Analyzing your games with Fritz (Part three)

Before embarking on this, a reader sent in a question regarding the sample game provided in the Blunder Check section: why are there no computer evaluations, and how did I get those very cool bar charts that can be seen right under the board?

Replayer game with bar charts:

The bar charts or more than a visual perk. If you click on any point in the bar chart the game will instantly skip to that point! The fact is that when you run Blunder Check on a game, it appends an evaluation and depth to each and every move, whether they be a mistake or not. The result looks like this:

The reason this does not appear in the JavaScript Replayer is that the Replayer automatically converts this computer output into the bar charts, and does not show them (nor does it erase them). If you publish your games online using the JavaScript Replayer from ChessBase 12 (see Web publishing with ChessBase 12 Part 2), this can be very practical. You can combine the bar charts for a quick visual overview of how the game went, and include lines and commentary without having the engine's numerical analysis detract from the game.

All that is fine and well, but what if you don't publish online, how is this useful? As a matter of fact, if you don't already see it open, Fritz offers a bar chart of its own within the program.

To open it click on View and then check Evaluation Profile

Now you can see the bar charts just as in the Replayer above. Just like the JavaScript Replayer
you can actually click on any point in the chart and the game will automatically skip to that point.

Let's Check

You can also consult the computers of online users via the Let's Check function. Although a wonderful resource if you are on a limited computer such as a netbook, or need to save battery, you need to understand that the moves will be distributed throughout the system, and the engines and computers used will vary enormously. As a result, you will see moves analyzed by all manner of engines and depths. Finally, you also need to be aware that there is a cost to use this resource, in the nature of credits earned by lending your own computer to Let's Check users.

With those limitations accepted and understood, it needs to be pointed out that there is no way you could obtain such deep analysis in so short a time.

Playchess broadcasts

If the game you are looking at is a grandmaster game that was broadcast on Playchess, the chances are every move has already been analyzed in great depth by more than one engine. Some Playchess users have incredibly powerful machines they enjoy running on top games. These analyses can be retrieved for free, and here's how:

Go to Analysis, and then click on Let's Check Analysis

Just click on Retrieval Only, and then click on Advanced

Now a new pane opens with even more options. Fear not as they are
mostly irrelevant since we are recovering analysis that has already been
done. The one option that really interests us is selecting All Variations.
This means we get the computer evaluations and the the main lines.

Let's Check your game

However, let's suppose the game you are interested in is not in the Live Book already, what then? In that case you can submit your game to the Let's Check users and have the entire game analyzed in great depth.

With your game open, go to Analysis and then click on Submit Game

The caveat is that you have no control over the hardware or engine used, but the advantage is that the variety of engines may provide a more balanced analysis and each and every position will have been analyzed for at least a minute if not more. Above all, it is far quicker than what you could achieve on you own computer. The reason is that the moves are all distributed by the Let's Check server to different users to analyze at the same time. Which means that several moves will be analyze simultaneously.

Sample game submitted to Let's Check:

Batch Analysis

An incredibly useful feature of Fritz is its ability to run Blunder Check and Full Analysis on several games or even a full database.

Go to the Home toolbar, then click on the Database button (F12) to go to the Database window

Here you must first open the database where the games you want analyzed are located

First click on File and then Open (the direct shortcut for this is Ctrl-O)

A pane will open, allowing you to locate the database. If it is a PGN file (*.PGN), then before you
go to the directory where the file is saved, click on Files of type, and select PGN files (*.PGN). If
you neglect this step, your PGN file will not appear even if you are in the correct directory.

Now you should see a list of games. You can select several games using the typical Windows shortcuts. In other words click on one, the holding the Shift key, click on another and it will select all the games in between, and/or you can select one by one holding the Ctrl key pressed down and clicking the games you want.

List of games in which six have been selected for analysis

Once the games are chosen and highlighted, go to the Database tab at top, and then choose
Blunder Check or Full Analysis. Just remember to consider how much time this will take. For
example, if you choose 20 games, then even if you choose to have each one analyzed for only
five minutes that is still nearly two hours before it is done.

Happy analyzing!