I know this topic has already been discussed but I didn't really find all the details I wanted and was wondering what are the differences between chessbase, aquarium, chess king and chess assistant and any other similiar programs that may be out there. Obviously chessbase is the most expensive but what I really want to know are the pros and cons of chessbase as oppose to the other ones and the differences between them all. Thanks

Instead of asking for full reviews with pros and cons of each, would be far simpler for you to post exactly what YOU want from a piece of chess software and people can advise which they think most appropriate.

Though, you'll find that none of the software does everything, some of the differences really just come down to preference. In fact you'll find that most keen software users generally use more than one interface.

I use Chessbase 8, Fritz 12 and Arena for my needs, and there's still plenty of things in each of those I'd happily change if I could.....

Maybe, to be honest I don't know exactly what I want, something to analyse and save my games with a large database, and a nice interface would be good too.

All of them will allow you to do that.

In fact you can do that for free with the likes of scid/chessdb and Arena.

All of which let you load extra analysis/playing engines too (including the free and very powerful Houdini 1.5a).

Maybe start with those. Won't cost you anything, and after playing with them for a bit you might have a better idea of what extra features you want and which of the commercial interfaces suits best.

Yeah I think I'd like a full paid version but I just want to know the differences between them all

Chessbase and Chess Assistant are database programs...you pair them with a large database of games and search games by player, position, opening, create reports on prospective opponents etc.

Aquarium is an engine interface (analagous to the Fritz program or Arena)...you pair it with a chess engine and use it to analyze your games or play against it.

I don't know what Chess King is.

Note that Chessbase will not analyze full games/blunder check your games but will  give you live analysis of a position if you add an engine (kibitzer) to it (I don't know if that's also the case for Chess Assistant).

My recommendation is, if you can afford it, buy Chessbase and the Big database (my understanding is it's the same as Megabase only without all the "annotated" games) and update the base as needed with TWIC downloads ( http://chess.co.uk/twic/twic ). If you need to analyze your games you can use a free program like Arena and a free engine (Houdini for example)

Yeah, I'm with Arctor on this one! Chess King is another ChessOK product that, from what I've read, doesn't offer anything better than that found on their other products. I have both CB and CA. I've never had the bugs other CA users complain about but there seem to be plenty of them. With CB, you have programmers who work very hard to keep the software running smoothly. I use CB for my teaching work and it is great for analysis and finding games to use in classroom lectures.

Ok, yeah I've heard chessbase is the best but I still want to know what the actual differences are between chessbase and chess assistant.

@arctor So can you not have a database with aquarium?

 You can, but I don't think the database functions are as comprehensive as a dedicated database program like CB or CA. Of course, never having used it, I can't be sure, and maybe you don't need to do anything more than simple searching of games by position...

If you want something to analyse your games, Chessbase isn't the answer...but then there are free programs and engines more than up to that task

Here's a review of Chess King: http://www.chesscafe.com/chessok/chessok.htm It seems a nice compromise (and the cheapest at $49) if you can get past the somewhat childish interface

Yeah the interface on chess king isn't great, but I thought you could analyse your games on chessbase with an engine like houdini or rybka.

You can add an engine to provide live analysis of a position (see image) but you can't feed in a game and leave it to analyse the whole game providing annotations etc.

Ah ok thanks for your help, I know you couldn't just put in your games and leave them there for chessbase to analyse them but I didn't know you could do that iwth any programs. So would I be right in saying that you can do that with arena, fritz, aquarium and chess king? Thanks

 Yup, though Fritz is the only one I've used. I tried Arena before but couldn't figure it out, it's the most user friendly software imo, but it does come recommended by a lot of people so there must be something to it.

I've just bought Chess King so stay tuned and I'll give a quick review soon

Fritz is good for an interface and for analyzing your chess games with an engine.  Chessbase is excellent for database management, if you have an opening repertoire, you can more easily sort games according to system and pawn structure, etc.  Chessbase 2009 premium, what I have, is likely the best buy for money, about $67 US, versus 100+ for the starter package of the latest version I believe, and I have had no major complaints.  As for database of games, simplest is to download all the TWICS for strong human games. For computer chess games, if you're interested in adding those, its simple enough to check the computer chess forums and rating lists for references.

Having played around a bit with Chess King, I have to warn that it is most certainly not one to use as a database program. The games don't open in a seperate window, meaning you can only have one open at a time. There's no option to search games by position, no playerbase, no statistics etc....it's really only good for finding games you already know. It is a nice touch to have the players pictures above the game though and you can enter images for those without them.

However, it is a really good playing/training program. I particularly like the fact that you can easily adjust the engines strength, the positional hints you can turn on when playing (see images) and how it's so easy to export diagrams. Also the fact that it comes bundled with Houdini 2 and the Giga King and Corr databases (5 million+ games) makes it an absolute bargain imo.

Thanks, Arctor. That's also my impression that it cannot do some of the things that Chessbase does.

But I think what you get for the money it's still a good investment.

Ok thanks, yeah it sounds like good value for money, it would be nice if it would work with a database but I guess you have to be prepared to spend money to have everything.

CB products are definitely pricey and some of their pricings make no sense when you actually look at them...

Though to be fair, some are very good products.

I'd say for the average player they'd not need more than one of the Fritz type playing programs, you can do most basic database tasks with them and they have far more "content" in terms of interaction (playing against engines, automatic analysis, various training modes/features), you can also use them happily with the larger DB (and there are several 5.1million+ DB for free on the internet) and with the training/game collection DVDs.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chess+assistant+analyse+games

In the review of Chess King it says it does have a huge database and it is also advertised as having it, you say there are no statistics, surely if there's a database with over 5 nillion games it gives you the win percents on each move.