Chess Base___________________Chess Academy 98
As I use CB 7.0 on a laptop when I do most of my playing and traveling, it is not easy for me to use these new features in an integrated holistic way. This is beacause laptops generally don't have alot of room on the hard disk. I might access Mega 98-- the 875,000 game database from Chessbase that was carefully groomed by Ftacnik and Knaak with all sorts of thematic keys to sort middle game positions as well as the usual opening , endgame and players keys, which are a kind of index. When I do access Mega, my CD-Rom drive is occupied so I can't use the delicious players encyclopedia with the player's photos and personal information necessary to make a complete dossier. There is a work-around for this: make a small database just of the games of the player that you want to study on your hard disk, then load the players encyclopedia.
This new version of Chessbase is compiled in pure 32-bit code which is a real advantage for owners of modern machines. The good news is that the manufacturer claims the program runs 30% faster than earlier versions. The bad news is that you must have a Pentium CPU in computer or better running at 116 Mhz or better. Otherwise you'll need a new machine to run CB7. If your machine is more than 2 or 3 years old (back in the days when memory prices were higher) you probably don't have enough memory in you machine to run this program without a bunch of nasty crashes and very slow searches of the big files that need a memory buffer to do the searches. That means at least 32 MB. Another disadvantage is that you can't use Fritz 5's engine nor Hiarc's engine to analyze inside of Chessbase. That's because these programs run inside a 16 bit shell of the Operating System and, as I said, CB7 is pure 32-bit. I suppose that you can alway create a new game in Chessbase, then open F5 to analyze the file after closing CB7, then port it back to CB7. This is another compenent integration problem. The 32-bit Crafty engine comes with CB7.
One of the things I most like to do with CB7 is to open Fritz5 powerbooks as a tree-database and study the grandmaster openings. I think that this is a better method of studying theory with CB than to buy their disk of opening surveys. Cb7 also runs the Ken Thompson endgame CDs if you have them. I never found them thaty useful for most players compared say with Dr. Nunn's books developed from analysis of this data.
While CB7 prides itself with its new training mode, (and there are good training CDs available including Knaak's tactic exercises and J.Hodgson's "Attack" series) I feel the training mode falls by the wayside when compared to the training features included in Chess Academy '98.
CA 98 doesn't explain everything with hints like say Chess Mentor. Instead it gives you tons of exercises with high quality examples that any IM or GM should know if he/she appreciates chess culture. You set a default time control in your preferences and if you fail a step the answer is revealed, sometimes with some analysis. There are pop-up analysis boards at your disposal.
CA 98 has some interesting tools to help train your memory from the study games in the 3 supplied databases.(The largest database has about 600,00 games but there is a 40,000 game database for close study.) You can choose a game a setup a test for you to recreate positions from memory, or to remember a sequence of white or black moves for the game or both. This takes the form of a quiz where you set the number of trials available to you and points are deducted when you make a mistake.
The User can make his own database in CA 98 . Games can be imported from CBF and PGN files. It is partly a nuisance to do this because the damned copy protection requires you keep a key CD in the drive to make new databases, trees etc. With the CD drive occupied, there's a limit to how much you can do. CA 98 has tree capabilities just like CB7.
This is not a program for the naive player. I recommend CA98 to players above USCF Class C strength and below FIDE IM strength.