit if I'm unwilling to go through an entire ream of paper printing the table and games.)

Good example. I was crushed twice in the Gruenfeld this week for both tactical and opening reasons. Chessbase helped me with the second part by highlighting where I went wrong, showing me how better players developed their pieces, and how they tried for an advantage. Now that I've chosen a specific setup against the Gruenfeld, it also alerted me to new games played with the same setup this week.

I just wanted to bump up this very old topic, because I'm interested in hearing about other people's experiences with Chess Assistant and ChessBase. I am considering shelling out the money for ChessBase (As well as installing Windows through Bootcamp on my Mac just for chess stuff!), and was looking through topics on it, and this topic led me to look a little bit a Chess Assistant as well.

It seems that SCID has just had a major release (version 5.0) within the last day or two. Highlights in the update include a new database format supporting up to 4 billion games, a new engine window, and Chess960 support.

SCID is less polished than ChessBase, certainly. In my experience, it really falls behind in automated game analysis. ChessBase stands out in that arena, especially with its natural language annotations. SCID users may want to supplement it with another program for that kind of automated game analysis (sort of like how one combines Fritz and ChessBase into one workflow I suppose).

There are two things that I much prefer in SCID over ChessBase. The first is a small thing, but SCID's ECO classification just seems strictly superior to ChessBase's. It updates dynamically as you step through the opening moves of a game, catches all transpositions, and overall is much more informative with letting you know what variations you're looking at.

The second thing that I think SCID does better than ChessBase is database maintenance. Especially in finding and deleting twin games, ChessBase has been very lackluster for me in the past. While this may be less of a concern if the user only sticks to heavily curated databases like MegaBase, SCID's thorough twin deletion, spell checking, and of course ECO classification can otherwise be immensely helpful.

I've used both chessbase and SCID-vs-PC for years. I prefer SCID-vs-PC over the original SCID because there are a couple of interface differences. SCID-vs-PC has a unique feature I like that chessbase doesn't ... in SCID-vs-PC you can set your player name or names and when you open a game with your player name it automatically flips the board, if necessary, so that your player's color is on the bottom. I don't think the original SCID has that option.

The main reason I prefer SCID to chessbase is that I prefer to use the Linux Operating System rather than Windows and chessbase will only run in a virtualbox Windows session. Also, SCID-vs-PC only costs time to learn, there is no financial cost. I have built a nice database from TWIC and high-level pre-TWIC games going back to Morphy.

ChessBase - the database program, not the company - has long been the industry standard, widely used by professionals, amateurs, and whatever category certain long-time bloggers belong to. Still, it doesn\u2019t always work brilliantly, and a kick in their pants from some worthy competitors would benefit the chess public. It\u2019s not super-expensive, but it\u2019s costly enough that some parents of serious-ish chess kids would prefer not to buy it. Plus it has a learning curve, seems to be a pain in the neck for Mac users, etc. Since I\u2019ve been using it for more than 25 years I\u2019m very comfortable with it, but it also means I don\u2019t have a good sense anymore about how user-friendly it is for newbies.

So, are there good competitors out there? Years ago I gave Chess Assistant a try and wasn\u2019t particularly pleased with it - but maybe with more time it would have felt more natural. I\u2019ve heard about Scid, but don\u2019t have much experience with it, and looking around a day or two ago came across Hiarcs\u2019s Chess Explorer (Pro). Are there others?

A Chess database is basically a collection of chess games - either in pgn (portable game notation) format or in some propritary format. The games are tagged in various way for quicker searches.

There are downloadable collections available on the net but it may be easier and better to buy one. The main competitors are ChessBase's MegaBase and Chess Assistant's Databases. Typically these collections contain more than 3 millions games.

In order to make use of the games you need a reader or preferrably a database program. There are very basic ones which only displays the moves on your screen and others that are very powerful search tools. Again the main options are ChessBase (chessbase.com)and Chess Assistant (store.convekta.com). I know Chessbase offers a free version with some essential functions disabled. I would expect Chess Assistant to do the same.

Chessbase game search is simply to search for positions in a game database. With a good search engine you can search by position or a part of a position, player, tournament, year, ECO code and probably a few other things. You can also combine these searches in many ways.

If you want to write an opening book one way to go ahead would be:
1) Select the games of theoretical importance.
2) Analyse them with the help of an analysis engine (e.g. Fritz).
3) Cut them at a point where they are no longer of theoretical interest and add a evaluation.
4) Merge and arrange the games so that the best or most popular lines are the mainlines.
5) Add more game references and evaluations where necessary.
6) Check all available sources for alternatives and differing evaluations.
7) Check all positions again with an analysis engine. Add some prose or keywords if you think it will be of any help.
8) Import the Chessbase file into a text processor and tidy it up.
9) Add the necessary prose and proof-read it as well as possible.
10) Find a good publisher - hopefully one experienced in chess publishing who checks your analysis as well as your prose.
11) Wait for the money to arrive - you will need to write approximately 10 well selling books a year to make a decent living.

Thanks for explaining about chessbase and databases.

I am planning to buy the newest version of Fritz. On Amazon.com, I noticed two similar products,Fritz 11 for Windows (DVD) by ChessCentral and Fritz 11 Chess Playing Software by ChessBase. Can you explain to me the differences between these two products?

Also, Fritz is a chess computer program where it will help you analyze moves and calculate variaitons right?

I am no expert but I suspect this is two slightly different names for the same program.

Yes, Fritz is primarily an analysis engine - one of the best. It also has some database functionality - possibly sufficient for your use. There is no risk trying out this option. It will be no problem switching to ChessBase later if you find out that you need a dedicated chess database program.

In order to avoid heavy server load and client-side busy script errors, file size is restricted to 10 MB. This covers most of the game databases offered for download throughout the Internet. But even with a few hundred games there may be some seconds delay. Please be patient! Remark that I switched to the new ChessBase reader and the result page opens a new browser tab now. This change became necessary in order to improve the usability on mobile devices.

It appears that sometimes the file selector in Webkit browsers fails and the uploaded file has zero length. I can reproduce this on MS Edge only; Chrome works fine here. Posting the games via clipboard always works.

This normally happens if there is a blank line missing between the single games. Probably the blog engine collapses two consecutive line breaks. Then the PGN parser assumes only a single game followed by some rubbish.

Chessbase is chess database only for Windows. There is android version of chessbase but have some limitations. The only way to run chessbase on Mac or Linux is using Wine. Wine is emulator to run Windows Apps under Linux. I believe they have a Mac version too. It call Micro Wine. I run Chessbase 12 and Houdini 3 with Chessbase 14 and the MegaDatabase 2019 on Ubuntu 22.10LTS without no problem. You can install Stockfish16 too. ?

Use Chess Assistant to play a game against one of the top UCI engines, to blundercheck one of the latest grandmaster games, or to manage a large database. There are some extra boards and piece sets from Chessassistance.com, as well as an opening encylopedia which can be best viewed as an ECO table. Other useful files, such asfonts, can be downloaded from here.

To install a UCI engine go to Engines/Enginessetup.../Add... Choose Universal Chess Interfacefrom the Type drop-down list. Press the button to the right of the Path box to browse to UCI engine .exe file.

There are quite a few limitationswhen compared with the commercial product, but despite that, it is perfectly usable (especially with the large database workaround above). It doesn't have the database features of chessbase light, but the ability to use strong free UCI engines and to save games makes up for this. The internet console is of no use to non-members of the Internet Chess Club.