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.

Players Dossier
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.