Chessbase 17 - November 23 Release Date

[CornfedForever]

DARK MODE!
The older I get...the more I appreciate this in any program.

Also, I am guessing the improved 2-D displays might be more like what we see in the new Fritz programs...those are very nice.

[Uri]

Chessbase 17 is a big disappointment...again.

I expected there to be more games being put into the Mega Database 2023. They say on their website that the Mega Database 2023 contains 9.75 million games but this is really not a lot of games considering that more than half of the Mega Database 2023 contains empty games.

Also most of the new features in Chessbase 17 have nothing at all to do with playing strength so for someone who wants to get a higher playing strength most of the features in Chessbase are a bit of a disappointment.

Again, I expected more from Chessbase.

[Werewolf]

Chessbase 17 is a big disappointment...again.

I expected there to be more games being put into the Mega Database 2023. They say on their website that the Mega Database 2023 contains 9.75 million games but this is really not a lot of games considering that more than half of the Mega Database 2023 contains empty games.

Also most of the new features in Chessbase 17 have nothing at all to do with playing strength so for someone who wants to get a higher playing strength most of the features in Chessbase are a bit of a disappointment.

Again, I expected more from Chessbase.

I'm afraid I have to agree.

[Albert Silver]

Chessbase 17 is a big disappointment...again.

I expected there to be more games being put into the Mega Database 2023. They say on their website that the Mega Database 2023 contains 9.75 million games but this is really not a lot of games considering that more than half of the Mega Database 2023 contains empty games.

Also most of the new features in Chessbase 17 have nothing at all to do with playing strength so for someone who wants to get a higher playing strength most of the features in Chessbase are a bit of a disappointment.

Again, I expected more from Chessbase.

Well I can't agree with you on any of your points. For one thing half of the games being empty is utter nonsense. With all due respect. Of course, if you have 5 million empty games, you should try downloading it again. As to playing strength it is very unclear to me what it is you mean. It's a database program and of course it's supposed to help you make the most of that core. The two highlight functions in it are the completely revised from top to bottom search system, which is absolutely amazing. And the second is the slew of powerful new engine functions. Now as to whether or not these will be of use to you I cannot say, as I have no idea what you expect of Chessbase the program, but that these are non-negligible features added to it is without question in my opinion. The engine features while amazing are actually less interesting to me. The search feature is absolutely fantastic, but everyone will have their own ideas. Personally I'm really into the replay training feature which I use for the Woodpecker tactics method. But that's me.

[Werewolf]

Albert if you have influence there please get them to sort out the Cloud Analysis feature.

It’s very interesting and could be amazing but the current implementation is a shambles. It’s not easy to see how the different engines work together, and the self deleting analysis leaves the user with almost nothing useful at the end of a session.

I know this isn’t a database function but it could be a winner for looking at difficult positions and it’s not at the moment.

[schack]

Is there going to be the ability to tag games with multiple phrases / tags and have each be searchable?

[jdart]

I just want them to fix the bugs. Especially the "You are running out of system resources" dialog. I am getting that regularly. To me that indicates you have not properly done resource cleanup in the program, which indicates you are a bad programmer, and if you are not fixing it for a couple of releases, it indicates you don't care much about your customers.

[emadsen]

I gave up on ChessBase due to the screen repainting issues. The GUI spazzes out whenever switching features. Takes a second or two to settle down to stable panels. Long operations, such as exporting many games to a .pgn file, freeze the entire GUI. Like Jon suggested re: "You are running out of system resources", this suggests poor programming (likely reliance on ancient Windows APIs) and lack of concern for the user's experience.

Hiarcs Chess Explorer Pro is so smooth by comparison.

[schack]

I've been using CB since DOS. I have _never_ had the kinds of problems you all are describing, and certainly not with the most recent versions.

[emadsen]

I speak of ChessBase products generally. Here's Fritz 16, which I foolishly bought thinking maybe the ChessBase developers finally got their act together and fixed the UI glitches. Nope. The GUI repaints window panels numerous times before stabilizing. It resizes the main GUI window without asking the user if they wish to transition to full screen. Just decides it's going to do that, user preference be damned. These issues have been present in ChessBase software for years.

Software users tolerated graphical glitches like this in the 90s, not because we liked it but because these defects were common. This is 2022. Why is a GUI behaving like this? I conclude for two reasons: 1) The ChessBase programmers lack the talent to solve the problem and / or the ambition to upgrade a large, aging code base. And 2) they're focused on adding features and don't care about the user experience. They don't view a pleasant user experience as a feature. Consequently, annoyances like this linger unresolved for years.