ChessBase is a personal, stand-alone chess database that has become the standard throughout the world. Everyone uses ChessBase, from the World Champion to the amateur next door. It is the program of choice for anyone who loves the game and wants to know more about it.
Actually the process is very simple. Click the "Download" link at the top right of the ChessBase home page, and then "ChessBase 8" in the navigation on the left. This will take you to the relevant download page.
When you click "elobase.zip" a file selector will appear and allow you to store the file anywhere on your hard disk. Use a utility like Winzip (or the excellent general purpose file manager Total Commander) to unip the file. It contains a file called Playbase.elo, which is about 7.6 MB in size. Copy this into your PlayBase directory, which is usually located in Documents and Settings, [User], My Documents, ChessBase. That is where most ChessBase data files are automatically stored.
Once you have installed the new Elo lists you can start browsing it in ChessBase 7 or 8. Click Edit – Search player (or press Ctrl-F2) and type in a name. Or you can generate lists of players from different countries or of different ages. A very popular list is female players below 20.
The Players Encyclopedia is used to supply the ratings (and pictures, if available) of the players when you load a game for replay. Take for instance the beautiful game we published on Helmut Pfleger's birthday.
If you switch on the Encyclopedia in ChessBase (Menu: Window – Panes – Photos) loading the game will produce pictures of the players in the replay screen.
Note that ChessBase extracts Elo ratings and pictures from the time the game was played. Helmut Pfleger no longer has the 2530 rating or the beard, and Polugaevsky of course died in 1995.
The Encyclopedia will also track the Elo rating of players: Press Ctrl-F2 and type in "Kramnik". Then click "Elo". This will give you a record of the world's number two since 1990.
And here is the far longer Elo history of Anatoly Karpov. Note that the 12th world champion did not reach his peak at the time he lost his title to Garry Kasparov (1985), but almost ten years later. Kasparov, of course, always kept ahead of him in the rating lists.
Finally we wish to remind you of an important function in ChessBase: the Players Dossier. It is extremely useful in situations where you wake up in the middle of the night, sweating profusely, because you have a critical game the next day against a player you know absolutely zilch about. How you can solve this problem is fully described in this article.
