Winning starts with what you know
The new version 18 offers completely new possibilities for chess training and analysis: playing style analysis, search for strategic themes, access to 6 billion Lichess games, player preparation by matching Lichess games, download Chess.com games with built-in API, built-in cloud engine and much more.
With hundreds of products in the ChessBase Shop it requires little effort to lose your way. There is a DVD on almost any opening. There are DVDs in different languages, for any level of players, or on any area of the game. The ChessBase Shop is in some way comparable to the old databases. With growing number of games in the database, ChessBase has kept on producing updated and improved versions of its software with awesome features, for easy search and classification. This time they have done something similar in the Shop. With brand new tools to search for the DVDs of your choice, shopping has become much more convenient. For a diehard ChessBase fan, these tools are simply amazing!
The new Tools!
We shall have a look at three new tools in the ChessBase Shop, ‘Openings index’, ‘Enter Position to find Opening’ and the’ Shop Assistant’. All three tools are always visible on the left hand menu in the Shop.
When you click on Openings on the main page of the shop, you are presented with two options of classification, the Openings Index and the Openings A-Z classification. Click on index and you get the above menu on the right side. The openings are classified into seven major groups and further into other sub-groups.
From the classification menu, ‘Universally Topics’ gives you the DVDs that deal with opening fundamentals, opening blunders, tricks and traps etc. These are for different level of players. The latest one that you can find here is Kasimdzhanov’s ‘Trends in modern openings’.
For an example let us assume you want to look for a DVD on the Ruy Lopez. So how do the new tools help you go about it?
After clicking on Openings -> Index in the left hand menu you click on ‘Ruy Lopez’ in the ‘Open Games’ section in the right hand menu. You get the above page. Let us assume you choose the DVD by Tiviakov ‘Attacking with the Italian Game and the Ruy Lopez’.
Is there a way to find the same DVD by using the Openings A-Z classification? Yes, there is.
Click on the Openings A-Z in the left hand menu. Scroll down and you find the opening you are looking for. When you will click on ‘Ruy Lopez’ you will be directed to the same page that we found via the Openings Index.
Since we already know the title of the DVD, it can also be found in the ‘Italian Game’ section from the Openings A-Z menu.
Another useful tool to find the DVD that you are looking for is the ‘Enter Position Find Opening’ tool. Click on it in the left hand menu and you get a board to enter the moves.
If you enter the move 1.e4, just like Google, you start getting real time results below. Already you can see a whopping 268 DVDs that have some material related to 1.e4.
As we have decided to look for the Ruy Lopez DVD to understand the new features, we can play over the moves to the initial position of the opening. We get 68 results for our search, and on one of the pages (in this case the last page) we find the DVD that we are looking for.
We click on the DVD and you get the description, an overview of the contents and other details. In case you find the DVD, but you want more specific information before buying it, then what? There is a way to get it.
On the home page of the website use the search bar to find the review of the DVD. Here, since we are looking for the ‘Ruy Lopez’ DVD, let us use it as our search criteria.
Somewhere on the first page of the search results you are likely to find a review of the DVD. The DVD that we are looking for has been reviewed by Albert Silver. Click on the review.
In the review you will get more specific information. You can then be sure whether to buy it or not. The above picture shows a part of the review. You can read the full description here.
The Shop Assistant lets you search for DVD’s according to level, topic as well as language.
Suppose I want to look for a DVD that will explain some material imbalances in middle game positions. Target students are of advanced level. That explains my search criteria in the shop Assistant. Out of the 55 results found by the ‘Assistant’ I like the DVD ‘The true value of pieces’ by GM Dejan Bojkov. I click on it to get more information.
This is an extract of the information about the DVD. Satisfied that I have found what I am looking for, I order the DVD and my work begins. I shall come back to you and let you know more about the above ‘Bojkov DVD’ soon but for now let us sum up what we have seen so far.
The new tools in the ChessBase Shop are keeping up with the modern times! Team ChessBase is not only continuously updating its world renowned chess database software but also paying equal attention to the Shop! The Shop is adding spectacular new tools, becoming more and more customer friendly and helping to save our valuable time. That is great news for chess players, trainers, writers and fans!
