what percentage of top players here at chess.com use the game explorer?

Wow Ziryab, you're much more sophisticated in your use of chessbase than I am... I have a question, how do you have it search for all games containing a smothered mate like that?

Also I never thought to create a database of only [insert favorite GM] games, then use their games as a mini opening database for you to emulate... don't know why I haven't heard of this, sounds like a great idea.  For example if two GMs separated by 50-100 years play, say the French, and you love the french, you can contrast the two, if you need a "novelty" for some young punk, pull a popular line from 1930, if you're more interested in current theory follow the other.

Any more advice on how to use chessbase?  Or have I just not read the help files?

The first couple years I had ChessBase, I did spend a lot of time reading Steve Lopez's column on how to use different features.

To find the smother mates, I used the position tab to search for the position below (except without the white king), checked the mirror horizontal and vertical boxes, and selected games ending in checkmate in the game data tab. Repeating the same search, but with a knight where the rook stands turns up the additional data. Of course, there are other smother mates that occur away from the corners, and this search did not find them.

Natalia, what an honor to hear from you.  I love hearing from Grand Masters.   It makes me feel like I know them a bit.

smothered, nice mate

Game Analysis (Analyze) I think is good, try different moves, flip the board and replay games from the start and don't rush a move, I still always rush my moves for some reason, I have used the Explorer in 1 game, that was the idea to use it for the first 10 moves and then play it out normally

I use the Game Explorer too much. I can't stop myself checking for each move.

Sometimes it works as a kind of "alarm", when my opponent makes a plausible looking move that is not in the Explorer, I immediately start looking to try and find what was "wrong" with the move that no GMs had played it. Sometimes this can lead to an advantage.

Other times, I find myself in crazy looking positions, and wonder how I got there, and how I'm expected to survive!

I try to discipline myself to try and calculate a move first, then check the Explorer, however it's very hard for me to go against the win/loss/draw stats.

I meant when studying an opening line they aren't playing in an ongoing game :) You know, like looking at the evaluations of different lines of an opening you aren't playing right now.

that what correspondence chess is all about!