ChessBase Broadcast: now with live chat!

by Frederic Friedel
4/20/2017 – Grenke Chess Classic, Reykjavik Open, Karpov Poikovsky, Chinese League. You can start watching the games with a single click, here in your browser. And if you have been using our Live Broadcast service you will have noticed that it is being constantly upgraded. We have engine analysis and advanced cloud functions, and now also chat in the browser, where your attention is drawn to interesting things that are happening in the games. You can jump to games in other tournament when people point to them – and that with single click in the chat.

ChessBase Account Premium annual subscription ChessBase Account Premium annual subscription

At the airport, in the hotel or at home on your couch: with the new ChessBase you always have access to the whole ChessBase world: the new ChessBase video library, tactics server, opening training App, the live database with eight million games, Let’s Check and web access to playchess.com

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Live Tournaments new feature

If you go to our main news page you see a section with the title "Live Tournaments" to the right of the main story. If the tournament you are looking for is not in the list you can click "Playchess" on the right and look for it in the full Playchess client that is available in your browser:

As we write these lines the four most important tournaments that are being broadcast are the following:

The Yingmei Cup Chinese Chess League Division A (translated by Google here)

The Grenke Chess Classic with the World's number 1, 3, 5, 9 players

The Reykjavik Open with Giri, Andreikin, Jobava, Shirov, Kamsky, etc., plus Nihal Sarin

The Karpov Poikovsky with Inarkiev, Jakovenko, Najer, Dubov, Sutovsky, Bologan and others

You will also find the Zurich Chess Challenge, which has ended, but where you can still access the games, most of them with machine-generated commentary.

 Clicking on any of the links on the right side of the news page will take you to the live broadcast of the event. These are the most-watched tournaments that Playchess is currently broadcasting.

As the day progresses more and more tournaments come on live – in this example China is well under way, and Reykjavik has just started (11 a.m. CEST).

If the tournament you are looking for in not in the list you can go to our Live Broadcast page and will probably find them there.

Clicking on an event, e.g. the Yingmei Cup, will produce a board with the top three games – or just one game, if you are watching with a smartphone. Click on the following image to enlarge.

Clicking on one of the small boards or one of the games in the list will transfer it to the main board.

New: chat in the Live Broadcast window

Note that our live broadcast now includes chat: spectators (and machines) draw your attention to interesting things happening in the games, even on remote boards and other events.

A click will take you to the game and the position (e.g. the Chu-Ding blunder in the above screen shot). And: if you have a ChessBase Account you can join in and enter chat yourself, right here in your browser.

At the bottom you have links to all the rounds played so far – and to other events

Of particular interest is the link "Analysis". Is shows you that 62 games from the event you are following have been analysed and annotated by a very powerful computer. Clicking on a game in the list that appears will open it on the large board (click image to enlarge):

The machine analysis included didactic opening notes, tactical analysis, threats, better lines – all given in natural language. Diagrams are inserted in key positions. The evaluation bar below the notation indicates how the game went for the two players. In the above example you can simply click on the bar to jump to the position, around move 50, where things went bad for the former Women's World Champion.

You probably know that on our JavaScript live broadcast board you can move pieces to analyse, and even start an engine to help you. You can maximize the replayer, auto-play, flip the board and even change the piece style in the bar below the board. At the bottom of the notation window on the right there are buttons for editing (delete, promote, cut lines, unannotate, undo, redo) save, play out the position against Fritz and even embed our JavaScript replayer on your web site or blog. Hovering the mouse over any button will show you its function.

So basically you can watch all the action from around the world with a few clicks:

  1. Go to our ChessBase News page (which you hopefully do once a day anyway);
  2. Check on the right which events are being currently broadcast;
  3. Choose one and watch the games live;
  4. Click on "Analysis" to see what happened in finished games;
  5. Click on the evaluation bar to jump straight to the position where it happened.

It is so simple, and provides such a lot of chess enjoyment.

ChessBase Account Premium annual subscription

At the airport, in the hotel or at home on your couch: with the new ChessBase you always have access to the whole ChessBase world: the new ChessBase video library, tactics server, opening training App, the live database with eight million games, Let’s Check and web access to playchess.com


Editor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.

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