ChessBase Reviews

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CDs, DVDs, Software Part 25

Fritz Powerbook 2006 By ChessBase

The current openings theory with 1 million games. The Fritz Powerbook 2006 contains 18 million opening positions, derived from 1 million high class tournament games. Together with each position all relevant information is stored: all moves that were played in the position, by players of what average rating, with what success and performance results. The games from which the Fritz Powerbook 2006 were derived are also included on the DVD. This means that in any position of the openings tree you can load and replay the games in which the position occurred. The Fritz Powerbook 2006 represents the state of the art of current openings theory. Discover exciting and tricky new lines and practice them against Fritz. In addition the DVD has a small but very exclusive book with the strongest GM games from the past 100 years (900,000 positions).

World Champion Capablanca By ChessBase

The Cuban Jose Raul Capablanca, World chess Champion 1921-1927, was considered at the height of his career to be almost unbeatable and received the nickname: "the chess machine". Even those of his colleagues who reached the chess throne would call him a "genius" (Alekhine) or "the greatest player in the history of chess" (Fischer). This CD came into being as a result of the co-operation between various authors.

The main database with all available games by Capablanca, is introduced by a biography. Approximately 300 of the games are annotated. The largest contribution to this database was made by Peter Schneider.

There is an appreciation by Dr Robert Hübner of the 1927 WCh-Match between Capablanca and Alekhine.

An endgame database is provided by GM Mihail Marin. It contains 1 text and 14 games (or parts of games). The Romanian grandmaster casts some light above all on the moment of the transition to the endgame.

A tactics database is put together by Martin Seifert. Perhaps there are not so many brilliant combinations known from Capablanca‘s play, but these do exist. The author has put together a database of 103 games, in each of which a training question (or questions) allows you to test and improve your vision. System Requirements: Pentium 166, 32 MB RAM, Win98 SE, WinME, Win2000, WinXP.

How To Play The Najdorf Vol 2 By Garry Kasparov

An excellent tutorial from the great Garry Kasparov covering the Najdorf Defence : 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6 6.Bg5 a6 7.f4 Be7 8.Qf3 Qc7 9.0-0-0 Nbd7 10.g4, 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6 6.Bg5 a6 7.f4 Nbd7, 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6 6.Bg5 a6 7.f4 Qc7, and 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6 6.Bg5 a6 7.f4 b5 8.e5 dxe5 9.fxe5 Qc7 10.exf6 Qe5+ 11.Be2 Qxg5.

Kasparov explains each with the aid of the latest ChessBase 9.0 reader which is included. You get over two hours of private multimedia lessons from arguably the greatest chess player of all time!

Also included is an extra ChessBase file with around 17924 entries with 380 of these annotated. There are 23 intensive openings surveys, and an openings book. All in all an excellent product which would improve anyone's play.

The ABC of the Benko Gambit By Andrew Martin

As I have said before, Andrew Martin is an excellent chess teacher. Any of his tutorials for ChessBase will improve your play and give you a thorough understanding of any opening he covers. This DVD gives you 4 hours of multimedia teaching with 22 multimedia files and 19 well analysed games with over 1 GB of data on the DVD. There is a lot of practical advice and opening tips.

Opening Encyclopaedia 2006 By ChessBase

The ChessBase Opening Encyclopaedia 2006 features the complete coverage of all opening sectors, offering an optimal start for opening training. Many well-known specialists have made contributions in their field of expertise, such as Anand, Bareev, Dautov, Dr Huebner, Jussupow, Kortschnoj, Krasenkow, Nunn and Ribli. For each of 500 opening sectors according to ECO standard there is at least one opening survey, so that the database is the ideal tool for building up a complete opening repertoire. The game database includes 2.5 million games, about 77,000 of them with annotations. Furthermore, the DVD contains a big opening key with 109,000 singles keys and a seperate directory with 221 special theory databases from the ChessBase Magazine.

ChessBase 9 Reader with access to all databases. System requirements: Pentium Prozessor 300 MHz or higher, 64 MB RAM, Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, Windows XP, DVD-ROM drive, mouse, sound card.

DVD Endgame Turbo 3 By ChessBase

The DVD Endgame Turbo consists of 9 DVDs with endgame databases (Nalimov Tablebases). With the help of the Endgame Turbo, all five- and 12 six-piece endgames (including the sophisticated and practice-oriented endgame R, P, P v R) are played with absolute perfection. Likewise, Fritz handles endgames with more than six pieces much better since the program can already access the endgame knowledge during the analysis. Definitely a must-have for correspondence players, endgame theoreticians and friends of engine matches.