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Our database program ChessBase 15 offers users numerous options for statistical evaluation. For example, should you wish to know how a specific player handles his games on one hand with White and on the other with Black or would you like to create an overview of his or her strengths and weaknesses… Our database program allows you to evaluate such information in only a few steps and along the way it reaches interesting chess insights.
As a basis for our evaluations we require in addition to the database software a carefully edited games database such as MegaBase. For our sample statistics we shall take the legendary chess world champion of 1921-1927, José Raoul Capablanca. Of course, the functions we shall describe in what follows also work with any other player included in Mega.
A right click on the database symbol in the database window opens a context menu from which we select the option “Search – Advanced”, in order to activate the search mask. In the search mask we deactivate the entry for “Ignore colours”, since we are exclusively looking for games in which Capablanca had the black pieces. In the input line for Black we enter »Capablanca« and then »Jose«.
A click on OK starts the search by the program.
The “Search result” window is displayed and a list of game data is shown. A total of 407 games in which Capablanca had Black are listed. Our next step is to right click on the first entry in the list and from the context menu to choose “Edit – Select all”.
That highlights all the games for future processing, as can be seen from the blue background. After these preparatory steps a fresh right click on “Statistics” takes us a step forward. An alternative way to get there is with the S key.
The result looks like the following screenshot:
Interpreting the statistics for Capablanca’s 407 games as Black is not complicated. The section of the diagram coloured red shows the number of Black wins, the blue area is for the number of White wins whereas the section highlighted in green represents the draws. At first glance it becomes clear that as Black Capablanca was particularly successful over the board! The drawing rate (161 games – 41%) is also very high, whilst the number of games lost (47 – 11.5%) is astonishingly low.
The section for rated games remains empty in our example because the rating system with its Elo values was not introduced until after Capablanca’s active career. Whenever the statistics function is employed for a player who has an Elo rating, the relevant performance is displayed too.
But the statistics window has other information to offer. Further entries can be found on the left of the screen, e.g. “Length” or “Years”:
The bar graph shows the length of the games in which Capablanca had Black. The values at the bottom of the diagram stand for the number of moves while those on the left represent the number of games. So, for example, it is possible to establish that as Black Capablanca played 18 games which were exactly 30 moves long.
It is of course obvious that this form of statistics delivers instructive results when applied to one’s own games. A typical example of using it consists of searching through all the games one has lost. In this case the interpretation of the pie chart of course shows only White wins and that is not very helpful. But things become more interesting when you activate the button for “Length” in the diagram displayed above. If the graphics for losses show a relatively high number of long games, this is an indication that you need to brush up on your endgame knowledge. If there is a relatively high number of short games, this suggests problems with the handling of the opening.
In addition, there is information about the distribution of games according to years.
The values at the bottom of the diagram represent the years and those at the left stand for the number of games played. So you can see at a glance how active a player was throughout his or her chess career.
The statistics function also takes into account a specific player’s opening preferences. Starting from Capablanca’s 407 games with Black, we now click on structured buttons on the left of the screen, for example “ECO C” etc.. This display is based on the classification from the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings, abbreviated to ECO. Section C, e.g., contains all the king’s pawn openings and the French Defence.
The higher the bar the more games which were played with the said opening. The number of games played is displayed in the values on the left of the diagram. The program quite specifically shows the number of games.
The statistical functions described above represent only a small sample of the numerous statistical functions available in the program. They are extremely useful when preparing for tournaments. Using the functions described clearly makes sense for ambitious players to record their games carefully and store them in their own separate database. The statistical functions of ChessBase can be very helpful in working out the strengths and weaknesses of one’s own play and those of opponents.
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