But there is a way to get Fritz’s opinion on every move in a game, as well as to have multiple engines analyze a game in one go. It’s called “Compare analysis”, and it’s the topic of today’s uscfsales.com blog post.

“Compare analysis” was introduced as a means to compare the analysis of multiple chess engines (hence the feature’s name). A user could compare not only the evaluations and preferred best moves of multiple chess engines, but could also compare their relative speeds (in positions evaluated per second). The feature was designed primarily for the use of chess engine developers as a means of comparing their own engine’s performance with that of established programs. One would think that this would consequently not be too interesting a feature for the average chess computer user, but the opposite is true – not only can you have more than one engine analyze the same game after a single “setup” operation, but you’ll also have the game’s every move (outside of opening book moves) analyzed, meaning that you’ll discover not just the mistakes you’ve made, but your good moves as well.

So let’s find out how to subvert this engine programmer tool to our own nefarious purposes as struggling chessplayers…

As always, start by launching Fritz, then open the game list for the database in which your “analysis candidate” game resides. Single-click on the game to highlight it in the list, click the “Database” tab, and look for the “Compare analysis” button:

Click this button to display the “Compare analysis” dialogue:

We’ve seen some of these parameters before in our discussions of Fritz’s other analysis modes, so I won’t repeat the material in detail here. I will give you a couple of recommendations, though. Chess engines tend to work better and give better analysis when you analyze the moves for both players, so do select “Both”. Also, when you’re using the “Time” setting, keep in mind that you’re going to have multiple engines analyze your game. So if a setting of “60” means that it typically takes the software, say, ninety minutes to analyze a game when you’re using the other analysis modes, you’ll need to multiply that ninety minutes by the number of engines you’re using in “Compare analysis” mode. For example, having three engines analyze this one game will take about the same amount of time as having one engine analyze three games in the other analysis modes.

And, as we’ve seen before, the “Time” and “Depth” settings are mutually exclusive – you can use one, not both. “Depth” is useful for the occasions when you want to have an engine analyze a game “in the background” when you’re using your computer for other tasks, so that the specific depth will always be reached no matter how long it takes to achieve it. “Time” is best for the occasions when you’re going to just totally turn your computer over to the chess engine (overnight while you sleep, for example).

To make “Compare analysis” work, we’ll need to select the engine or engines which we’ll use to analyze the game. To add an engine, click the “New” button:

…and you’ll get the dialogue shown above. Scroll through the list of engines to select one you want, set the hashtable size (as we’ve previously discussed), and set any engine parameters you wish to use (by clicking that button to display that dialogue).

This brings us to another tip: if you’re going to have more than one chess engine analyze the game, it’s useful to have the software display the analysis in different colors for different engines. Click the “Variation color” button to display the Windows color palette and choose the color in which the engine’s analysis will appear in the gamescore. After you select a color and click “OK”, you’ll see the band under the “Variation color” button display the color you’ve chosen:

Click “OK” after you’ve made your selections, and the engine will appear in the list. Repeat the process, choosing a different variation color for each engine, until you’ve selected all the engines you wish to use:

If you decide to change some details for an engine’s settings, highlight it in the list and click “Edit”.

If you want to completely remove an engine from the list, highlight it and click “Delete”. Note that this does not delete the engine from your hard drive – it just removes the engine from the “Compare analysis” list.

There’s one more setting which is unique to this dialogue that we need to mention: the “Node count” toggle. Selecting this will display the number of positions each engine analyzed as part of their displayed evaluations. This is useful for users who want to compare the relative speeds of various engines, but otherwise isn’t terribly useful. I seldom use it, but do please feel free to play around with it.

After your selections are complete, click “OK” and let ‘er rip! If you hang around to watch, the Fritz GUI will load the first engine you selected and it will begin to analyze the game starting with the final position and working backwards. When it reaches the “Last book move” (as we’ve seen previously), the GUI will unload the first engine, load the second engine, and the process will repeat.

When it’s all said and done, you’ll wind up with a gamescore which looks something like this:

Click on the picture for a larger view

For each move of the game (except “book” moves in the opening) you’ll see analysis from all of the chess engines you selected. You can see from the illustration why I recommended that you color each engine’s analysis in a separate shade: it makes it easier to differentiate between them.

By the way, the evaluation for each game position (given after each “text” move, that is, the moves that were actually played in the game) are provided by the last engine to analyze the game, which will be the last engine listed in the “Compare analysis” dialogue. So if you’re going to use some “speculative” engine parameters (for example, change Junior 12′s settings to look for [possibly unsound] sacrifices), you’ll probably want to add such an engine at the top of your “Compare analysis” listing, leaving the last listed engine at its “default factory settings”.

You can scroll up and down the gamescore to compare the moves played in the game with the moves recommended by each engine. You can also compare the numeric positional evaluation of an actual move with the evaluations given at the end of the recommended variations, to look for improvements. In this way, you’ll see not only criticism of your moves, but also get the “attaboys!” for the good moves you’ve played.

Now a couple of reminders:

Our host for this blog, uscfsales.com, is offering a 15% discount (excluding shipping and taxes where applicable) on all chess purchases from our website between now and TOMORROW (as I post this) February 22, 2012. Those savings apply to everything on our site, not just to chess software purchases. All you need to do to enjoy the 15% discount is type the code VALENTINE in the coupon code box when finalizing your order on the Checkout page, and 15% will be deducted from the total purchase price of your order.

And when you purchase ChessBase, Fritz, FritzTrainer DVDs, ChessKing, and now ChessOK Aquarium Windows PC computer software from uscfsales.com, you will receive free technical support from yours truly. Fair warning: you will NOT get technical support from me if you purchase your chess software anywhere else! Just e-mail me with your questions (but don’t forget to include your uscfsales.com order number!).

Have fun! – Steve Lopez

Copyright 2012, Steven A. Lopez. All rights reserved.

Here’s how you activate the “Measurements” pane. Just click the “View” tab on the menu bar, then click the box beside “Measurements”, as shown here:

“Measurements” is at the bottom of the third column; when you move your mouse over it, you’ll see the same yellow description box as in the illustration. More important, you’ll see the “Measurements” pane appear on your screen:

This panel resembles the speedometer and tachometer display from a car’s dashboard. What it measures is something which I term the “volatility” of the current board position – the potential that something important (and sometimes violent) is about to happen on the chessboard.

The easiest meter to understand is the “Mate-O-Meter”. The more danger which exists to one (or both) of the Kings in the current position, the higher the needle goes on the Mate-O-Meter.

The other meter measures the position’s “hotness” — the needle will rise with the presence of tactical (or even important positional motifs) from position to position. This is a visual cue to the user that something important is happening – perhaps the possibility of material exchanges (or the chance to win material outright) or an especially strong (or weak) positional structure, such as pawn positions or piece mobility.

There’s a third component to this panel: a small round light at the top. While this “virtual bulb” is glowing red, it indicates that the internal chess engine is in the process of making evaluations (and you’ll see the needles moving on the meters); when the bulb goes out, the engine has completed the evaluation, and the needles will settle on a particular measurement.

We can look at a particular game for some examples of how this works. You can find the game in your Big Database or Mega Database: Borja Alvarez-Otero, Asturias Segunda, 1995.

After the moves 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6, the “Hotness” meter eases upward (to a measurement of “2”), being as this is a Petroff Defense: both e-pawns are attacked by the respective Knights. After the moves 3. Nxe5 d6 are played, the needle flies upward pretty quickly:

…because the Knight is attacked (and Knights, obviously, are worth more than pawns). The next few moves (4. Nf3 Nxe4 5. d4 d5 6. Bd3 Bg4 7. Be3 Be7 8. c3):

…put the needle into the “5” to “6” range; pieces are coming out, other pieces are pinned, and exchanges are threatened. The further moves 8…Nd7 9. Nbd2 Ndf6 10. Qa4+ drive the hotness needle up to “6”:

…because of the check to the Black King.

The game eventually does see those aforementioned exchanges made, and after 10…Bd7 11. Qc2 O-O 12. Nxe4 dxe4 13. Bxe4 Nxe4 14. Qxe4 Bc6 15. Qd3 Bxf3 16. gxf3 Re8 17. O-O-O, the game settles way down according to the hotness meter:

The exact measurements aren’t terribly important (there’s not much difference between what a “4.8” reading and a “5.0” reading represent); in fact, you can move ahead and then back through the moves and often see that a position’s exact “hotness” evaluation reads slightly differently the second time you come to the position than it read the first time. The important part is the movement of the meters: if the needle rises, you should be on the lookout for tactical opportunities, strong positional motifs, or mate threats (depending on which meter is moving and the amount of change it registers), while if a meter’s needle falls you should feel comfortable that the position is becoming (relatively) more safe.

For example, after the further moves 17…Qd5 18. Bf4 Qxa2 19. Bxc7 Bg5+, things get a little nuts:

No strong mating threats are present here, but the Black assault on the White King drives the hotness meter into the yellow “caution” zone. If you were playing a game against Fritz 13 with the Measurements “dashboard” visible, this would be your cue to start thinking hard about how to parry Black’s attack. Even the defensive move 20. Kc2 pushes the needle up into the red, because Black still has a check up his sleeve: 20…Qa4+.

If you run the measurements panel while replaying this sequence of moves and keep an eye on the needle, you’ll get some important clues as to how this feature works. After 20. Kc2 the needle drives up into the red zone, but when the actual check (20…Qa4+) is played, the needle moves back down. What we can infer from this is that the engine driving the “hotness” meter looks one move ahead and thus moves the needle according to the “mayhem” potential in that upcoming position: checks and captures drive the needle upward, while a flat-out blunder (like hanging a piece) will likely “peg the meter” (as we used to say back in my radio days) the whole way into the red.

After 21. Kb1 Rac8, we see:

…because White’s Bishop is under direct attack and, if it moves away, the Black Rook will join the attack against the White King’s position. Note, though, that the Mate-O-Meter is still pretty inactive; although things are getting pretty uncomfortable for White, there’s no threat of an imminent mate.

As a game progresses, you’ll tend to see a lot more activity from both meters toward the late middlegame and into a (non-drawing) endgame. In this game, both meters start hopping after 22. Rhg1 Bh6 23. Be5 f6 24. Bxf6 Rc6 25. Be5 Ra6 26. f4 Qa1+ 27. Kc2 Qa4+ 28. Kd2 Qa2 29. Qb5:

…because of all the possibilities of changes to the material balance. In fact, although the “mate” needle drops back down, the “hotness” needle reaches critical mass (hitting “9.6”) just before the game’s final move (which drops the needle back into the yellow). By the way, the rest of the game went: 29…Re7 30. Ra1 Rb6 31. Qxb6 Qxa1 32. Qd8+ 1-0

If you run “Infinite analysis” on that final position, you’ll learn that White has a forced mate here, but the combination is so long (over twenty moves) that the mate meter doesn’t register it. What’s interesting to me about this game is that despite Black’s early assault, White survived the onslaught, went ahead in material, and ultimately turned the tables – action that was registered visually by the relative move-by-move activity of Fritz 13′s “hotness” meter.

And now, as I promised at the start of this post, a word from our sponsor – a word which can save you some hard green cash. Our host for this blog, uscfsales.com, is offering a 15% discount (excluding shipping and taxes where applicable) on all chess purchases from our website between now and February 22, 2012. Those savings apply to everything on our site, not just to chess software purchases. All you need to do to enjoy the 15% discount is type the code VALENTINE in the coupon code box when finalizing your order on the Checkout page, and 15% will be deducted from the total purchase price of your order. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it saves you some serious bucks.

Don’t forget: When you purchase ChessBase, Fritz, FritzTrainer DVDs, ChessKing, and now ChessOK Aquarium Windows PC computer software from uscfsales.com, you will receive free technical support from yours truly. You will NOT get technical support from me if you purchase your chess software anywhere else – you might not receive software support at all! Just e-mail me with your questions (but don’t forget to include your uscfsales.com order number!).

Have fun! – Steve Lopez

Copyright 2012, Steven A. Lopez. All rights reserved.

Think about it for a moment. How many times do you see the word “threat” (or its various derivations such as “threaten”) used in chess articles, tutorials, annotated games, etc.? As a chess term, it’s pretty ubiquitous, right? Even some of our treasured chess maxims contain the word, such as Nimzovich’s famous “The threat is often stronger than the execution”.

But, aside from the occasional opponent threatening to physically flip the board if he loses, or Dr. Milan Vidmar famously driving ol’ Nimzo half batty by “threatening to smoke”, what’s the actual usage and definition of “a threat”?

It’s pretty simple. A threat is what a chessplayer would do if he could make two moves in a row (and, if we want to split hairs, it’s usually applied to the position after the first of these moves, but before the opponent has responded).

Here’s a great example of a threat:

Black just played …Qxf3. Black’s threat is mate-in-one; if he could make a second consecutive move, he would play …Qxg2#. So White has to find a way to stop Black’s threat, or else he’ll lose the game outright. This, by the way, is exactly the reason why Aron Nimzovich said that “the threat is often stronger than the execution” — by making threats, you force your opponent to respond to your plans instead of pursuing ideas of his own. It’s similar to a couple of boxers in the ring – if one guy is launching a flurry of blows, the other fighter will cover up and not be in a position to punch back.

Of course, once in a while it doesn’t quite work out that way, and the guy who is covering up suddenly snaps up, unleashes a barrage of blows of his own, and wins the fight. That’s exactly what happened in that chess position. Black played …Qxf3 and thought he had White skunked. But White fought back and the game ended with these moves: 20. Rxe7+ Nxe7 21. Qxd7+ Kxd7 22. Bf5+ Ke8 23. Bd7+ Kf8 24. Bxe7#

Four checks in a row, ending with mate! Black never even had time to play the threatened mate-in-one.

That’s from a very famous chess game, by the way, which you may well recognize; for my money it’s the most awesome game ever played. It’s known as “The Evergreen Game” because it’s literally “ever green” — no matter how many times you replay it, it still blows your mind. The great Adolf Anderssen, one of the greatest players of the nineteenth century had the White pieces, while Jean Dufresne (who was himself no slouch at the chessboard) had Black. Check your chess database – any “comprehensive” database worth its salt will contain this game, and it’s been reprinted scores (if not hundreds) of times in chess books.

So what relation does this “threat” business have with chess software? (After all, the banner at the top of this blog indicates that this is a chess software blog, right?) I’m been using chess software for twenty years (as of this year in fact – happy anniversary to me!), and every single piece of chess software I’ve ever used has a “Show Threat” feature (even ancient outdated leftover crappy programs that you can get for free from websites that haven’t been updated since the 1990′s or buy for a couple of bucks at a chain discount store, the kind of programs that don’t run on anything newer than Windows B.C. Mesopotamia Edition, have it).

The Fritz “family” of playing programs (Fritz 13, Hiarcs 13, Shredder 12, Junior 12, Rybka 4) certainly have it, and for novice players or anyone of any chess skill level who is replaying a database game and suddenly finds him/herself asking “Why did they do that?”, the “Show Threat” feature can be an incredibly useful tool.

I’ll even use the Evergreen game as an example to show how you can use it. Let’s go to the position after 19…Qxf3 and have Fritz13 show us the threat. (If you want to follow along, open Fritz’s database and do a search using “Evergreen” [without the quotes] in the “Tournament” field, double-click on the game in the game list to load it, then click on 19…Qxf3 in the Notation pane to jump to that position.)

Next we’ll click on the “Home” tab in the menu bar, and select “Threat” as shown below:

What this actually does is “trick” Fritz into thinking that the side which just competed a move is the side to move next (it’s that “two moves in a row” thing we were talking about earlier), and makes Fritz calculate the strongest move in that position. After a moment or three, we’ll see this on the chessboard:

…where we now see a red arrow, indicating that Black’s threat is …Qxg2#.

Please note that the threat function doesn’t work when the moving side just gave check, as it’s assumed (taken for granted, actually, being as chess has rules and all) that a check constitutes an automatic mate threat.

Just for chuckles, though, you can click on 19.Rad1 to load that position, and click “Threat” to get this:

Yep, ol’ Fritzie sees the combination Anderssen had in mind (and which Dufresne could have averted if he’d not been so intent on enforcing his own mating plans). Running “Infinite Analysis” here will show you what Dufresne should have done – and the answer might surprise you!.

Note, too, that you don’t always get earth-shattering, startling results when you display a threat. If a position is fairly quiet, with no obvious tactical shots, displaying the “threat” simply shows the best move in the current position for the non-moving side – this could very well be just a simple developing move which is not terribly dangerous in itself. It all depends on the position in question.

Hey, don’t forget: When you purchase ChessBase, Fritz, FritzTrainer DVDs, ChessKing, and now ChessOK Aquarium Windows PC computer software from uscfsales.com, you will receive free technical support from yours truly. You will NOT get technical support from me if you purchase your chess software anywhere else! Just e-mail me with your questions (but don’t forget to include your uscfsales.com order number!).

Have fun! – Steve Lopez

Copyright 2012, Steven A. Lopez. All rights reserved.

It’s not always easy to understand the point of a particular move, whether one is a beginner or a grizzled veteran – heck, I’ve been playing for many years and I still often find myself wondering why a particular move was played. The Fritz family of playing programs (Fritz, Hiarcs, Junior, Shredder, and Rybka), chess playing software which is available from uscfsales.com, contains a feature which can help point you in the right direction when you’re trying to figure out the reason behind a particular move, a feature called (not surprisingly) “Explain all moves”.

Bear in mind that you won’t get a detailed multi-paragraph explanation of each move in a position; you’ll see a short descriptive phrase of a move’s purpose or an evaluation of its weaknesses. But this can often put you on the right track when you’re trying to understand why a particular move has been played or you’re evaluating candidate moves in a position and, as we’ll see later, sometimes offers very surprising information.

Let’s see an example. In the game Coro – Acha Fernandez, Spain, 1995, the following moves have been played: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Bc4 Nxe4 4. Nxe5 d5 5. Bb5+ c6 6. Bd3 Nf6 7. O-O Be7 8. Nc3 O-O 9. Re1 Re8 10. b3 d4 11. Ne2 c5, to reach this position:

Fritz 13 chess playing and analysis Windows PC software from USCFSales.com

This is interesting. Black seems to have pushed his d-pawn too far ahead and now White is trying to capitalize on the mistake; how should White proceed?

We can always launch our chess engine of choice and click the “plus” button in the Engine analysis pane to see as many candidate moves (and their resulting variations) as we can. But if we’re interested in just the candidate moves with a short explanation, we can get that information from “Explain all moves”. Click the “Training” tab near the top of the screen, then click the box beside “Explain all moves”:

Click on the picture for a larger view

A new pane will appear on your screen (its exact location will depend on your present configuration of panes in Fritz13) and will display every candidate move along with a short text explanation for many of them:

Click on the picture for a larger view

There are a few points to bear in mind regarding this list. It’s a list of all of the legal moves in the position, generated by the Fritz5.32 engine (which is included with all ChessBase chessplaying programs). The moves are listed in order of their evaluations by Fritz5.32, from best to worst from the point of view of the moving player, and this ranking will change as Fritz looks farther ahead, more deeply into the possibilities of future moves. The verbal comments will change, too, as sometimes a move which looked good initially turns out to be detrimental somewhere on down the road (and vice-versa). The numerical evaluation at the top of the list applies to the current board position; this too will change as Fritz analyzes (and you will also see the current search depth at the top of the list).

It’s interesting to note that the move White actually played here (12.b4) ranks pretty far down on the list; several moves were much better. The top move so far in Fritz’s estimation is 12.Bc4, and Fritz calls it a “decisive threat”. Why?

Looking more closely at the board, we see the threat of 13.Bxf7, forking the King and Rook (since the Bishop will be protected by the Knight on e5) and winning the exchange if Black fails to prevent it. So even though “Explain all moves” didn’t mention all of that, it did get us to ask that all-important chess question: Why? And we were able to discover the answer on our own. That’s what I meant when I said that this feature can often put us on the right track to understanding moves and positions.

Note that as you go down the list, the explanations become more general or are omitted entirely. That’s because it’s a whole lot easier to explain the purpose of good moves than it is to justify the ideas behind bad ones – and this is especially true for a computer program.

If you’re an experienced chessplayer, you might be mentally writing “Explain all moves” off as a feature suitable only for chess beginners. Please allow me to try to disabuse you of that fallacious notion (gee, I love that kind of fancy talk) with an example from the same game. Here’s the position after Black’s fourth move:

Fritz 13 chess playing and analysis Windows PC software from USCFSales.com

In the opening of this game White seemed to be going for a Giuoco Piano, then switched to a Ruy Lopez-like plan by playing 5.Bb5+ , which took the game clean out of “book” (check Powerbook 2012 – the only move listed after 4…d5 is 5.Bb3). But if we back up a move, we’ll discover something really interesting…

Click on 4…d5 to jump to that position, then select “Explain all moves” (as I described earlier) — then watch what you get:

Click on the picture for a larger view

The “Explain all moves” feature in Fritz13 correctly identifies the position after 5.Qe2 as a transposition into known lines in the Petroff Defense! If you go back and check Fritz Powerbook 2012 you won’t discover this, being as no one has played 5.Qe2 in this position. But make the move 5.Qe2 on the chessboard in Fritz13 and then check Powerbook again – you’ll see three candidate “book” moves for Black in the position. By playing 5.Qe2, White can transpose into a known Petroff variation — and we might not have found out had we not used the “Explain all moves” feature.

Thus I mock the notion that “Explain all moves” is a “mere beginner feature”. “Hah!” I say. “Hah!” indeed.

A reminder — when you purchase ChessBase, Fritz, ChessKing, and now ChessOK Aquarium Windows PC computer software from uscfsales.com, you will receive free technical support from yours truly. Just e-mail me with your questions (but don’t forget to include your uscfsales.com order number!).

Have fun! – Steve Lopez

Copyright 2012, Steven A. Lopez. All rights reserved.

Over the years, I’ve sometimes heard players say, “Why do I need millions of games? I’ll never play through all of them anyway!” Gee, I don’t know – why do you need a local library? You’re never going to read all of those books. Comments like these illustrate vividly that the point has been missed. A database of five million games (or any chess database of any size, for that matter) is just like a library – you’ll never use everything that’s in it, but what you will use is there for you whenever you want it. Let me show you what I mean with a simple chess example…

Let’s say that you’ve been reading an instructional column in the latest Chess Life magazine describing how a player should handle positions with an isolated d4-pawn blockaded by a Black Knight on d5. It’s a common enough theme (after all, Aron Nimzovich wrote a whole book about such positions back in the day), but plenty of chessplayers aren’t sure how to play these positions from either side of the board.

You’ve read this column and it provided an illustrative game or maybe two games, if you’re lucky – this is a magazine you’re reading, and they can’t devote an entire issue to dozens of examples illustrating a single specific theme. But you find yourself wanting more; you’d like to see additional instructional examples. This is precisely where Mega Database 2012 comes in – you can fire up ChessBase 11 or any of the Fritz family of playing programs to search the Mega Database for games containing an isolated White d4-pawn blockaded by a Black d5-Knight, then play through as many of these games as you’d like.

After bringing up the Search mask and clicking the “Position” tab, you’ll see this:

ChessBase 11 chess database software from USCFSales.com

This dialogue provides the tools we’ll use to specify a particular position search. We’ll start by clicking the radio button next to “Look for board”, then we’ll click the buttons for the pieces and pawns we want to use (in this case a White pawn and Black Knight), then place them on the board by clicking on the desired squares:

ChessBase 11 chess database software from USCFSales.com

So we now have a White pawn on d4 and a Black Knight on d5. That’s a start, but we’re not finished yet. We’re still missing a key ingredient – the most important one, actually. The White pawn needs to be isolated (e.g. no pawns on either the c- or e-files). How do we designate that as part of our search?

Have a look at the radio buttons in the upper right-hand corner of this dialogue – you’ll spot one which reads “Exclude board”. Just as the “Look for board” lets us specify which pieces must be on particular squares, the “Exclude board” gives us the tools to specify which pieces must not be on certain squares.

So we’ll click the radio button beside “Exclude board”…

ChessBase 11 chess database software from USCFSales.com

…and then we’ll place White pawns on the c-and e-files, plus on the d-file for good measure (so that we exclude positions with doubled d-pawns) as shown here:

ChessBase 11 chess database software from USCFSales.com

…to indicate that a White pawn may not be on any of these squares.

We obviously can skip the first and last ranks, as pawns can’t legally be placed on these squares anyway, plus we can safely omit the squares d4 and d5 (because we’ve already specified on the “Look for board” that particular chessmen must be on these squares).

Now we click “OK” and let ChessBase/Fritz do the search. I’m going to use ChessBase 11 for the rest of this post, because I want to show you some things you can do with ChessBase that you can’t do with Fritz.

When the search is finished in ChessBase 11, you’ll have a list of games in which the search criteria (and isolated White d4-pawn blockaded by a Black d5-Knight) occur. Single-clicking on a game in the list loads the game (in the left-hand panes) with the board and notation already displaying the position in which the isolated/blocked criteria apply:

Click on the picture for a larger view

The result is that we’ve now found more than 142,000 games in addition to the couple of games we saw in that Chess Life article. That gives us plenty of examples to play through to reinforce the lessons of that article. Now nobody’s expecting you to review over 100,000 games, but you can easily limit the search further by doing it again with additional search criteria (such the name of a favorite player, White wins, a specific ECO code or range of them, etc.). Heck, you could just scroll to the bottom of the list and play through, say, a dozen or two dozen recent games from the year 2011.

But here’s the cool trick I wanted to show you. Remember when I mentioned that Mega Database 2012 has over 78,000 annotated games? One more click will re-sort the search results so that the annotated games are grouped together at the start of the list. Just click on the column header for the “VCS” column (those letters being designations for various annotation forms), and you’ll now see this:

Click on the picture for a larger view

We now have a re-sorted list, with all of the annotated games together at the top of the list. You can single-click on a game to play through it right in the game list, or double-click on it to open it up in its own game window.

That’s the value of having a large game database for use with ChessBase and Fritz, especially an annotated one like Mega Database 2012. Nobody in their right mind would think that they could review millions of games from such a database. But when we’re studying game concepts (like isolated pawns, opposite colored Bishops, Knight underpromotions, castling on opposite wings, particular opening variations, Rook vs. Queen endgames, and on and on and on), a huge library of games will greatly enhance your chess study by providing much more exemplary material on a specific chess theme than any book or magazine could ever possibly offer.

And now a word from our sponsor — uscfsales.com is offering a 10% discount (excluding shipping and taxes where applicable) on all new chess purchases from our website between now and January 31, 2012. Those savings apply to everything on our site, not just chess software purchases. All you need to do to enjoy the 10% discount is type the code NEWYEAR in the coupon code box when finalizing your order on the Checkout page, and 10% will be deducted from the total purchase price of your order. It’s easy!

And don’t forget — when you purchase ChessBase, Fritz, and now ChessKing Windows PC computer software from uscfsales.com, you can receive free technical support from yours truly. Just e-mail me with your questions (but don’t forget to include your uscfsales.com order number!).

Have fun! – Steve Lopez

Copyright 2012, Steven A. Lopez. All rights reserved.

But the process of installing Powerbook 2012 is a bit different than we’ve seen in previous versions. The opening books and databases of previous Powerbooks were accessible directly from the CD or DVD. The latest version of Powerbook contains its books and databases in compressed form, so they must be installed to your hard drive by using the executable files on the Powerbook 2012 DVD.

Start by placing the Fritz Powerbook 2012 DVD in your computer’s disk drive tray. Close the tray and after a few moments you should see the following popup appear:

Fritz Powerbook 2012 chess opening book software from USCFSales.com

Click on the command I’ve highlighted in the above illustration – the one beside the picture of a tree – to begin the installation process.

Next you’ll see this:

Fritz Powerbook 2012 chess opening book software from USCFSales.com

…which lets you set up the language for the installation program. Pick your language from the pulldown menu and then click “OK”. You’ll see this message:

Fritz Powerbook 2012 chess opening book software from USCFSales.com

…and click “Next”.

This next display is pretty important. ChessBase 11 and the Fritz family of playing programs will NOT automatically find the opening books and databases after you’ve installed them; you’ll need to use each program’s “Open” commands to “point” the software to the correct location. So when you see this dialogue:

Fritz Powerbook 2012 chess opening book software from USCFSales.com

…be sure to note the folder into which the Powerbook files are going to be installed. Write it down if you feel the need (in fact, that’s a pretty good idea regardless). You’ll need this folder path later when it comes time to show your ChessBase and Fritz where the files are located.

If you want to change this folder path, you can type a different path into the box (highlighted in blue in the illustration) or use the “Browse” button to select a different drive and/or folder.

After you’ve selected a destination folder (or decided that the default is where you want the files to go), click “Next”:

Fritz Powerbook 2012 chess opening book software from USCFSales.com

This dialogue lets you select which components of the Fritz Powerbook to install.

Here’s a short description of the four items:

Powerbook 2012 – a large opening book (a.k.a. opening tree – the terms are interchangeable) containing 4,443,678 individual positions, each with statistics as to White/Black success rate and the average ratings of the players who undertook each move. The book was created by merging together 1,531,511 games taken from actual tournament practice by human players.

Powerbook Database 2012 – the aforementioned 1,531,511 games, provided so that when you come across an interesting position in the Powerbook tree, you can easily search for the position in the Powerbook database and play through the complete games in which that position appeared.

Strongbook 2012 – a subset of the complete Powerbook, intended primarily for professional players as a statistical reference and for use by pros as an opening book when using a chess engine as a sparring partner. The Strongbook is a tree created from top level games which contained “bleeding edge” opening theory at the time the tree was created.

Strongbook Database 2012 – the database of games from which the Strongbook tree was created.

Obviously, anyone who purchases the Powerbook 2012 DVD can use any or all of these components. Since I’m a club level player (not a professional player), I opted to install just the two “Powerbook” components and didn’t install the “Strongbook” (to save drive space for the videos I produce and my other professional work). But, as I said, you can install any or all of the four components as you wish.

After you’ve selected the components you wish to install (by checking or unchecking the boxes beside their names), click “Install” to let ‘er rip.

Next you’ll see this:

Fritz Powerbook 2012 chess opening book software from USCFSales.com

….which is simply asking what folder you want to put the tree/book into. This is just a sub-folder of the folder you previously selected, so click “Extract” (and make a quick mental or paper note to add “\books” to the database path you wrote down before, so that you can find your opening books later). Another dialogue will show you the progress of the file extraction/copying process.

When that’s finished, you’ll get another dialogue which pertains to your database choice(s):

Fritz Powerbook 2012 chess opening book software from USCFSales.com

…and here again you’ll want to note the folder path so that you can find your database(s) later. You’ll see another progress dialogue showing how far along the database installation process is at any given time.

When the database or databases have been installed, you’ll see this:

Fritz Powerbook 2012 chess opening book software from USCFSales.com

Click “Finish” and you’re done.

The last step will be to point ChessBase 11 and your Fritz programs to the opening books and databases.

In ChessBase 11, go to the Home tab and click the “Open” button:

Fritz Powerbook 2012 chess opening book software from USCFSales.com

to get this dialogue:

Fritz Powerbook 2012 chess opening book software from USCFSales.com

Use the pulldown menu to select which kind of file you wish to open (a database, which will have the “*.cbh” extension or a book/tree, which ends in “*.ctg”) as shown in the illustration, then navigate to the folder where you installed the item.

If you don’t know how to do the navigation, just click the “Computer” button on the left side of this dialogue, then follow the folder path you (hopefully) previously wrote down to “drill down” to the last folder listed in the path – and there you’ll see your file.

In the Fritz family of playing programs, you click “Play name of program” in the splash screen, then go to the File menu, select “Open”, then either “Open Database” or “Opening Book” (depending, obviously, on the type of file you want to open):

Fritz Powerbook 2012 chess opening book software from USCFSales.com

…and that will display the File Select dialogue, just as we saw for ChessBase 11 earlier.

And now a word from our sponsor — uscfsales.com is offering a 10% discount (excluding shipping and taxes where applicable) on all new chess purchases from our website between now and January 31, 2012. Those savings apply to everything on our site, not just chess software purchases. All you need to do to enjoy the 10% discount is type the code NEWYEAR in the coupon code box when finalizing your order on the Checkout page, and 10% will be deducted from the total purchase price of your order. It’s easy!

And don’t forget — when you purchase ChessBase, Fritz, and now ChessKing Windows PC computer software from uscfsales.com, you can receive free technical support from yours truly. Just e-mail me with your questions (but don’t forget to include your uscfsales.com order number!).

Have fun! – Steve Lopez

Copyright 2012, Steven A. Lopez. All rights reserved.

You may have occasionally noticed text comments attached to chess positions on the Fritz13 “Let’s Check” server; for example, after 1.e4 you would see the following when you click the “LiveBook” tab in the Notation pane:

Click the pic to enlarge it

The right-hand portion of the pane (in violet, for those playing along with their Windows color palettes at home) contains a number of natural language text comments about the position. These were submitted by “Let’s Check” users (including me, as viewers of my YouTube ChessBase and Fritz videos might remember – I submitted the Gyula Breyer quote in the illustration).

It’s really easy to submit a comment; let’s learn how…

We’ll use the opening book to step through the following moves:

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5

…which you’ll recognize as the first three moves of the Giuoco Piano. There are no text comments to this position yet:

Click on the picture to enlarge it

…so I’ll write and submit one. You’ll notice in the illustration above that there is a string of buttons at the bottom of the comment pane. When I click the “Write” button, Fritz13 presents the following dialogue:

Fritz 13 chess playing and analysis Windows PC software from USCFSales.com

This dialogue allows users to write a short comment about the position. And I do mean “short” – you’re limited to 144 characters (four more than Twitter allows). You’re not going to be able to write a major multi-paragraph exegesis on the merits of the Giuoco Piano, just a short comment as I’m writing here:

Fritz 13 chess playing and analysis Windows PC software from USCFSales.com

I didn’t get to say much, and I still used all 144 characters. To use this features, we have to train ourselves to be concise and to the point!

After I’m finished writing, all I have to do is click the “OK” button, and now my comment has been posted to Fritz13′s “Let’s Check” server:

Click on the picture to enlarge it

…and we notice that a global message has been sent to everyone presently using “Let’s Check” that I’ve added a new comment (it’s displayed in the black scrolling message box in the illustration above).

The comment function also allows users to go back and edit their own quotes. Let’s say that I discover to my horror that I’ve misspelled “Giuoco”. I can click on my comment, then click “Edit” (to display the same dialogue I used to write the initial comment), which allows me to rewrite my comment. After clicking “OK”, the revised comment replaces my original one on the server.

There’s also a button which allows users to delete their own comments (obviously you can’t delete someone else’s comments). If you change your mind about one of your comments later and decide that you don’t want it to appear online, you can click on it to highlight it, then click the “Delete” button to permanently remove it.

If the comment function resembles a “chess Twitter”, two other buttons make this feature a “chess digg” or “chess reddit” (for readers familiar with those Internet sites). Notice the pair of buttons marked “Like” and “Dislike”. These allow you to “vote” on other users’ comments. You’d simply highlight a comment that you particularly appreciate (or disagree with), and click either “Like” or “Dislike”. Fritz13′s “Let’s Check” server keeps track of these “votes”, and you can access a “leader board” which shows the running totals. Go to the “Engine” tab, click the “Lists of Honour” button, and then “Likes”:

Fritz 13 chess playing and analysis Windows PC software from USCFSales.com

…which will bring up a scrolling list of “Let’s Check” users whose comments have been voted upon:

Fritz 13 chess playing and analysis Windows PC software from USCFSales.com

Note that if your comments are particularly useless, uninformative, or unpopular, your score can fall into negative values:

Fritz 13 chess playing and analysis Windows PC software from USCFSales.com

…so if you want a good ranking, it’s best to make sure that your comments are pertinent, accurate, and/or helpful to others who wish to understand a particular position.

You can also click on a user’s name in the list, click the “Show User Information” button, and see the personal information about that user which they’ve opted to attach to their Playchess profile.

There’s one final button which we should mention (although I really wish we didn’t need to). The Interrant being what it is, there are always a few clowns who feel the need to exercise the electronic equivalent of spray painting all over every blank surface they can find. Since the comments on “Let’s Check” are unmoderated (meaning that no one needs to approve them before they’re posted), someone is bound, sooner or later, to use this feature for inappropriate commentary, such as remarks of a sexual, racial, religious, or political nature – or even just to post a string of random obscene words. If you spot one of these comments, please do everyone a favor and highlight it, then click the “Report” button. That will send a message to the folks who run the server indicating that the comment should be reviewed and, if necessary, removed.

On the other hand, please don’t use the “Report” button just because you personally don’t like the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit and someone posted a comment encouraging other players to try it. That’s not what the “Report” button is for, and using it for that purpose is simply wasting somebody else’s time.

Ultimately the “Let’s Check” server is what the community of users makes it, so even if you’re not especially interested in using your Fritz13 chess program (or other chess engine) to discover or analyze chess positions, you can still make your own valuable contribution to the community by offering the benefit of your personal chess knowledge – write and submit some text annotations to the growing tree of “Let’s Check” positions and help other players better understand the game of chess, one position at a time.

And now a word from our sponsor — uscfsales.com is offering a 10% discount (excluding shipping and taxes where applicable) on all new chess purchases from our website between now and January 31, 2012. Those savings apply to everything on our site, not just chess software purchases. All you need to do to enjoy the 10% discount is type the code NEWYEAR in the coupon code box when finalizing your order on the Checkout page, and 10% will be deducted from the total purchase price of your order. It’s easy!

And don’t forget — when you purchase ChessBase, Fritz, and now ChessKing Windows PC computer software from uscfsales.com, you can receive free technical support from yours truly. Just e-mail me with your questions (but don’t forget to include your uscfsales.com order number!).

Have fun! – Steve Lopez

Copyright 2012, Steven A. Lopez. All rights reserved.

You might want to consider bookmarking this page in your browser to make it easy to come back to this index.

The links are provided in chronological order in two sections: ChessBase videos and Fritz videos. Note that the earliest ChessBase videos (numbers 1 through 11, plus 33) cover topics (such as basic database searches) which also apply to Fritz software.

ChessBase Tip #0001 – Player searches in ChessBase 11, tips on replaying games, resizing the default chessboards, as well as other display tweaks.

ChessBase Tip #0002 – Two easy ways to use ChessBase 11 to learn the ECO (Encyclopedia of Chess Openings) code of a chess game and then use that information to search for games by opening.

ChessBase Tip #0003 – Easy and effective game header searches: finding games by tournament, year, result, and other criteria.

ChessBase Tip #0004 – Searching for annotated games (chess games which contain master or grandmaster commentary and variations).

ChessBase Tip #0005 – Search for a specific board position in your master reference database.

ChessBase Tip #0006 – A “hidden” tip for conducting board position searches across multiple databases in a single pass.

ChessBase Tip #0007 – Search for chess position fragments (partial positions).

ChessBase Tip #0008 – Create and implement advanced position searches and exclude board and position elements from a database search.

ChessBase Tip #0009 – Some “hidden” features of chess position searches in ChessBase 11, including “Or” board searches and piece sacrifice searches.

ChessBase Tip #0010 – How chess annotators use the “medals” feature as a visual cue to point out especially interesting and instructive games in a database.

ChessBase Tip #0011 – How to search for games which have been marked with annotator medals in ChessBase 11, which are colored bars that denote various chess themes and motifs.

ChessBase Tip #0012 – Basic techniques for conducting easy and effective material balance searches in ChessBase 11 through the example of a simple Queen vs. two Rooks endgame search.

ChessBase Tip #0013 – A continuation of the topic started in ChessBase Tip #0012; material balance searches in ChessBase 11, (finding games based on board material).

ChessBase Tip #0014 – Minor piece endgame searches in ChessBase 11.

ChessBase Tip #0015 – Database searches to find multiple various pawn structures such as passed or doubled pawns.

ChessBase Tip #0016 – Search for games containing common strategic Bishop motifs.

ChessBase Tip #0017 – Maneuver searches in ChessBase 11, the basics of writing effective search parameters to find specific piece movements in the games from your chess database.

ChessBase Tip #0018 – How to limit a ChessBase 11 maneuver search to a specific span of moves, allowing you to designate the phase of the game (opening, middlegame, endgame) in which the maneuver occurs.

ChessBase Tip #0019 – How to search for maneuvers involving captures, and search for specific captured pieces.

ChessBase Tip #0020 – The power of wildcards, which enable you to create searches which involve more than one moving piece as a maneuver parameter.

ChessBase Tip #0021 – How to string multiple maneuvers together into a single search.

ChessBase Tip #0022 – Database searches for pawn promotions, as well as pawn promotions with an opposing piece capture.

ChessBase Tip #0023 – The surprises you can find in a ChessBase 11 database search, such as Knight underpromotions with mate.

ChessBase Tip #0024 – Search for material sacrifices.

ChessBase Tip #0025 – Search for tactical themes, a little known “trick”.

ChessBase Tip #0026 – Techniques for combining different search types (such as by player, opening, and specific piece maneuver) into a single search.

ChessBase Tip #0027 – Demonstrating an apparent paradox: the more parameters you specify in a database search, the less information you receive as a search result.

ChessBase Tip #0028 – How to create a new database in ChessBase 11, copy games into the new database, change the sort order of the game list so that annotated games are displayed at the start of the list, how to make this new sort order a permanent change.

ChessBase Tip #0029 – An advanced ChessBase 11 technique: how to copy a portion of a master database’s existing opening key to a separate unkeyed database and then index the second database’s games.

ChessBase Tip #0030 – Another advanced ChessBase 11 feature: creating a “theme key”, a game index saves time on oft-repeated searches.

ChessBase Tip #0031 – How to “nest” keys inside of other keys, creating an organized hierarchy of specific subkeys.

ChessBase Tip #0032 – How to turn a ChessBase 11 database into an opening book for Fritz.

ChessBase Tip #0033 – An explaination of the statistical displays in opening trees.

Fritz Tip #0001 – Color-coding game variations to provide greater viewing clarity in a game’s notation.

Fritz Tip #0002 – Why Fritz’s handicap modes are a much better choice than “fixed time” modes for casual training games. Fritz’s pre-programmed “personalities” are also discussed in this video.

Fritz Tip #0003 – A special “beginner” play mode: pre-programmed “odds” games in the Fritz interface.

Fritz Tip #0004 – “Friend” mode, a training mode which utilizes an “adaptive” opponent: over a series of games, the chess engine will alter its own chess strength to be just slightly better than your own, offering a competitive game without being overwhelming.

Fritz Tip #0005 – “Sparring”, a special play mode in the Fritz software which actually sets up tactics for you while you’re playing against the chess engine.

Fritz Tip #0006 – How to expand your suite of chess playing engines by importing new U.C.I. (Universal Chess Interface) engines for use with the Fritz interface.

Fritz Tip #0007 – How to set up a board position for practice or analysis in the Fritz interface.

Fritz Tip #0008 – How to set up the Fritz Endgame Turbo tablebases; testing for a proper tablebase installation.

Fritz Tip #0009 – How to set up an endgame position and then practice your endgame technique using the Fritz Endgame Turbo tablebases.

Fritz Tip #0010 – How to use the Fritz pre-programmed endgame training.

Fritz Tip #0011 – How to adjust Fritz’s “draw” and “resign” settings.

Fritz Tip #0012 – “Opening Training” options including general and detailed openings, and how to use the training feature to force the chessplaying engine to play a particular opening.

Fritz Tip #0013 – Customizing Fritz’s Endgame Training feature (shown in Fritz Tip #0010) by adding your own endgames.

Fritz Tip #0014 – How to set up your own suite of opening variations to use with Fritz’s Opening Training feature.

Fritz Tip #0015 – “Attack Training”, which challenges you with random positions in which you must successfully identify all pieces and pawns which are under attack.

Fritz Tip #0016 – “Defense Training”, a mode designed to hone your ability to spot pieces (both yours and those of your opponent) which are undefended.

Fritz Tip #0017 – “Check training”, a feature which tests your ability to spot friendly and enemy pieces and pawns in a position to check their opposing Kings.

Fritz Tip #0018 – A short tour of the changes to the program’s user interface between Fritz 12 and Fritz 13.

Fritz Tip #0019 – A basic “Let’s Check” feature, position discovery.

Fritz Tip #0020 – Instant access to existing game analysis on the “Let’s Check”server.

Fritz Tip #0021 – How to analyze a complete chess game using a chessplaying engine while contributing your analysis to the worldwide Fritz13 “Let’s Check” community.

Fritz Tip #0022 – How to earn “analysis credits” for using your computer and chess engine to analyze positions submitted by other Fritz13 users.

Fritz Tip #0023 – How to submit a position to the Let’s Check server for other Fritz13 users to analyze.

Fritz Tip #0024 – Submitting a complete game for analysis by the worldwide Fritz “Let’s Check” community.

Fritz Tip #0025 – How to annotate positions for the worldwide “Let’s Check” audience.

Just a reminder (even though I mentioned this before): please bookmark this page for future reference. If you find any broken links, please e-mail me.

And now a word from our sponsor — uscfsales.com is offering a 10% discount (excluding shipping and taxes where applicable) on all new chess purchases from our website between now and January 31, 2012. Those savings apply to everything on our site, not just chess software purchases. All you need to do to enjoy the 10% discount is type the code NEWYEAR in the coupon code box when finalizing your order on the Checkout page, and 10% will be deducted from the total purchase price of your order. It’s easy!

And don’t forget — when you purchase ChessBase, Fritz, and now ChessKing software from uscfsales.com, you receive free technical support from yours truly. Just e-mail me with your questions (but don’t forget to include your uscfsales.com order number!). If you’d like to reach me by phone, please contact our sales staff at (800) 388-KING to make arrangements for details on how to receive technical support from me via telephone for your chess software purchase from uscfsales.com

Have fun! — Steve Lopez

Copyright, 2012. Steven A. Lopez. All rights reserved.

We’re down to “last minute” status and you know what that means: if you find that perfect gift online and need to get it in time for the holiday, you’ll likely need to use some form of expedited shipping — two-day or overnight.

Here at uscfsales.com, we’re understand time has a bad tendency to slip away from us, and we want to help you out. That’s why this week we’re offering our BIGGEST SALE EVER – 20% off any purchase from uscfsales.com with the use of coupon code BIGSALE when you checkout an order now through Saturday December 24^th, 2011 EXTENDED DATE — SATURDAY DEC. 31st, 2011! We understand that you’re likely going to have to spend extra on shipping at this point in the game, so we’d like to make things easier for you by offering the added discount. Just type BIGSALE in the “Coupon Code” box when you finalize your online order and you’ll receive 20% off the purchase price of your order (excluding shipping and taxes where applicable). Also please be aware that the code has to be entered at the time of purchase to claim your savings.

Uscfsales.com has literally thousands of chess items in our inventory: chess boards, chessmen, clocks, books, instructional videos, computer software, even t-shirts and jewelry! Please pay us a visit and take advantage of our biggest sale ever now through December 24^th.

As for me, I’ll be taking the holiday off this year to spend some time with my sons (who are home for the holidays). There will be a new video this Wednesday on our YouTube video channel, but no blog post or video during the week between Christmas and New Year. I’ll be back with a new ChessBase/Fritz tip in this blog on January 3^rd. Until then, Happy Holidays, stay safe, and…

Have fun! – Steve Lopez

OK, I’m being deliberately dramatic, just having fun. But the holidays are almost upon us, sneaking up behind us like a stealthy, deadly ninja, ready to strike…

All right, I’ll stop now. But this next part is no exaggeration – USCF Sales has a knowledgeable staff of professionals who are happy to answer your questions and help you find the perfect holiday chess gift for the chessplayer on your holiday list (or even for yourself, for that matter).

And because we know time is running out, we’re going to make things ever easier for you: from now until Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011, you can receive a 15% discount (excluding shipping and tax where applicable) on your next purchase from USCFSales.com – just type the coupon code CHRISTMAS in the box provided when you check out, and your order placed between now and Sunday will receive the discount plus count toward the USCF Sales MyRewards program!

So don’t be caught unaware like a drowsy teller when the holidays suddenly burst through the door like the James and Younger brothers pulling a bank job – get that shopping done with the help of our friendly, professional sales staff and a 15% discount from USCF Sales!

Have fun! – Steve

P.S. I’ll be back here soon with more Fritz & ChessBase chess software tips. In the meantime, check out my new Fritz13 video tip tomorrow on USCF Sales’ YouTube channel!