Chess programs: Tutorial

One of the best methods to improve your chess is to analyse your own games. ChessBase helps you to create training tasks from your own games which you can then use for your training. With the "Tactical Analysis" this is easy — and quick. Give it a try!

Training is particularly effective when you come out of your comfort zone. So, why not spice up your training by letting the clock run or awarding points for the right solution? And of course, you do not always need a computer to train — maybe you want to print out the tasks?

The Woodpecker method — a name coined by Swedish GM Axel Smith — is a popular training method to improve your tactical vision and your tactical reflexes. To summarize: when training à la Woodpecker you have a set of training tasks which you work through repeatedly. And with ChessBase, you can easily create databases with sets of training tasks for this purpose.

Playing online is both fun and helps you to improve. ChessBase offers a number of possibilities to do so, including in your web browser. Here's a short and easy introduction to the various ways and possibilities to play online chess with ChessBase for free.

Fritz 18 has been released, bringing a fantastic opponent so that now you have an engine that will adapt to your play, try to make it a fun and engaging opponent, and even set you up with a brilliancy or more if the situation allows. This is not merely hype, but the result of feedback from players who have tried it, from weak amateurs to grandmasters themselves.

After 30 years, chess programs are now gradually reaching a level at which one can reasonably play against them. With Fritz 18 you have an unprecedented opportunity to train and learn sharp openings, helping you master the tactical motifs that are otherwise invisible in the 'perfect play' of normal computer games. Fritz 18 will even help you set up tactical tricks and sacrifices for you to deliver!

How do you build an opening repertoire and learn the variations? Fritz 18 offers many possibilities for this, and you can even compare your learning success with other users. In a short series of tutorials, we show you how to do it. In the first episode, we deal with learning and testing the opening repertoire. The next episodes will deal with building the opening repertoire. With the new "Easy Game" mode in Fritz 18, you can check your knowledge of an existing repertoire, and you can replay and practise it.

Those who have learned their variations with the Fritz Opening Drill may start with the practical exercise: the training game against Fritz 18. For good reason: with its "Evolving Genius" mode, Fritz 18 is the ideal partner for practice-oriented opening training. Fritz adjusts its playing strength and you quickly see whether you can play the positions resulting from the newly learned opening. Fritz 18 guides you through the training games as a trainer, gives intelligent hints and thus ensures a motivating sense of achievement. The best practical training for a real game. ChessBase seminar leader Martin Fischer shows how it works and that this opening training is really fun.

Adding symbols, evaluations and comments may be important, but without variations and moves to depict the possibilities that could have taken place or should have taken place, describing chess as a science would have no meaning. Yet knowing how to organize and re-organize those variations and moves sensibly and efficiently is no less essential. Learn how to do it like a pro!

You've seen videos using it, and articles displaying it, and here is the tutorial on how to use it in all its glory. The Engine Correlation in Let's Check can be a wonderful tool when used properly and comes with a variety of options in both ChessBase 16 and the Fritz interface. Here is the easy-to-use definitive guide.

Using an engine to find out how many moves in a game match its top choice, is but one way to measure a move's quality with an engine. Another key way is what analysts such as Ken Regan use: a tool to compare the engine's evaluation of a move with its own choice of best move, and see by how much the evaluations differ. Now you can do this too using the Centipawn Analysis tool in ChessBase 16!