John Hartmann

John Hartmann is the Digital Editor for uschess.org, the website for the US Chess Federation (US Chess), and he writes the monthly review column for Chess Life magazine. He won the 2018 Best Column Award from the Chess Journalists of America. You can find him on the web at Chess Book Reviews and First Look Chess.

Recent news

Review: ChessBase 15 - "Should I buy it?"

2/13/2019 – Courtesy of our friends at USChess.org. The new digital editor JOHN HARTMANN recently penned a "Books & Beyond" article featuring a look at the new ChessBase 15, and we share excerpts from his review, for your review. Of course, we can only agree with his conclusion, "ChessBase is a mature, best-of-class product, and I cannot imagine seriously studying chess without it"!

John Hartmann: Diving into Databases

12/11/2015 – "You can buy the fanciest GUI," writes John Hartmann, "and you can collect all of the strongest engines around, but if you’re working with poor quality data, your research will suffer for it." He takes a look at the chess databases that are available for ambitious players and takes a special look at the Big and Mega Databases from ChessBase, each currently with 6.46 million games.

John Hartmann: And then there were two

6/9/2015 – Currently there are two programs vying for the title of strongest chess engine in the world, and both have seen new releases in recent months. Komodo and Stockfish currently top all computer lists, in that order. But they have different personalities, as John Hartmann shows in his engine review. "Shows" includes both engines simultaneously analyzing in an interesting realtime video.

New ChessBase program – Lucky Number 13?

11/24/2014 – "If you are an ambitious chess player, no matter your age or rating, you should be using ChessBase," says John Hartmann, award-winning chess book reviewer, teacher, organizer and tournament director. He takes a critical look at the latest ChessBase 13, released this week, describing all the new features he encountered, with screen shots and explanations..
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