ChessBase Reviews

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CDs, DVDs, Software Part 28

The Path to Tactical Strength: A World Champion's Guide to the King's Indian By Rustam Kasimdzhanov

Two excellent training DVDs from the former FIDE world champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov. In The Path to Tactical Strength he uses 22 of his own games to provide first class tuition in the tactics of the middlegame. The lectures will help you to recognise tactical motifs so you won't have to concentrate on memorising hundreds of positions and game moves.

In A World Champion's Guide to the King's Indian, Rustam shows with a number of examples how realistic Black's chances are in this opening to get a complex structure with the most serious attacking potential. Apart from theoretical information, the disk also contains structural insights and an array of ideas which will enable you to include this opening into your repertoire immediately and with tangible success! Both DVDs should help improve the arsenal in your chess play.

Mega Database 2007 By ChessBase

As always, this is one of my favourite DVDs of the year and I would think a serious must for Correspondence Chess players. Nowadays you need to have game information instantly available to avoid being trapped into playing poor lines. This database is up to date, well organised and always well prepared. Well worth the money compared to some of the free stuff you can pick up on the net.

The exclusive annotated database contains more than 3.5 millions games from 1560 to 2006 in the highest ChessBase quality standard. 60,000 games contain commentary from top players, with ChessBase opening classification with more than 100,000 key positions, direct access to players, tournaments, middlegame themes, endgames. The largest top class annotated database in the world. The most recent games of the database are from the middle of November 2006.

Mega 2007 also features a new edition of the playerbase. As usual, this is where most of the work was done. As the player index now contains already more than 180,000 entries, it made sense to use an adapted playerbase which includes about 200,000 names. Doing this, the photo database was extended as well to contain 27,000 pictures now.

Fritz Powerbook 2007 By ChessBase

The current openings theory with 1 million games The Fritz Powerbook 2007 contains 18 millions opening positions, derived from 1 million highclass 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 2007 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 2007 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).

My Best Games in the Petroff Defence By Alexei Shirov

With this DVD on the Russian Defence (Petroff Defence) Alexei Shirov continues the successful and highly praised series of his best games. Since many players look on the Russian Defence with the suspicion that it is a drawish opening, and one which at the same time is both dry and boring, Shirov has in this DVD set himself the specific task of countering this view of matters. Thus he begins the DVD with a game featuring the Cochrane Gambit. Then of course Shirov concentrates on the solid and recognised lines, and in doing so continually manages to explain their deeper content.

But the spectator will draw benefit not only from his remarks on the opening, because Shirov understands so brilliantly how to explain instructively and profitably for the student every phase of the game, with the result that at the end of the DVD on the Russian Defence, you will even have learned a lot about endgames. I found this to be a thoroughly instructive DVD on this opening especially as I was never quite sure how to handle it in the past.

Fritz 10 By ChessBase

New in Fritz 10: enhanced and improved chess engine developed especially for the 2006 Kramnik vs Fritz match; extended openings book; updated database; dynamic graphic tips for attack and defence; improved graphics and move entry on the 2D board; new high resolution 3D piece sets in classical wood; live display of the thinking process on the chessboard; more efficient position analysis.

New chess server features: additional ranking lists, full rankings for all players, filters for challengers with bad internet connections, new and simple video conference function, bullet lists in the engine room, animated global weather display, direct link to Google Earth.

It used to be the case that players looked at Fritz as a program that they played on their computer and got beaten by on a regular basis. Indeed Fritz is capable of beating the strongest players in the world when running on high end machines. These days it is much more than that as it can be used as a high end teaching resource.

The program will help you along during the game, with numerous sophisticated coaching functions, adjusting its playing strength to exactly match that of any opponent. It graphically displays threats and plans, and provides full opening statistics. For beginners Fritz will explains moves and positions, or warn you of dangers and of errors you are committing. It has instructive training modules and amusing handicap levels. For club and tournament players Fritz has long become a trusted friend and indispensable advisor, helping them to study their games and find new opening ideas for their next tournaments. A database with more than a million games provides the basis for state-of-the-art analysis. Even Garry Kasparov has used Fritz on a regular basis.

With its Chess Media System Fritz brings the world's greatest chess players into your living room, in full high resolution video and sound and a synchronised graphic chessboard. Listen to Garry Kasparov, Viktor Korchnoi, Alexei Shirov or (former world champion) Rustam Kasimdzhanov while they explain important openings and ideas that lead to success.

How to Play the Queen's Indian By Dmitri Oleinikov

With his previous publications (ChessBase-CDs: Budapest Gambit, Bird’s Opening, Colle System) the author has already demonstrated, that he is particularly interested in passing on ideas, typical structures and plans. His new work is no exception. But how can that work with such an enormous opening as the Queen's Indian? This is how he goes about things:

About the author: Dmitri Oleinikov lives in Moscow and is a journalist. He has worked as a trainer with various Russian teams. He is a FIDE trainer and worked in 2004-2006 as a trainer in the Asian Chess Academy (Singapore).

You get a lot of instructional material and a first class database to add to your collection with this CD.