Fritz and ChessBase

I have Fritz 12 and just downloaded ChessBase Light, but I'm wondering what can I do with ChessBase that I can't already do in Fritz?

Absolutely nothing. Chessbase is for people that do not own a Chessbase engine and want acces to their playing/broadcasting server. It's a simple waste of space on your hardrive.

Fritz 12 came with a 1,5million games plus database, and the internal databasefunction let's you access this db (and others you add) without having to use ChessBase Light.

You can add games from The Week in Chess to the Fritz database, to keep it current.

Chessbase lets you build opening keys with statistics for each position, so you can quickly go through your repertoire looking for which lines you've done well in, and which lines need work.  It has a reference pane which gives you quick access to the continuations played by GMs in any opening position as well as which GMs favoured which moves and win/loss statistics.  You can easily navigate through each database archive by player, tournament, event, annotator, result, opening, endgame, themes.  All game lists are sortable with a single click.  It can generate opening or player reports with detailed information on which lines are successful, or which lines a certain player favours.  Fritz is more a program for playing against, while Chessbase is more for opening and tournament preparation and research.

If I'm not mistaken, Fritz 12 does almost all the things you mentioned. I'm not sure about the opening or player reports, but it does give statistical info on opening moves, including statistics of my own games I have stored.

It also lets me install keys, but I had to download Chessbase to get keys, so I guess it serves that purpose.

Fritz can read opening trees (ctg), but does not allow you to create your own customized opening keys, nor can it generate statistics from any position in an opening key.  It doesn't have a reference pane nor opening reports nor player reports.  Chessbase also allows you to import games from a new database that match lines in your repertoire database.  Also database management (finding and deleting doubles, merging archives) is much better in Chessbase.  I would say opening keys and the reference pane are two of Chessbase's most useful features.

This is a topic I am very interested in and am much frustrated over!  I am not the most database literate guy in the world.  How do I use Fritz 12 to generate list of moves in tree forms (or games in tree form) to track my repertoire.  I can combine games and list key moves and analyses in annotation style but the trees is what I am looking for.  Can i do this on fritz 12?  Thanks in advance.

In Fritz 12, trees are called "opening books."  You can create a new opening book by clicking on the Application Menu in the top lefthand corner, and then clicking on New Openings Book.  Then in a game window on the "openings book" tab under notation, right click, and select "Allow Move Adding," so that you can add new moves to the tree.  Under Analysis on the standard tool bar, from the Opening book menu, you can import games, reset weights, learn from database, etc.

In Fritz, you can import games from database to make an opening book, and/or import very good openings books online if you research the computer chess opening book rating lists (for example at pionerchess or sedatchess) , often these opening books are made freely available in .ctg format, what chessbase uses.  In computer chess, some cool novelties and trends in sharp lines can be found in these books. but these also can be found on your own - the effort might be worth it.  b/c i've never seen a really strong player just give away his or her opening prep, or say hey, these lines are what you really got to know!

Many open source engines also may have an opening book, such as stockfish, these are in .bin format or some other format.

SCID is the best open source alternative to chessbase I know.  chessbase is for database management, if you can't be bothered to do it yourself. chessbase probably has a better player encyclopedia, openings report, can handle very large databases easier, and has an easier to navigate interface.  Annotating games is probably a bit aesthetically nicer and/or easier with fritz or chessbase. i like color coding opening lines.

SCID has fewer file formats, so the bases take much less space.  Also loading times are excellent for sorting through games, etc.

What I'd recommend for opening repertoire is to download some really large databases ( the dann corbit jbase, icofy base, million base, etc. [some 10 million games total] )  and filter them by ECO and strength, import the games from database into an opening book then play through the lines of interest to see which ones work.  You can use Fritz for that.  Then once you know what lines you want to play, use the chess position trainer software to practice them, which is freeware.

Probably Fritz is a great investment, but chessbase, to buy, one would have to be a really serious player and you've checked out the features of SCID and ChessbaseLight first because chessbase costs quite a bit more and maybe SCID has what you need.

Fritz8, SCID, and CPT is the chess software i use. really to study an opening, you just need a good opening book, and to make a pgn file to go through lines right? and a strong engine to check your analysis as well as some creativity in your thinking.

So it sounds like I can, minimally, expert the fritz12 games into scid to track my trees as well as enter any new moves. Two questions, how many games can I enter or upload into scid.  Also am I able to annotate to give my thoughts on various moves and variations. 

Or is it just worth the investment to purchase chessbase light PREMIUM (not the full one).  God knows I cant afford Megabase or need megabase...

Thanks

If you already have Fritz 12, why don't you use that?  Its opening book features are probably the slickest of any program out there.  Chessbase Light Premium can be useful if you work with archives of games, doing searches and comparing moves, but Fritz itself is more than enough just to work with opening books/trees.  SCID is more for people who don't have access to Fritz or Chessbase.

Frankly, and I am embarrassed to admit it, I am struggling mightily with figuring out how to do it and how to get the views I like and can read easily.  I have the manual but I just dont understand the weights and how to make it work properly.  It just does not seem intuitive to me.  I saw a video tutorial that chessbase has for fritz but it does not cover this well or in depth.

But yes I go back and forth on what I want to do. 

Frustrating.

Thanks!

As I understand it, if you want to make the engine more likely to play a certain move, you increase the weight all the way up to a maximum of 125.  If you want to make it play a move less, you can decrease it anywhere down to -125.  You can also mark the moves you want it to play green ("Main move" in the context menu), and moves you want it to avoid red ("Don't play in tournament").  The Fritz approach is pretty easy once you get used to it.  If you want to look at other approaches to repertoire management, Chess Position Trainer is free.  I also find Chessbase Light Premium's opening keys useful, but it all depends on what you want to do really.

Yes this is helpful.  I think I am starting to understand and when I get home I can try it out.  So, the question I have is this.  I guess I can create an opening "tree" from the Practice Opening area or Learn from your openings database area (I forget what it is called).  But when I change the weights, add moves, or delete moves, does it to these things to the ENTIRE database or just to the mini database I have put together on, say, the Four Knights. 

Thanks

SCID databases i keep under 3 million games so that the maintenence functions work rapidly.

i sort them by ECO (using the header search). i had a database of 8 million games on SCID (the Corbit jbase), but i had to break it down to better use the utilities in SCID. the database switcher and the maintenence window, especially the cleaner i function i use when making databases. 

SCID has opening report, player statistics analysis and other utilities, opening tree from base, some training options too, of course you can annotate games easily when they are in the SCID db, i haven't used these features so much yet.

for opening books, Fritz is fine, import .ctg books or games from db, opening trees are easy to navigate, very functional, the analysis part is what is difficult.

yyankdog, in Fritz 12, under the Training tab on the ribbon, there is a menu item called Opening Training, but when you train this way, it looks like the program is making moves independent of the opening book that you have open.  Either it is using some kind of training-specific opening book or the engine is making the moves.  If you want the program to use an opening book that you yourself have created, I think you have to play a game rather than use the Opening Training.

Each opening book that you create (eg. fourknights.ctg) is going to be seperate from other books.  If you want to make changes to a specific book, you have to open that book using the Application menu, and then make changes in the Openings Book tab under Notation of a game window.  You can import one book into another, although that will probably lead to the weights and colours being changed for moves that are in both books.

Hmmm.  You might be right and hitting close to the mark.  I will try it when I get home and report back.

I apologize for asking such simple questions that you think would be or should be covered in the manual but much of it is unclear or simply not covered.  So, I thank you all very much for the help.  I suspect I am not the only one with these challenges.

I will keep you posted.

yyankdog

I've not used the "Opening Training" yet, but you can set the database it uses by going to the "Options" panel and selecting the "Training" tab.

jpepper, good point.  Options are down at the bottom of the Application Menu.  I am still not used to the new ribbon interface of Fritz 12, but if you look around, everything does seem to still be there.