Is chessbase worth it?

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Avatar of laurelturner

Hi,

I am considering getting chessbase and am wondering if it is worth it. I am a 2000-rated player in online rapid, about 1900 over the board, and am trying to hit 2100. I am trying to get serious about my opening preparation. I've tried to use scid before, as well as lichess, but never really found a good system/a way to make things stick. I imagine with some effort I could, but it sounds like chessbase is much more fluid for repertoire management? I can theoretically afford it but it's still a decent bit of money.

If you're a 1900-2200 rated player who's purchased chessbase and have found that it is markedly more fluid for preparation and repertoire management for xyz reason, I'd love to hear why. Also, if there's anyone in the same rating range who has developed a good system on lichess/scid/etc, I'd also love to hear what makes it work for you.

note: I know that this question has been asked a few times but I've found that the answers people give are fairly general and fairly mixed - if possible, I'm looking for any testimonials of specific features of the software that has made it work/not work for people compared to scid/etc.

Thank you!

Avatar of jjlohe

Hi, I not speak english.

Avatar of jjlohe

I am from Nicaragua 🇳🇮

Avatar of madratter7

Personally, I absolutely think Chessbase is worth it.

BUT not for the reason you have stated. I like it for annotating my games.

There are many strong players who think it is the cats meow for opening prep. And it IS good for doing things like studying lines you might be interested in. But personally, I find actually building a repertoire within in it rather cumbersome. I have watched various videos of peoples systems for doing this within Chessbase and nothing has really clicked for me.

Where it is really shines is doing things like finding lots of games that have a particular theme. For example say you want to study where the Greek Gift sac of the Bishop on h7 works and doesn't work. It is easy to find many games where this occurs, narrow it down to games between good players, and then study those games.

Or you might want to find games where a particular pawn structure occurs. This is really easy in Chessbase.

As I am sure is also true of SCID it also integrates well with a variety of chess engines. I am currently using it paired with Stockfish 18. I haven't used SCID in quite a while but I did not like it when I tried it. But that WAS a long time ago.

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