I think it depends what you want it for, if it is for playing there are loads of choices like Fritz, Hiarcs etc., also the free ones like Stockfish.
As for database management I use Chessbase, I am sure there will be lots of other good suggestions, free as well, I am just saying I find Chessbase perfect for my use.
Good Luck and shop around as there are so many good alternatives that may suit you better.
Cheers.
Get Arena and/or WinBoard (free chess programs) and a bunch of free chess engines like Houdini, Stockfish, Firebird etc before you buy anything. I own Fritz 12 it's a great program but I would've tried the free ones first if I had known about them.
If you absolutely have to buy something look around for older used versions at amazon and eBay. Trust me, you won't be able to tell the difference between engines rated +3000 and those rated 2800 or lower. And keep in mind those astronomical ratings are based on using state-of-the-art PCs with powerful CPUs not some piece of junk several years old that can't even run a 64 bit OS or IE9 - like mine for instance.
http://winboard.en.softonic.com/ http://www.playwitharena.com/
http://www.zfchess.com/engines.html
Scid + Stockfish, both are completely free. Scid is a GUI for chess database, engine analysis, training, and more. Stockfish is one of the strongest engine (usually in the top 3 of various engines rating lists).
If you have old hardware then go with a free engine (I hear Stockfish being thrown around alot). However, if you have at least an i7 950 with an SSD like me then go with whatever engine fits your style the best. You'll always get strong moves recommended to you, but pay more attention to features and style rather than strength. Some engines keep track of knight paths and note, "The knight plans on moving here", or "this square is the focus of the position". Seems like obvious stuff, but many beginners need to be shown such and not just be given variations. A good task is to explain why a variation is good after you fed the game to a computer, and if you can't it's time to get studying (you'll discover it's because of superior pawn structure, or activity of the pieces more than makes up for your bad pawn structure, good knight vs. bad bishop or vice versa, etc., which engines don't typically spell out)
If you mean engine then I use Houdini, but as has been mentioned above unless you're using a very powerful computer, you won't really notice much difference.
As for the GUI, if you don't need a database and would like something that's easy to use and can easily edit pgn files, then I recommend the free Tarrasch GUI.
Scid + Stockfish, both are completely free. Scid is a GUI for chess database, engine analysis, training, and more. Stockfish is one of the strongest engine (usually in the top 3 of various engines rating lists).
Yeah, good combination. You can of course add many engines in addition to stockfish.
If you are technically inclined and familiar with relational database functionality, I'd highly recommend Chess Assistant 12.
CA has a crappy user interface that is reminiscent of 1990 software design.
But under the hood it natively integrates CQL -- chess query language into the engine. This allows you to do things with the database that are simply impossible with other chess database packages.
As for engines, any good engine will do. There are plenty of very high quality freely available engines out there, and unless you're playing in ICCF tournaments, you really don't need to ensure that you're using the best engine out there.
If you are technically inclined and familiar with relational database functionality, I'd highly recommend Chess Assistant 12.
CA has a crappy user interface that is reminiscent of 1990 software design.
But under the hood it natively integrates CQL -- chess query language into the engine. This allows you to do things with the database that are simply impossible with other chess database packages.
As for engines, any good engine will do. There are plenty of very high quality freely available engines out there, and unless you're playing in ICCF tournaments, you really don't need to ensure that you're using the best engine out there.
I'm curious, like what? Can you give an example?
Sure. Say you want to find all games where one player sacrifices a queen and remains down a queen in material for at least 10 moves and wins. That's easy enough.
Or maybe you want to find all examples of Zwickmuhle, or "see-saw" attacks within your database?
Or perhaps you want to look for a geometric relationship between the pieces, but you don't care where on the board it occurs, or which color
has the pattern.
The list can go on forever. Basically, CQL allows you to define any relationship between pieces and moves you can imagine, and search for it. This is way beyond what ChessBase searches can do.
Hmm, ok.
I know SCID can do material and pattern searches, but I haven't really tried playing with that. If I remember correctly CA could search for "manuevres". I dont think SCID can do that.
SCID can't do particularly complex pattern searches, and it can't search for how patterns change over the course of the game. It's search capability is pretty much on the same level as Chessbase - fairly primitive and static.
As the title suggests....
I hear people talking about Shredder, Fritz, Rybka etc and just wondered which is the best to go for.
I don't mind spending the money for decent software but didn't want to just blindly spring for the most expensive assuming it to be the best without taking a bit of advice first.
Any info would be much appreciated.