Fritz: An interesting Evaluation Profile feature
by Roger Vermeir
Being a mediocre club player, one of the features I particularly like about
the chess programs from the ChessBase family is the evaluation profile, which
allows me to spot my mistakes at a glance. As my average opponent usually belongs
to the same Elo range (you don't want to know the numbers, trust me), we still
commit serious errors from time to time, making the yellow bar appear in the
evaluation profile given by Fritz & friends. The 'problem' which then arises,
is perfectly summarized by the note accompanying the screen shot below. We
might see something like this:
As the program has switched to a full scale of eight pawns, we may not very
well see the severity of the other errors we have committed.
If you are in the habit of writing elaborated tournament books, like I am,
you may have tried to include the evaluation profile screen shot into your
favourite word processor and then tried to stretch the drawing vertically.
That would for example have the following result:
Notice not only that the text becomes slightly distorted, but also that we
apparently do not get any more detailed information about the severity or number
of mistakes earlier in the opening. That is due to the fact that we are actually
trying to stretch pixels which aren't even there (because the original frame
didn't show them when me made the screen shot). What we need is a way of 'stretching'
the information at the time when it is generated, i.e. while entering the game
in infinite analysis mode, or right after a blunder check (Fritz 8 or higher).
Is this possible at all? The answer is a clear 'yes', as we will discover
very soon.
When you start the Fritz family of chess programs, you may have chosen for
a layout which includes the evaluation profile below the diagram of the chessboard.
It may also be the case that the program starts with a rather tiny size of
this evaluation pane, something like this:
Now that is real small, and no doubt you will have enlarged the evaluation
pane yourself. However, whatever you try, you will not be able to increase
the size beyond a certain limit (probably coded somehow in the GUI part of
the chessprogram). The maximum you will get, may look like this:
For some people, this is still not what they want. However, as you probably
know, you can not only stretch the size of the pane a little, but also grab
it (the cursor becomes a grabbing hand, seen from the back) and drop it at
another location inside the chess GUI.
Now the nice trick, something you may not know, is that you can drag the pane
completely outside of the chess program's window, and drop it somewhere on
your desktop, such that it becomes a 'Windows OS' window of its own, as you
can see in the following partial screen shot:
You may need to try a few locations on your desktop before you succeed, but
once you manage to get this far, you can resize this window to a much higher
extent than the GUI would normally allow you to do. See the next screenshot:
Maybe you are now pleased with the extended size of the evaluation pane, and
as you can see more details about weaker moves are being shown now (maybe the
game I selected for this demonstration wasn't the most appropriate one, but
I'm sure you are getting the picture)!
But probably you are a bit of a perfectionist like myself, and you don't want
your desktop to be cluttered with an evaluation profile window, covering up
your favourite chess application window? Well then, another trick comes in
very handy now: by double-clicking on the title bar of this 'new' window, it
disappears from the desktop, and gets restored inside the chess program's GUI,
with its original size it had before the stretching operation.
Now, what good is that, you undoubtedly ask, if it gets back its original
size we wanted to get rid of in the first place? Well, for some obscure reason
(I bet even the ChessBase programmers still haven't found out ;-), after performing
this entire operation meticulously, the GUI program has now 'forgotten' that
there is supposed to be a maximum size for stretching the pane, and you can
now resize the evaluation profile pane from inside the chess GUI, up to any
size you prefer! Don't take my word for it, just look at the final screen shot
(where I exaggerated the resizing a little bit):
Now this is what I call a (detailed) evaluation profile! You also
notice that this time, the numbers in the pane are not distorted at all, and
the X-axis is still a tiny line like it's supposed to be.
Let's hope this – until now undocumented? – feature doesn't disappear
in the future releases of the ChessBase programs (and maybe it will even make
its way into the online help).
I
can assure you, from now on my chess colleagues who participate to the annual
tournament I'm kind of responsible for, will get a tournament book with not
only very detailed engine analysis and blunder checks, but also with awesome
evaluation profiles where they can see every mistake, even those of sub-pawn
magnitude, at a glance!
I would like to end this little workshop with a small copyrighted quote from
Steve, hopefully small enough not to offend the netiquette:
Until next time, have fun!
Roger
Vermeir
