Fritz 16 and the new Powerbooks

by Steffen Giehring
5/22/2018 – In the last few months, we have published a number of "Special Powerbooks" for various openings, e.g. for the London System, the French Defence or the Nimzo-Indian. These Powerbooks are very popular, which is no real surprise because they contain lots of information that you will not find elsewhere. Moreover, with Fritz 16, the opening trees and statistics in the Powerbooks are ideal to practise your repertoire. | Photo: ChessBase

Fritz 16 - He just wants to play! Fritz 16 - He just wants to play!

Fritz 16 is looking forward to playing with you, and you're certain to have a great deal of fun with him too. Tense games and even well-fought victories await you with "Easy play" and "Assisted analysis" modes.

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A combination to learn and train!

Opening experts use the new Powerbooks to search for opening trends because a great part of the statistics are based on games that are played in the engine room on playchess.com. That makes them ideal to fine-tune and deepen your opening repertoire and your opening knowledge. Let’s say you played the Nimzo-Indian in a recent game and now you look at this game with Fritz 16, the Nimzo-Indian Powerbook tells you how far you followed “theory”, and which other moves offered good chances.

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Of course, you can also explore the variation tree to take a look at the unknown positions. Every chess player who wants to widen his or her repertoire and is keen on new ideas will find lots of valuable material in the Powerbooks!

FritzTrainer plus Powerbook

Alternatively, use the new Powerbooks as a source of additional information when studying a FritzTrainer! E.g. the new Nimzo-Indian DVD by Rustam Kasimdzhanov. In the popular line 4.Qc2 0-0 5.a3 Bxc3 6.Qxc3 the opening expert proposes to continue with the rare move 6...b5. If the Nimzo-Indian Powerbook is active while you study Kasimdzhanov’s DVD you see the main lines and the statistical evaluations of Kasimdzhanov’s proposals during his lecture.

Rustam Kasimdzhanov

Rustam Kasimdzhanov enhanced by Powerbook

Practice your repertoire

Remembering the lines you studied to be ready for your next game is crucial when studying an opening. Combining Fritz 16 with the Powerbooks allows you to practice your repertoire with a few clicks! Start Fritz 16 and in the starting screen go to "Classic Menus". Load the Powerbook with "File → Open → Opening Book".

Now start a new game with Ctrl+N or via the menu, and then click on the tab "book" in the notation window. You see the Powerbook with the statistics about the starting position. Let’s say you want to practice your Nimzo-Indian repertoire against the line 4.Qc2. First, you have to define the first four moves by White as "Tournament Move". Right click on 1.d4 in the variation tree, select "Tournament Move", and then do the same for 2.c4, etc.

Main move

Main move

Now you are ready: set the clock in the menu "File" ("Levels") and start a new game with Ctrl+N or with "New Game". Note: to tell Fritz to follow your choices in the book go to "Analysis" in the menu and select "Optimal Book":

If you want to play White in your training game make the first move. If you want Fritz to play with white press the "Space" key. Fritz now will follow your settings → in our example up to move four. But then he will do his best and you can check and test your repertoire against the best and most comprehensive Nimzo-Indian opening book. Have fun!

Hint: If you always want to train with the same colour against Fritz, go to File → Options → Game and deactivate "Turn Board with new Game"!


Fritz Powerbook 2018

The current openings theory with 1.5 million games. An indispensable resource for the serious player.


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Dr Steffen Giehring, born in 1968, has been a ChessBase employee for over 25 years. Since autumn 2018 he has been editor-in-chief of ChessBase Magazine together with Oliver Reeh.