Sometimes I use 'em, especially to learn an opeing i never tried before. Sometimes I just play, like you said, as I go. It gets pretty funny sometimes, when the two players are using the same database, which I know has happened to me, like when some 1100 player is into the 14th move of the Itchy Variation of the Joe Blow Gambit, played by Alekhine in 1929 and you play something out of the line. There's a 3 daywait, then a clunker materializes out of nowhere. There are advantages and disadvantages to using databases. Do whatever you have time for.
Originally posted by Blitz00I use databases on and off. For a while I used databases for every game, I always had a link in that notebook thinkgy to a www.chessgame.com game that most matched the game I was playing. Often provided good ideas and insights that would normally be outside my chess theory/style/idea range. It can backfire however, I remember one game I played, I think I was white and I followed the "winning" database move blindly down and down through 17 odd moves, all the way there was this 10% games won by black it gets to this critical position in the database. There was something like 10 games left, in 8 games black played one move and was crushed quickly and in the other 2 databased games black found the winning move and knocked white about, the person I was playing found the winning move and I quickly lost the game, since then iv used databases less and when I have used them iv used them more intelligently.
How many people use databases and how many people just use what they know and what they have learned?
I dont use databases personally I just play as I go.
Lol I dont think I have ever used a database. I for some reason feel it sort of cheating because you have all the moves set out in front of you and you can choose which one is better just by looking at the database and the results of the games set before you. Then again some games just go way out of book and there is no database for them lol. alot of my games are like that.
I use a database for as long as I can. I do agree that they can be trouble, but this has yet to happen to me, and it provides much better play. I'll always find myself in a favorable, or at least interesting position after the opening. Plus, my OTB opening knowledge has improved drastically from looking up and playing the right moves, rather than guessing and getting in the habit of playing the wrong moves.
Databases can be traps, but if you're careful, they can be avioded. Just look down the line a few moves for anything suspicious.
One of the problems with databases is that it takes time. Somebody carrying, say 50 games or so can go nuts checking all his moves against databases. I talked to Talem16, who is a strong player, and he says he decides his moves in about 5 seconds each. I guess if there's a problem, he will take a little longer. I have to disagree a little with Ark13 who says he does it in the opening, rather than " guessing and getting in the habit of playing wrong moves." If you play with general principles in mind you can rarely go wrong. Another problem with databases, if you're not careful, is that you don't really get into the game until a new move is played. I think it takes time to get acclimated to a position, develop a feel for it, and that takes thinking on every move, not just at the end of a line.
I use databases daily--usually in one or two of my 30-40 games at six sites. I generally use them because I'm using correspondence to expand my opening repertoire. I use them in conjunction with books, including ECO and several opening monographs.
I also have specialized opening book databases for particular openings, which I will fairly extensively for those openings (although after a few games the lines I play are well rooted in my memory).
At present I am playing a few games with another player, where one player uses databases, and the other absolutely does not. We're doing it as a sort of test of the relative benefits of database use here at RHP. I'm willing to conduct more such "experiments" with others of varied strengths.
Originally posted by JusuhThe point, at least for me, is to learn. When I use a database, I don't follow it blindly, but try to understand the moves. I also still think about alternatives, and if I don't understand the "book move", I might play something else to see what that leads to. And in the not unlikely case that it leads to a lot of trouble, it may help me understand why the "book move" would have been better. I could try to figure it out all by myself, but that would take a lot more time.
I have never used databases. After all, whats the point of it?