Chess Program Review Archive

Before I say a few words about Chessbase 7.0, I would like to make a little disclaimer...

The arrival of this program has brought me to a sobering realization: Chess programs are getting so complex and feature-filled that a measly two page review can no longer do some of them justice. Keep that in mind as you read this review.

CB 7.0 is quite a product. There are so many new features in the program, that I will not even attempt to list them all here. Instead, I would suggest that you visit the Chessbase website for more information.

Chessbase 7.0 now has a chess tree, which first appeared in Fritz. Although CB 7.0 adds many interesting analysis functions, which will be huge time-savers to anyone doing serious opening study. The chess tree is integrated with the program pretty well. For instance, when player and opening reports are produced, they contain hyperlinks to the appropriate chess trees. Trees also contain many statistics - you can see the best line of play for several moves in advance via a function called 'minimaxing'. The speed at which trees are produced is fairly reasonable, but not blinding.

Is CB 7.0 a worthwhile upgrade from CB 6.0? The answer is an unqualified YES. While While I found some of the new features to be pretty amazing (like the new player dossiers and opening reports), the inclusion of a chess tree is what makes the upgrade decision an easy one. I only found two potential wrinkles for those upgrading to CB 7.0 from CB 6.0 (see below).

If you are an author of chess books, or other training materials, then CB 7.0 cannot be beat. This is because the program will do much of the historical and background work for you, whether it concerns a player, or an opening variation. It does this by creating hypertext documents that show (among other things):

• The openings that a player employs
• Critical lines in opening variations
• Typical plans for openings
• Historical development of players and openings

As a user of CB 6.0, I found the following features (and quirks) in the program:

Strengths

• While there are many new features in CB 7.0, I found that the tree was the new feature I used the most. What surprised me was that there are a number of usability and interface enhancements that made my life a bit easier. They are listed below:
  • A new button for selecting an analysis engine. This is better than having to remember keystroke combinations for them (as in CB 6.0).
  • In a similar vein, you can now select a position to which you want to 'lock' the engine. Thus, you can let the engine concentrate on a specific position while you move through the game score (handy!).
  • There is a new tabbed game score box, for switching among tabular, training, and normal game score display options.
  • CB 7.0 now supports folders (which are essentially directories). You can perform search operations on entire folders at once. I use this feature quite a bit.
  • Icons on button bars have been changed, so you will have to relearn them (if you are a CB 6.0 user). I found the new icons to be quite attractive though.
  • Medals are now attached to specific positions in a game.
  • Search for multiple players at once has disappeared. You can now only search for two players at a time. I hardly ever used the multiple player search, so I think that the simplification of the search dialog has enhanced the usability of the program, especially for new users.
  • True-type fonts are now included with the program, and you also have the capability to output HTML directly.
  • There is support now for quite a few chess engines: Crafty, Junior, Hiarcs, Fritz and the CD ROM Endgame; with EXChess, and Nimzo soon to follow.
  • Many people hated the dongle copy protection, and now it is gone.
  • Many new features, too numerous to list, are in this new version. Make sure that you check them out at the Chessbase site.
• There are a whole host of new analysis functions associated with the tree. I would recommend that you take a close look at the Chessbase web site for more information. Suffice it to say, you can see things such as unplayed transpositions, alternate move orders to reach the same position, and many other wondrous things.

Weaknesses

• There is no support for figurines when annotating training questions.
• You still cannot search through variations.
• The link between a database and it's tree is not preserved.
• You cannot extensively comment moves in a tree.
• Some of the key formats have changed in CB 7.0. Thus, once you add CB 7.0 keys, the CB 6.0 keys do not work.

I expect that Chessbase will address some of these issues in their next upgrade. Regardless of this, I feel that the product is quite solid as it is. Don't let the above list fool you - it concerns mostly quirks in the program, but that is because I felt that the good points were too numerous to list, and that Chessbase does a good job discussing them.

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