I'm toying with the idea of purchasing ChessBase and was wondering if anybody out there would care to comment on which version they would suggest?
I like the idea of the annotated games in the Mega Package but was wondering what the quality of the annotation was like? Is it mainly lists of moves or are there text explanations? Also, what are the chances of you finding annotations on a particular line you are interested in? 60000 games sounds like a lot of commentary but that wouldn't help much if it is concentrated on a few lines.
Thanks in advance.
I'm not qualified for answering this question for I don't have the megapackage, but I'm almost sure all the annotations would be even much worse than a "fritz full analysis". at least that was the case with "Informants". in informants, what they call an annotated game is a game with just a couple of more variations than the mainline. with not a single comment or idea.
I can’t tell you about the annotations, but my db that I made from scratch has 1.3 million games. I recently did a check of my last 20 games with opponents rated over 2000 and that average number of moves before we ran out of db games was 10.5 so it seems like spending a lot of money for the package is a waste.
Thanks to all those who've replied. I agree with masscat about the amount of money involved. The question to me is whether it is worth it or not.
The detail of the annotation is important. Often I search the Fritz database and try and find a position from a game I have in one of the books on the shelf.
Often when I'm faced with this sort of situation I try and add up how much time and effort it would take to do the task in hand myself and work out mentally how much it would cost per hour compared to the amount of time saved by buying something off the shelf. If it then seems better value to buy I would think very strongly about it. As yet I'm still undecided!
Originally posted by tapestryI did not buy Mega; a friend of mine did. He said the annotations were not worth the extra $150; I've spent that much several times over on other annotated games that I've imported into ChessBase, viz, Opening monographs, player monographs, Chess Informant publications.
As yet I'm still undecided!
Just want to add an update.
In the end I settled for ChessBase Light and paid for the upgrade to the Premium Edition. I then loaded the database from Fritz 10 and added to it using The Week In Chess.
It seems to do what I need which is allow me to search a large database of games more readily than Fritz itself and add to it quite easily. I may look into Big Database 2007 in the future.