Can any of you people who are familiar with Fritz help me with this, please?

I would like to be able to pull individual games from PGN and/or CB databases to create new databases. The idea is to create bases containing the illustrative games from certain chess books for some of the younger players in our che3ss club and at the local schools. I've found downloads of some great books (plenty of them here at chess.com) and I would like to be able to make discs for these kids where the PDF and/or WinDJ files are accompanied by a database of the games contained in those books.

I know the premium version of ChessBase Light will do this, but frankly at $85 or so that's just too expensive for me. I also know that I could just give them a link to the U of Pitt's site and let them download a ton of bases and find the games for themselves (which I've done), but I'd like to make this as painless for the kids as I can.

Thanks for any help and advice anyone can give me on this.

Fritz is an engine, not a database.  You can use WinBoard: download free here: http://tim-mann.org/chess.html  You can put multiple games in one PGN file thereby creating a mini-database for your needs.

 

Fritz does have database functionality, and such has been the case for some time now.  You obviously don't have all the bells and whistles of the premium Chessbase product, but all the basics are there.   I've imported pgn files with no problem, and saved them in the Chessabase cbh format using Fritz.

If the capabilities of Fritz or the freeware Chessbase Light aren't enough, ChessDB / SCID is the most popular free chess database. Of course, using it is not quite as fast as using Chessbase, but it gets the job done. :)

Thanks very much for the pointers, everyone.  I downloaded Winboard, and it does indeed do just what I need.  I appreciate the info and advice.

In Fritz, just open a game in one PGN database and then save the game. Tell it to do so in another PGN database. I don't use Fritz for database management much, but from what I remember you can save as PGN.

Another option is to download the free version of CB Light - you should not need the premium version.

If my memory really has failed me and I can't remember my pre-CB days, here is another option. Just open the pgn file in a text editor and find the game you want using the search feature. Then copy and paste to a new text file. Just dump all the games you want in the file, suffix as pgn rather than txt and open it in whatever pgn reader you want to use.