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Subject: Re: What are the best benefits given by ChessBase or TascBase?

Author: Komputer Korner

Date: 22:54:32 05/31/98

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On May 31, 1998 at 12:39:17, Eran wrote:

>
>
>Hi,
>
>Since I am a positional player favoring slow games in Rebel9, I do not
>know whether I need ChessBase or TascBase and why.  In addition, I do
>not know exactly what the purpose of ChessBase or TascBase is.  I never
>bought one of them before; I am not sure whether I will buy one until I
>fully understand why ChessBase or TascBase is so important to any strong
>positional player.
>
>What are the best benefits given by ChessBase, TascBase, or any other
>database software?  Are they very helpful to any strong chess player?
>If so, how?  Please give me several examples how any strong positional
>chess player manages ChessBase or TascBase to gain benefits in chess.
>
>Which is the best chess database software, ChessBase, TascBase, or any
>other one, and why?
>
>The reason I am considering very carefully about any other commercial
>database software is that they have several million games comparing to
>Rebel's Topbase database file that has only about 116,000 games and that
>is not enough.  On the other hand, the commercial chess database
>software is quite expensive.
>
>Your help is greatly appreciated.
>
>Thank you,
>Eran

Top of the line databases help the serious player study minute parts of
his games like studying the isolated d pawn, r vs b endgames, the 2
bishops,..... etc.
What you are really asking is what are the database features contained
in top of the line databases that Rebel doesn't have that will help you
do these? Rebel 9's database does not let you drag and drop games or
databases from one to the other. It is much more labour intensive to
collect new games from the internet and combine them into your Rebel 9
bases. Rebel 9 does not have theme keys which will provide instant
access to the above theme games in the database. You cannot search on
specific dynamic themes, nor can you combine different search types in
the same search. Rebel 9 doesn't allow direct printing of your games nor
allow diagrams to be inserted which can be useful if you want to take a
bunch of them to a chess tournament. As for opening book study, Rebel 9
does not allow the user to edit his opening book while in monitor mode.
in other words while in monitor mode you can't get Rebel analysis. Rebel
9 can't sort a database on anything other than the white player's name.
It cannot import a file from a floppy. It cannot import other user books
to its user book format. Rebel 9 does not have a Chesstree as
ChessAssistant and Fritz 5 have. Rebel 9 will sometimes crash running in
my Tecra notebook with a Logictech mouse. Rebel 9 has a 250 page limit
in scrolling back screens  in it's database. You cannot import special
training multimedia files. Rebel 9 will not run in WIN NT 4. You can't
find a player's wins losses, draws with a specific colour. The post game
analysis feature is backward. It first analyzes the game's move and then
analyzes it's move. This wastes time because if it did it the other way
around, it would save time in not having to analyze the game move all
over again. Rebel 9 will analyze some of it's book moves. In a pgn game
if there are 2 or 3 promotion squares for the pawn, Rebel 9 will not
import the game. When you save a game to a textfile, it doesn't put the
txt extension on. You have to do it yourself. The move window does not
allow variations. Move comments don't show when Rebel is analyzing.
Selecting all the games after a search takes a horrendous amount of
time. Because Rebel 9 is a DOS program you cannot rearrange the window
sizes. No K best variation mode like Fritz or Tascbase engine has. No
contempt feature like the Tascbase engine. Menus could be larger
lettering. Any selection of certain menus stops Rebel's analysis. Rebel
does not have other external engines besides Rebel. Endgame databases
are not accessed. No email feature. No merging of games into one game.
No intelligent mouse feature. No game marking feature with medals as in
Chessbase. You cannot drag and drop engine analysis into game move list.
There are other drawbacks as well but as a playing program Rebel 9, has
a lot of features that other playing programs don't have such as 4 board
simultaneous play. However as a full fledged database, opening book
editor chess tree, it has it's limitations. Rebel 10 will correct many
of these limitations.   The best database software is Chess Assistant
3.02 if you don't mind that there is no find and delete doubles feature
and no compress base feature. If you do think these are important then
ChessBase 6.03 is best.



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