Analyzing games with Komodo (Part two)

Analyzing the game

There are two ways to automatically analyze a game using your engine, though they can be configured as you prefer. First you have the Blunder Check, which is a cut-down, no-nonsense analysis designed to highlight mistakes, then you have the Full Analysis, which is the most complete analysis with natural language comments.

Complete video tutorial

Video instructions on how to analyze your game with Blunder Check or Full Analysis and the options to choose.
The video is recorded in high-definition, so be sure to set it to 720p or 1080p and maximize it on the screen.

Blunder Check

If you are reviewing blitz or bullet games played online, this will be your most commonly used analysis tool. It will give you a quick and clear overview of how you did in your game in record time.

To use this, go to Analysis and select Blunder Check. Blunder Check is ideal for quick analysis
to highlight which moves were mistakes, and by omission, which moves were not.  You can
set it to analyze only your side, both sides, and more.

On the  right side you can see Time or Depth, which is to choose whether you want each
move analyzed for a specific number of seconds, or instead prefer a determined depth

How much time or how deep is good enough? As a rule, I use a fixed depth of 14 plies and just let it zip through. 14 plies is far deeper than a human will see as a rule, and on a modern computer will be reached in a fraction of a second. This means that the entire game will be analyzed quite literally in seconds.  You can have the machine spend more time, but it would be silly to have it analyzing longer than you spent playing it.

The next significant choice is the Threshold, which determines what the engine will call a 'blunder'

The default setting is 60, which means 0.60 pawns. Although a difference of 0.60 may indeed be a mistake, you might really be interested only in flagging moves that lose a little or a lot of material. If so, set it to a higher value such as 90 for a pawn (remember it might calculate some minuscule compensation for the lost material, lowering the value). This is my personal setting.

It should be mentioned that you can use the program to check your analysis as well. Suppose you wanted to analyze the game yourself without any computer help (an excellent exercise), and entered the variations into the annotation. You can ask the engine to not only analyze your moves, but your analysis as well.

To request analysis of the variations as well, put a check in Check variations

Although these are the essential choices, feel free to consult the Help button in the pane for a more detailed description of all the options.

Blunder Check of Anand-Carlsen (14 plies / Threshold 30):

Full Analysis

This is the grandmaster in the house so to speak. With it you will get opening commentary accessing your database, more natural commentary including moves that were correctly avoided. In other words, why a certain move that was not played, would have been a mistake. Finally, you get text commentary to emulate a human annotator to a degree, that will point out threatened material, passed pawns, and more.

To activate it, click on Analysis and then Full Analysis

When you do this you are presented with a minimalist pane that just shows you a time to
spend analyzing. This presumes you wish to use the previous, or default choices. To modify
them, click on Advanced.

Here, a new pane opens. Most options are self-explanatory, but not
all. If you put a check mark in the Opening Reference, you need to tell
the program which database to consult.  To do so, click on Reference-DB.

A pane opens in which you point it to a database it will consult this time and all future
times unless you change it. In this case, I have set it to Mega Database 2014.

The threshold is the same as in the Blunder Check above, and is the minimum difference between its choice and yours, to highlight a move as an error.  In practice, I use this only for a rapid game or slower, and turn on all the options and let it analyze for 5-10 minutes.

Full Analysis of Anand-Carlsen (Time 1 minute / Threshold 30):

In part three we will look at analyzing several games at once, and the Let's Check game analysis.

Komodo Chess 8 includes:

• The Komodo 8 engine, which can support up to 64 processor cores and 16 GB of hash memory
• The new Deep Fritz 64-bit program interface (+ 32 bit program interface)
• Online access to the world’s largest analysis database “Let’s Check”, with over 200 million extensively analyzed positions (free access to “Let’s Check” until December 31, 2016)
• Access to ChessBase engine cloud
• Premium membership to Playchess.com for six months
• Database with over 1.5 million games

System requirements

Minimum: Pentium III 1 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Windows Vista, XP (Service Pack 3), 7/8, DirectX9, 256 MB graphics card, DVD-ROM drive, Windows Media Player 9 and Internet access for program activation, access to Playchess.com, Let’s Check and program updates.

Recommended: PC Intel i7 (Quadcore), 4 GB RAM, Windows 8.1, DirectX10, 512 MB graphics card, 100% DirectX10-compatible sound card, Windows Media Player 11, DVD-ROM drive and Internet access for program activation, access to Playchess.com, Let's Check and program updates.

Price: €79.90 (€67.14 without VAT for customers outside the EU; $86.62 without VAT). Languages: English, German. ISBN: 978-3-86681-442-4; EAN: 9783866814424. Delivery: Download, Post

Order Komodo Chess 8 in the ChessBase shop now!