ChessBase Reviews

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ChessBase 8 Part 4

I have previously covered searches with ChessBase in an article on ChessBase 7. Still, I thought it would be worth another look.

ChessBase is great as a research tool, particularly if you have a large database as I do. It's great to have a position on screen and search through a large database to find other games that have reached that position. The speed of searches has been greatly improved in ChessBase 8, so searching through a million plus game database is very quick. Still, not everyone has a large database, and the makers have helped greatly with this by adding an online search facility.

If you have Internet access on your PC then from the Edit tab you can now select Find Position in chessbase-online.com. This can be very helpful, as their online database may have examples of more recently played games than you have in your own database. Their online database has more than two million games and with advance search tools on their server results of searches are displayed within a few seconds.

In the last article I covered a number of search options but left out position search and opening report. Both of these have been covered in a previous ChessBase 7 article and remain much the same apart from the speed of the searches being improved in ChessBase 8. One thing that I now feel that I didn't make clear is that both should be used with care. Take this position, reached after the moves 1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.Nf3 a6 4.e3 e6 5.Bxc4 c5 6.0-0 Nf6 7.Qe2 cxd4 8.exd4 Be7 9.Nc3 0-0 10.a4 b6 11.Be3 Bb7.

At this point the game has reached an identical position as was reached at move 12 in the game Szopa,A (2056) - Borgula,R (2145) [D37] Bydgoszcz op-B Bydgoszcz (4), 1999, after: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5 4.e3 Nf6 5.Nf3 Be7 6.Bd3 dxc4 7.Bxc4 0-0 8.0-0 a6 9.a4 b6 10.Qe2 cxd4 11.exd4 Bb7 12.Be3. The vital difference is that White has saved a tempo by not playing Bd3. Despite my extensive databases I didn't find the Szopa game until I did an online search at the ChessBase site. I had been following a line that seemed good for Black but I missed the transpositional possibilities. Databases help a lot but we must use them with care.