I'm getting back into chess after around 3 years of online poker. I'm planning on buying the new deep fritz 12 and was thinking of ordering a one year subscription to their magazine. Any TR's in the house?

I got three issues with my Chessbase 10 purchase....as a whole I like it - not as devoted to opening theory as New in Chess - more then Informant for games and stuff - I guess I would definately consider it but I buy too much chess learning crap anyways

Speaking of Chessbase 10, is that worth it? What computer software do you own, fritz? Shredder? Rybka?

it's alright but I think there's a lot of stuff I do with it I could do elsewhere - my installation is actually pretty hosed and unlikable right now and I can't seem to fix it -

I use Fritz 11 and Rybka - now I'm not in the mood to buy anymore chess software - I can't beat the stuff I already got - LOL

RB

I'm starting from scratch here... If you could do it all over again would you just buy chessbase 10 mega package + install firebird 1.0 = is this the ultimate combo?

chessbase only comes with a couple old engines and you have to add your own - in a case like this, it makes a lot of sense to use the firebird engine as it's free and pretty competitive, but jeez, even fritz 5.32 or old rybka or crafty will do well enough to get you thru.

The mega package has the mega database which has annotations, and that's fine - but I went with teh big database in the starter pack - I can ALWAYS find more annotated games then I can shake a stick at - so I question paying for the extra.

Another option I've heard of is downloading CB10 light and then paying for the upgrade for 100 bucks - you can then get your own database of games (there are quite a few places to go for current games like TWIC, and lots of old PGN/CBH files out there with standalone databases) with everything but the player database which is meh -

unless you're really an annotated game junkie I'd just stick with the starter package, but that's me - I then update my games every week thru TWIC to get the good stuff in current theory if I want it

RB

I get everything Chessbase has to offer. I like the magazine. The only thing chess related I ever purchased NOT worth the money was a 2 year subscription to Kasparov's site that went out of business that week. Back to the Chessbase magazine. I highly doubt you'll feel it is a waste of money. There's a lot of free sites with good chess content, but I'm partial to Chessbase and the quality of work in most of what they offer.

I read the powerbooks were pretty useless unless you're a hardcore engine nerd. Chessbase 10 is OK, but it has annoying bugs.

I heard chess assistant is the nuts, the problem though is their GUI that is so incredibly ugly.

Ew, I'd like to hear more about these annoying bugs. Does Chessbase regularly try to release new updates and plug leaks?

Where did you hear that chess assistant is the nuts? Finding good reviews over the web is hard to come by.

I got chessbase 10 from isohunt. But I am not doing anything with it. Really I never look at any games when I can analyse my own games. And yes robbolito rules.

If you use 2 screens then windows tend to pop up randomly on one of them. Also when copying large quantities of games i used to have problems, but with my new hardware it went fine.

@Chess assistant: A guy from our club showed me some features, it updates a game tree automatically, has automatic database actualization without serial number iirc. It probably can do most that chessbase 10 can do and is cheaper.

chessbase 10 for sure is the more user-friendly program, but it's obviously way overprized for what it can do.

yeah chessbase is very buggy with two screens. The % score it shows for lines is often way off, too, which is quite a big problem. I don't think they release bug fixes, you just have to wait a year+ for CB11.

I have two screens so this is not good news for chessbase 10 unfortunately. I'm going to have to consider/research Chess Assistant 10 Professional with Deep Rybka.

Thanks for the feedback so far guys, you may have saved me literally hundreds of dollars.

I noticed this - I was researching a line that had 13 games that it said was 33% for white when I counted and it looked more like 50% (with three ties and 5 wins each) -

I went back one - came back, and it read 40% for the SAME setup - LOL

kinda stopped putting faith in those after that

rb

I'm glad it's not just me then, I'm surprised I haven't heard more people complain about it though since almost every serious player uses chessbase.

Nowadays as a chess player is very important you have the following:

Chessbase (whatever the current one is... last I used was 10 and is perfect,though I am sure 11 will be better for sure)

Mega Database (the most modern on from Chessbase which has annotated games by the experts in different lines.....)

Chess Informants ( all of em.... keep updating them as they come along and work em in a separate database)

TWIC (The week in chess... used to come out weekly like on tuesdays and will keep u posted weekly on everything going on around the world as far as openings and tournament results etc)

Some sort of engine (chessbase brings some of them already)... like Rybka which is the strongest by far... but most commercial one is Fritz for sure...

My friend GM Lenier Dominguez from Cuba once told me he uses different engines given the position... some of them more towards positional understanding and some towards a more tactical approach but don't really remember which one he said he used for what... anyhow.. with what I mentioned on top and LOTS LOTS of work u should be on ur way... Playing is a most of course and whatever else comes to ur hands u should grab... but these I mentioned u should have for sure!. Thanks

What are you trying to do?

My super setup historically is:

ChessBase 10
Deep Rybka 3
Firebird
Deep Fritz 12
Mega 2010
Powerbook 2010
Informants 1-110 or whatever we're up to now
ChessBase Magazine

But I'm a sicko database jockey.

The Magazines are interesting, for sure, but frankly, you don't need most of this stuff to seriously analyze games.

This appears to be a serious problem imo.

Have any of you super database users ever invested in CA10?

Xtremeungar - if you buy chessbase + mega package, doesn't it automatically download all of the recent games for the 2010 season? So you don't need TWIC?

if he's 2400 I would agree - but if he's around my rating (1500 or so) - or even up to 2000 there's a lot of opening theory in some of that stuff that doesn't need to be absorbed -

and for that matter Informator isn't getting the top level annotations the way it used to from the players who played the game - and it has a LOT of opening lines without complete games

rb