Note: BOOKUP 1.6 has been released - this review concentrates on BOOKUP 1.5.3. The new version features the ability to export a variation from any book to a PGN format file. There are also other minor improvements in the program.
For the purposes of this review, I looked at BOOKUP 1.5.3. It should be noted
that here that BOOKUP is not a games database per se. There is no facility
for a game header search (i.e. player name, year, etc.). It is meant
strictly for use as an opening book editor. Let me reiterate - it is
not a games database.
Anyway, I've divided this review into a list of pros and cons It's not meant
to describe the various features the program has. It only lists what I consider
to be the high (and low) points.
Pros:
- Very intuitive way to work with openings. For instance, I was working on
a repertoire for black against d4, and I was using the KID for this purpose,
however I wanted to avoid the 4-pawns attack. I then noticed that you could
transpose into the KID from the old-indian move order: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 d6..
Before I got BOOKUP the idea never even occurred to me. While you can examine
alternative lines in other products, BOOKUP is so intuitive that the process
is sped up immensely.
- Examining alternate lines is vary fast. You can fire up the built-in Zarkov
engine and grab the engine analysis for annotation purposes.
- You can export positions in EPD format, and analyze them with Zarkov, or
with Crafty. Additionally,
you can export only the positions you want analyzed, or only end positions,
or all positions in the database. An aside: It would also be nice to be able
to export only the positions when it is either black or white to move.
- You can practice your openings against the computer. Great for drilling.
None of my other software is nearly as good for this.
- It's easy to import PGN game collections. You can even play back games once
they are stored in the book. However, when drilling against the computer,
these games are also used in the drill (so you end up playing the
whole game over, unless you abort the drill). It would be nice to provide
an option for excluding games when drilling.
Cons:
- It could be easier to move variations from one book to another. Right now
you have to mark all the ones you don't want to move, which is a really tedious
process.
- The book files are huge. If you compress them to a zip file, you get quite
a bit of space savings (orders of magnitude in fact). I know there are technical
and speed reasons for using the current format, but something a bit more
compact would be nice.
- It's difficult to get your book information out of BOOKUP, for use in other
programs (i.e. chessbase).
- Backsolving is very slow. Other programs (i.e. Chess Assistant /Fritz
5 for example) provide success statistics instantaneously.
- You cannot get stats on how often a line is played - just on how numerous
the branches are off a particular node in the tree.
Suggestions for improvement:
- I would make book backup a menu option, and store the backups in zip format,
which makes them a lot smaller. Right now, a book consists of a number of
files, and automating the process would make things easier. Either that,
or it needs to be harder to corrupt books.
- Provide a way to assign informant rate symbols on the basis of computer
evaluation.. This may be a dangerous feature to include, but you might let
the user decide.
- An easier way to move variations between books.
- A way to practice a variation by name.
- When drilling, have an option to disable the inclusion of games in the drilling
process.
- Some way to export a bookup book in PGN or CBF format. This would allow you
to use bookup with some of the many playing programs available. this is the
feature I miss the most, because I do a lot of my analytical work in chessbase,
and there is no way to get information from Bookup into Chessbase (short
of exporting every single variation by hand (egad!))
I realize that some of what I am suggesting is probably easier said than
done, so I take full responsibility for my own stupidity.
The verdict: Overall it's a pretty neat piece of software. It's quite
easy to use, and if you don't like it, you can send it back. It's the only
program that you can drill openings with.
Tech support is excellent, free and prompt. There is no copy protection.
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