Author: Steven Schwartz
Date: 13:13:19 04/18/00
Today seems to be the day for former Computer Chess Reports
Senior Editors. First, a discussion about Enrique and now Larry
Kaufman called me to tell me that he has done a Review of a
new Chess Assistant software.
I was going to place it in the Computer Chess Resource Center
under Computer Chess Reports, but since that has been dormant
for so long, I opted to put it right on the message board. I
hope this is not a problem for anyone.
This is a brand new product. We do not even have it yet.
Steve (ICD/Your Move)
Review of Chess Openings 2000, by I.M. Larry Kaufman
This software, by Convekta Ltd., is closely related to Chess
Assistant. It is basically an abridged version of Chess Assistant 5.0,
with some limitations. It does not allow the adding of new games or the
leading of other databases. It does come with Encyclopedia Chess Openings
2000 and Base 2000, with over 300,000 games, of which 2100 are annotated.
It also comes with the playing program "Crafty".
The main reason for my review is that I was quite impressed by how
easy it is to learn new openings using this software. There are basically
four ways to get an evaluation of an opening position; you can look at
statistics from master play from this position, you can ask a GM or IM for
his evaluation, you can ask a computer, or you can analyze it yourself.
With this software, all of these methods are at your fingertips! You can
quickly go to any opening position, and at a glance you will see the
evaluation of an IM or GM, the actual results of master games from this
position, and the evaluation (if on file) according to a computer. If no
computer evaluation is on file, you can quickly get one on the spot. If
you analyze it yourself, you can store your results. The advantage of all
this is that you are not dependent on only one source in choosing which
move to play in any position.
I tried it out by picking an opening I have never played for either
side (the Catalan) and decided to learn it. I was surprised at how much
easier it was to learn than is usually the case with a new line. When
using books, we never know what the actual results are, nor how careful the
author was in making assessments. When using computer databases, the
statistics are readily available, but often good moves are suggested but
never played. It is such a pleasure to have all three key pieces of
information available at the same time! Moreover, the analysis by the
titled players seems to be quite current, with games from the last
informant already included. In general, I found the evaluations to be
reasonable, though I found a slight tendency to credit white with a slight
advantage when I would have thought equality was the proper verdict. One
very good point about the evaluation system is that in addition to the
usual "=" or "+/=", they also use the evaluation "=/ +/=" to indicate that
black is close to equality but not quite there yet. This evaluation
applies to the opening position and to the position after each of the four
best white opening moves, and hence represents a "par" result for both
players. Another good point is that the annotators rarely hide behind
the "unclear" evaluation, which usually indicates a degree of laziness.
I won't go into all the features, many of which are similar to several
other database products on the market, but I would definitely recommend
this software for anyone wanting to learn new openings.
Regarding other products of Convekta, Chess Assistant 5.1 is the
latest version of that database program, with a host of new features and
the very strong "Tiger" playing program. It is a worthy competitor for
ChessBase.
Finally, I'd also like to mention favorably "Strategy 2.0" by the same
people, which gives a huge number of problems to teach various aspects of
chess strategy, and allows the user to test himself on them and get rated.
Larry Kaufman
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.