Sponsored Links

Wholesale Chess
Buy chess sets, clocks, boards, pieces, books, and other chess equipment at great prices!

Chess Instruction Online
Lessons are available from Cardoza author, FM Eric Schiller, using videoconferencing or Internet Chess Club facilities

Unique custom, autographed and personalized books and software, and rare chess books too! Visit our store today!

Other Links

Best Chess Software for Rapid Improvement

by Eric Schiller

There are many software products available to help you improve your chess game. Some are products used by professional players in their training, others are specialized for beginners, and yet others are for intermediate players. Each product claims, of course, to be the perfect tool for everyone. That's ridiculous! On this page you will see reviews of software, considering suitability for four classes of players: beginners (rating 0-1000), intermediate (1000-1700), advanced (1700-2200), and professional (over 2200). Because most software offers a free "light" version, I will briefly describe important features and give a list of pros and cons to be considered.

Note: all programs are trademarks of their respective companies.

Chess processors

Programs for researching, analyzing, and processing chess data are to chess as word processors are to writing. There are two popular full-featured chess processors, Chess Assistant and Chess Base. I've used both of these programs for many years. In the past, I have split my recommendations depending on the level of play, but recent additions to Chess Assistant make it hands down the better choice for all chessplayers.

Chess Assistant

Available from Convetka. $109 or 129 Euros, Direct. Also available at Chess Central.

Free "light" version here.

Pros: Very fast. Capable of handling millions of games without problems. Huge database of over 2 million games included. Opening tree, engine analysis, board position and commentary visible simultaneously. Flexible classification scheme. Good handling of PGN import, able to open native files in other formats, including ChessBase. Excellent HTML and RTF output, easy to transfer to word processors and web page editors. User-definable keyboard shortcuts.

Cons: Unwieldy menu structures, "round-trip" PGN is messy when used with other programs. Can't save multiple layout and print specifications, non-standard font coding. No XML support yet.

When playing through a game, you can see all the commentaries, information about the game, the current position with attractive graphics (many to choose from) and a list of all the moves available in the included huge database. You can see the stats for the move of the game, highlighted in yellow. Of the 502 games played from the position, the move 4.g3, chosen by Alekhine, was played 112 times, and it scored a very respectable 64%. The move is considered only slightly better for White, and the computer evaluation (CAP) is dead even.

As you play through the game, you can invoke one of the powerful chess engines included with Chess Assistant.

The analysis, here using Ruffian, says that White has a very slight advantage, about 1/5 of a pawn. This is based on a search of 6 moves by each player. Black should play 9...Be7. You can see that indicated on the chessboard, as well as an indication of Black's actual move (castling on the queenside).

You can get more detailed opening research by clicking a button on the toolbar, which sends the program searching through the huge database for relevant games. Here is part of what it added for this game:

Based on its research, it marks the position after 5.Bg2 as slightly better for White. It appended another Alekhine game, a classic Capablanca example, and others, including the ratings of the players where available. Over 20 moves are included. This is a very helpful tool.

For more intensive work, the program can perform all the usual database functions, such as calling up a list of all games where the current (or any other) board position was seen. You can search for specific maneuvers, material balance, and an almost unlimited number of players, tournaments, and openings. This function truly shines, you are not limited to a single set of players. For example, you could search for all games played from a specific position by a whole list of players, such as all the World Champions. You can save searches for re-use.

You can customize the display in many ways. Indeed the power of the program and its almost unlimited customization can make Chess Assistant a bit intimidating. The help file is helpful, but I frequently turned to their excellent and speedy customer service to unleash powerful features and shortcuts I hadn't noticed.

Since Chess Assistant is the basis of a wide range of instructional offerings it has many useful features for commenting games and highlighting aspects of the game. It can automatically highlight the move it considers best for each position. Editing is easy, though you need to learn a few tricks, as some shortcuts aren't easy to find. Pressing the Control and F3 key takes you to a window where you can enter long commentary, while CTRL and A brings up a window for symbols or short commentary. You can enter text before or after moves, enter diagram markers which show as true diagrams, and customize display and output as far as your imagination will take you!

Just look at all the options you can set in the following collection of tabbed dialogs.

There are detailed options for each tab along the top of the window. You can email games directly, not having to save and then attach a file. You can customize the notation, including the fonts and colors. You can create your own classifications for openings or other searchable items. Notice the ICC tab. If you play at the Internet Chess Club, you can use the program as an interface to log on, read messages, chat, and play games (but make sure the engine is turned off unless you are registered as a Computer player).

The import and export of data is easy, and the output is highly customizable, even supporting stylesheets. You can set up and save specific layouts for different types of exports, for example to word processors or web pages. If you have appropriate software, you can print directly to PDF files to email to friends or post on the web!

Whether you are a beginner, or a power user, Chess Assistant provides a wide range of tools which will help you learn, study, or seek out chess wisdom.

An alternative to Chess Assistant is ChessBase (www.chessbase.com), which has a larger user base and most of the important features of Chess Assistant. It is a fine program, and I used it for many years. I prefer Chess Assistant 7.1 to ChessBase 8, but these highly competitive programs improve with each release, and I suggest you play with the downloadable free versions of both products before making your decision. In many ways it is like choosing between Mac or PC, and then Windows or OSX or Linux. It really is not possible to make a general recommendation, because in the end it depends on how you use the program.