A Cornucopia of Chess
By
Steve Goldberg
ChessBase Magazine #143 (DVD), by Rainer Knaak (ed.),
ChessBase 2011, $23.95, (ChessCafe Price: $19.95)
ChessBase Magazine, appearing every two months, has been and remains
a virtual cornucopia for serious chess players. There is a little of everything
– coverage of recent tournaments, opening surveys, various strategic and
tactical presentations, endgame analysis, countless annotated games, and an
extensive database of correspondence games. There are video segments and audio
segments, as well as text-based instruction.
The DVD is the main star here, but there is a companion booklet that accompanies
it. The booklet is a twenty-five page summary of the contents of the disc, so
a player can quickly identify items of special interest. Actually, there are
twenty-five pages in English and another twenty-five pages in German.
The initial screen of the DVD provides a rather extensive overview of the magazine's
contents, with clickable links to various elements within the DVD. The left
side of this initial screen contains a basic table of contents, again with clickable
menu items.
Recent Tournaments
This issue features coverage of four recent events:
- The Candidates Matches in which Boris Gelfand emerged as the world championship
challenger to Anand.
- The Bazna Kings tournament that saw Carlsen and Karjakin tied for first
place.
- The Lublin tournament as part of the 3rd European Chess Festival. Alexei
Shirov took clear first here.
- The 46th Capablanca Memorial Tournament, where Ivanchuk and Le Quang finished
ahead of the field.
It should be noted that this tournament coverage consists of a brief discussion
of the course of the event, together with a number of extensively annotated
games. It's not an in-depth round-by-round report of the event.
In addition to the four tournaments noted above, this issue also contains games
from a variety of other events. The primary game database lists 844 games from
all of these events, dozens of which are heavily annotated. Except for the number
of annotated games, the game database resembles the weekly TWIC database updates
many players will be familiar with.
Openings
A total of thirteen opening surveys are included here:
- A89 Dutch Leningrad
- B30 Sicilian Anti-Sveshnikov
- B33 Grivas Sicilian
- B90 Sicilian Najdorf
- D27 Queen's Gambit Accepted
- D44 Semi-Slav
- D52 Queen's Gambit Cambridge Springs
- D53 Queen's Gambit
- D90 Grunfeld Defense
- D94 Slav/Grunfeld Defense, Schlechter Variation
- E11 Bogo Indian Defense
- E67 King's Indian Fianchetto
- E73 King's Indian
Each opening survey reviews plans for both sides, provides various alternative
variations, links to a number of relevant annotated games, and ends with a conclusion
about the nature of the specific opening.
In addition, there is an "opening trap" segment covering the Staunton
Gambit in the Dutch Defense. Furthermore, there are four other FritzTrainer
video segments covering the Classical King's Indian, French Winawer, Exchange
Slav, and the Grand Prix Attack in the Sicilian Defense.
Move by Move
Daniel King presents a game in which the viewer is asked to consider options
for Black after nearly every White move. King frequently lists alternatives
to Black's actual moves, but doesn't always provide an evaluation of these moves.
I found this portion of the DVD a bit difficult to work with, although turning
training mode off and just working through the game annotations can still be
beneficial.
Strategy
This segment consists of a single, lengthy written presentation titled "The
vital art of exchanging queens," by Peter Wells. He broadly discusses when
and how one should seek an exchange of queens, and when this should be avoided.
Links again are provided to multiple relevant annotated games.
Tactics
Thirty-one tactical puzzles are included, six of which are presented on the
"Tactics" screen. These six are easily worked with, as long as the
"training" tab has been clicked on the game screen. The other puzzles,
however, were less intuitive to access. I found that if I opened this segment
using my ChessBase program, and if I had the "training" option clicked
(tools-options-notation-training, in ChessBase 9), the puzzles worked beautifully.
Without ChessBase, though, a viewer will have to click the "games"
tab on the Tactics main screen of the DVD. This will bring up the thirty-one
game database in the normal ChessBase database format. But then clicking on
any game brings the viewer to the beginning of the game, not to the specific
puzzle position. Proceeding move by move, the viewer may well move right past
the puzzle position(s) and thereby miss the whole point of trying to solve the
problem.
Endgames
In this portion, eight endgame positions are reviewed by noted endgame specialist
Karsten Müller. These are short video segments, most between about three
and seven minutes, looking at recent games.
Tele-Chess
Somehow, I expected this segment to consist of little Teletubbies characters
wobbling around with chess boards on their abdomens. Instead, ChessBase uses
the term "tele-chess" to refer to correspondence chess, whether by
postcard, email, web server, or similar means.
There's not a lot of "meat" here, but there are a number of annotated
games included. ChessBase also includes links to multiple sources for free correspondence
chess. Of note is that there is included in this section a database of 7,029
correspondence games, although most of these games appear to involve lower-rated
players.
ChessBase 11 Video Course
In order to view these video segments, I had to have my version of ChessBase
(CB9) open. This essentially is a "how-to" set of videos for users
of ChessBase 11.
Summary
Serious chess players will relish spending countless hours studying the information
in ChessBase Magazine issues. Some players may find just the opening analysis
they've been looking for, while others will appreciate the impressive depth
and breadth of the annotated games, too many to count, with many of these annotations
by world class players. I should note that some of the annotated games use German
text only, and at least one of the video segments on this DVD is in German,
not English. But with these few exceptions, everything else is user-friendly
for English-speaking players. Also, ChessBase
Magazine Extra is published on alternating months from the regular
edition.
There may be better options for tactical puzzles, and for greater in-depth
coverage of international tournaments, turn to the New in Chess print magazine.
But for the sheer variety and scope of the chess included, these ChessBase
Magazine issues are a source of pure joy.
My assessment of this product: Great (five of six stars)
Order
ChessBase Magazine #143 by Rainer Knaak
