Chess software product question

[Zeljko Kitich]

What's the difference between having Big Database 2012 or Opening Encylopedia 2012? Are they the same except OE has more articles on openings?

[John Upper]

Re: Chess software product question

What's the difference between having Big Database 2012 or Opening Encylopedia 2012? Are they the same except OE has more articles on openings?

one difference is that the "Big" dbs have no annotated games, they're just raw gamescores, the OE has annotated games.

another is that the Chessbase Opening Encyclo. has all the opening surveys from CB Magazines.

I'm not sure about this last one, but I think the OE also comes with an opening book made up of games from high rated players (>2550).

FWIW I think the OE is a much more useful product... which is probably why it's about twice as expensive.

[Zeljko Kitich]

Re: Chess software product question

great thanks, also when they say Deep Fritz multi-processor version what do they mean exactly, anyone know, does this just run on a regular computer?

[Normand Arsenault]

Re: Chess software product question

Thank you Mr.Upper.

Where does the Fritz PowerBook 2012 fit in, in all this?

Norm

[Gordon Ritchie]

Re: Chess software product question

John is entirely correct. Big Database is essentially a mega database without annotations. It is packaged with CB to give that software something to work with. To go up a very big step, you should opt either for Megabase (some 5 million games with quite a few annotated more or less fully) or Opening Encyclopedia which gives you a much richer opening book plus a large set of opening surveys (plus another older set in German).
PowerBook as far as I can tell is simply MegaBase pruned to limit it to strong GM games. You can obviously produce the same database yourself from MegaBase by filtering for both players over, say, 2550. There are, however, specialized powerbooks for various openings which, presumably, add more content.
"Deep" simply means that the engine is designed to run on a multiprocessor machine at a significantly greater speed. As my office desktop is an i7 multiprocessor, I generally opt for the deep versions of Fritz, Rybka, etc. despite the extra cost. But I should note that you get very good results from the free engine, Houdini 1.5 or, for that matter, Stockfish. When I set up engine matches, both these free engines outplay Fritz or Rybka.

[John Upper]

Re: Chess software product question

Where does the Fritz PowerBook 2012 fit in, in all this?

It is an opening tree (CTG file) which can be read by the CB playing program Fritz to choose its opening moves, or by Chessbase to show "best" continuations when you press the "openings book" tab.

CTG files are very easy to make -- just create a new CTG database and drag and drop some games into it --- so the only questions about whether it is worth buying one are:

how much skill and effort did the book maker spend choosing which games to include?, and
how much "hand tuning" has been done to identify lines which have scored well in the past but are now known to be second-rate?

There are many excellent free CTG books made by players who are constantly testing them in engine matches on playchess.com. FWIW, I suspect one or several of these would be more state-of-the-art than any of the Chessbase-made Powerbooks. On the other hand, they probably don't have nearly as much coverage of lines which are common in club events but unpopular in engine v engine tournaments. e.g. almost no bookmakers have their engines aim to play the French or the KID, but the Najdorf is very well covered.