ChessBase 17 - Mega package - Edition 2024
It is the program of choice for anyone who loves the game and wants to know more about it. Start your personal success story with ChessBase and enjoy the game even more.
This week we bring you another roundup of commonly-asked user questions and their answers. Onward!
Q: I just bought Deep Fritz8 and the engine won't work in ChessBase 8. What should I do?
A: Either do an online upgrade of your ChessBase 8 program (Help menu/Online upgrade) or use the CB8 upgrade service pack from the latest issue of ChessBase Magazine to upgrade it.
Q: How do I delete games from a database in Fritz8?
A: It's (deliberately) a two step process. The first step is to mark a game (or games) for deletion. In the game list, move the black cursor bar over the game in question and hit the Delete key on your keyboard (or Edit/Delete from the menus). This will put a line through the game in the list. Then go to the Tools menu, select "Database", and then "Remove deleted games" from the submenu. This will permanently delete the game from your database (and that's why it's a two step process: to help keep you from accidentally deleting games; you'd need phenomenally bad luck to be able to achieve this by accident). Note that there's no "Undo" command for this, so please be sure you really want to delete a game before you do so.
Q: I tried that and it doesn't work. What's wrong?
A: You're working with a database in PGN format and Fritz won't delete games from databases in that format. Either convert the database to ChessBase format (by copying the games into a CB format database) or else use a text editor to manually delete the unwanted games from the PGN file.
Q: How do I print multiple games from a database in Fritz8?
A: First, select the games you want to print by highlighting them. You can single-click on the first game, hold down the Shift key, and use the Down Cursor button if the games appear in the database all in a row. More commonly, though, you'll need to "skip" games. In this case, hold down the CTRL key and single-click on each game you want to print. In both cases, right-click on a highlighted game, select "Edit" from the popup menu, and then the "Print selection" command.
Q: I don't much care for the arrow Fritz displays on the chessboard after a move is made. How do I get rid of it?
A: Go to the Tools menu, select Options, and click the "Game" tab. Uncheck the box next to "Mark move with arrow" and you won't see that arrow anymore.
Q: Fritz8 won't let me underpromote a pawn; it insists on promoting my pawns to Queens.
A: Here again, go to Tools/Options and select the "Game" tab. Uncheck the box next to "Always promote to Queen".
Q: Fritz8 resigns too soon -- I'd like to be able to play out the endgames to mate. How do I fix this?
A: Go to Tools/Options, click the "Game" tab, and pick your poison under the "Resign" heading -- you can choose from "Early", "Late", or "Never". You can similarly select the willingness of Fritz to offer/accept draws by making a choice under the "Draw" heading.
Q: I start Fritz8, it flashes the "splash" screen, and then immediately disappears. How do I fix this?
A: This is a rare problem; I've only run across this question a few times. The usual answer is that you have a corrupted tablebase file. To figure out which one is corrupted, you can do what my friend Mike calls a "binary search". Move your tablebase files to a different folder. Then move half of them back into your regular tablebase folder and restart Fritz. If the problem persists, you know that the bad file is still in your tablebase folder. If the problem's gone, you know that the bad file is in the half that you moved to another folder. Repeat the process, removing and replacing tablebase files in 50% increments, until you narrow it down to the culprit file. Then just overwrite the bad file with a replacement from your Turbo Endgame CDs/DVDs, regenerate a replacement using TBGen, or download a replacement from one of the tablebase repositories on the 'Net.
Q: I'm getting the message "book disk error" in ChessBase 8. How do I fix this?
A: The usual solution is to start CB8, go to the Tools menu, click "Options", and then the "Folders" tab. Make sure the folder listed for "Temporary Books" actually exists on your hard drive. If not, either create it (in Windows Explorer, My Computer, etc.) or use the "Browse" button next to the "Temporary books" display to designate an existing folder.
Q: What do the different colored medals signify?
A: For some weird reason, this was inadvertently left out of the current Help files. Here's a list of the colors and what they mean:
Best game -- gold
Decided tournament -- pink
Model game -- dark blue
Novelty -- light blue
Repertoire -- blue-green
Strategy -- ochre
Tactics -- dark red
Attacks -- yellow
Defence -- white
Sacrifice -- light red
Material -- violet
Endgame -- light green
Endgame CD -- dark green
Tactical blunder -- black
Strategical blunder -- grey
User -- turquoise
Q: The game list has a "C" in the far right-hand column for a game in the game list, but when I open the game there's no commentary. What gives?
A: We kinda sorta covered this a few issues back in ChessBase Workshop (though not this specific problem). The game is annotated in a language that you're not set up to display in your "Language" settings. Reset them to display all languages and you should see the commentary when you reload the game.
Q: Does the Shredder8 package contain the "Shredder Classic" GUI?
A: No. Shredder8 is only available with the Fritz8 GUI.
Until next week, have fun!
