ChessBase Reviews

| index | part 1 | part 2 |

ChessBase 9 Part 1

My first impressions on the new program is that it looks very impressive. One problem that I initially saw was that people who didn’t have DVD drives on their computers wouldn’t be able to install the program and perhaps it would have been a good idea for ChessBase to manufacture copies on CD’s as well. That said, it seems that it is not totally impossible to install the program on a computer which doesn’t have a DVD ROM drive. I have an old PC, still fully functional, which doesn’t have a DVD drive, so I connected it to my new computer with a data cable, put the DVD in my DVD drive and transferred all the files from the DVD to the hard disk of the old machine and installed CB9 on that machine from there. I didn’t really need it on both machines but thought it might be interesting at some point in the future to compare how the program ran on two different spec machines. Of course the other option is to purchase a DVD drive for your computer, after all they are relatively cheap now. Considering the new tutorial DVD’s which ChessBase are now producing it could be a worthwhile investment.

The first thing I noticed when I when I launched the program, was that the interface window looked totally different from previous versions of ChessBase.

My gut reaction was OH NO. At times I can be rather old school in my thoughts. If something works fine then why change it. Once I got over the initial shock I took a closer look. Basically the main window has three panes. The left hand one looks like a standard Windows navigation pane and allows you to click through the various directories to locate whatever files you are looking for. In previous versions you would use file and open to get a new pop up window which allowed you to do the same thing. Now it's right there from the start, so is more readily accessible and therefore useful.

To the right of this window there are two windows, one above the other. The top contains a list of the databases, or multimedia files you use or open using the left hand navigation pane. Clicking on any database produces a list of the games from that database in the window at the bottom. Very handy for a quick look at the contents and you can double click on any game to launch a new window where you can play through the game.

Having successfully launched a game, I started playing through it and noticed that the new program had a threat engine included. From the above picture you can see that ChessBase has detected that Black’s last move, Nf6, threatens Nxe4. You get various coloured arrows appearing at different points in games, but I will leave the details for a future article. This threat tool is reasonably handy when you are studying games as it can help focus your mind on points of interest. Fortunately you can switch off this option if you don’t want to use it when analysing your own correspondence games.

So far I have managed to deduce all of this without reading the manual. This is probably because I am pretty much used to seeing this form of interface in most modern programs so I don’t really need to learn any new skills. Clearly the ChessBase developers have spent some time making sure that their users should have as easy a time as possible using the program.

Next I thought I would try having a look at one of the multi media files which came with the CB9 DVD. These were Jacob Aagaard’s lectures which I covered in a previous review. At that time I had to use the Fritz 8 program to access the lecture and get the game board displaying the position and moves at the same time as the video of the lecture. It played perfectly in the new CB9 which means I now have a program which covers all my study needs. I find this much more advantageous rather than having to switch between different programs.

I think that the ChessBase developers have done the right thing by incorporating the more advanced features from the interface of their playing programs, such as Fritz 8, directly into ChessBase 9. It has produced a more rounded program which should meet the needs of even the most advanced correspondence and OTB players as they research games.

You can now even use ChessBase 9 to connect to the ChessBase playchess server to play games live on the internet against players from all over the world. Purchasing the program gets you one years free access to this service and after several hours of analysing your own games, or studying the games of others, it can be quite relaxing to pop online and play a few quick games.

So for my first impressions I have to say that I am quite impressed and I haven’t even begun to take a deep look at the improvements that are incorporated in the new program. I hope to get into these more in future articles.