The Mega Diwali Sale 2022 with the launch of ChessBase 17
by Sagar Shah - 15/11/2022
"Oh wow! ChessBase India has a sale! That's so wonderful," a chess lover exclaims. "But how do I navigate the over 800 products available in the shop?" This is a very valid worry for any person who is new to the ChessBase India's online-shop. We have so many useful chess products, but it is quite possible to get lost in the sheer quantum. At the core we deal in three types of chess products - 1. ChessBase softwares and fritztrainers 2. Chess Books 3. Accessories which include t-shirts, hoodies, chess sets, notebooks, pens and much more. From the 14th to the 16th of November is the Mega Diwali Sale across the entire ChessBase India store. We hope that with this article you will be able to navigate the ChessBase India shop like a boss and get the most appropriate product for yourself. Don't forget, ChessBase 17 and Mega Database 2023 are now out for pre-order!
The biggest sale of the year is here!
I know you are thinking to yourself. What's up with ChessBase India? Why are they putting up the Diwali Sale, 20 days after the completion of Diwali? Well, firstly we decided to delay the sale because ChessBase 17 was launching this November and we wanted the sale to coincide with the launch of ChessBase 17, Mega Database 2023 and a few other new products, so that you could get them at a discounted price. Secondly, we decided to continue with the name "Diwali Sale" because that is what we have been doing at ChessBase India since its inception in 2016! We didn't want to break the tradition. So, now that we are clear on why we call this the Mega Diwali sale from 14th to 16th of November, let us tell you what are the offers available:
If you buy:
Rs. 1 to Rs. 2,500 you get 5% off
Rs.2,501 to Rs. 7,500 you get 10% off
Rs. 7501 to Rs. 20,000 you get 15% off
Rs. 20,001 to 50,000 you get 20% off
Rs. 50,001 and above you get 25% off
The amount of discount depends on your sub-total which is before GST.
The Diwali Sale in the ChessBase India shop keeps getting more and more exciting and valuable each year as we keep introducing new products. The shop now has over 800 products including softwares, books, t-shirts, and accessories! There is something for everyone here. This Diwali you can think about getting a new software, or a new book, or a new hoodie (recently launched), or the ChessPa in Chess Adventure Park book. If you are an ambitious player, you should definitely check out what ChessBase 17 brings on the table for you along with Mega Database 2023 in new format. With so many products available, it is natural to get confused. This is the reason why we have mentioned some of the new arrivals and best selling products in the shop that can help you make a good decision with regards to the products that you would like to buy. At the end of the article you will also find all the products in the shop along with clickable links, which will help you to make easy decisions.
ChessBase 17
If you are an ambitious player, getting this is a no-brainer for you!
The main features of ChessBase 17, explained by the makers of the software - Matthias Wuellenweber and Mathias Feist
Here are a couple of main features that you would definitely love about ChessBase 17:
1. Determining the Beauty of games
You now have a database of ten million games, but how do you find the really exciting hidden
treasures in it? In earlier versions of ChessBase there were approaches to this: The search for combinations. But it was not always possible to find the most beautiful games. ChessBase 17 can now attribute a "beauty" to each game in four
stages. Beauty is indicated by zero to three medals in a column of the game list. This makes
each database sortable by beauty, i.e. the spectacular games are at the top. This is only
possible in the new data format (2CBH). We will talk about this format later in this article.
I decided to try this function on Arjun Erigaisi vs Gukesh, ChessBase India Originals Death Match 2.0 that was recently held
The result of clicking on the "Set Beauty" button
You should set the beauty values once for your large database. This takes a few hours,
because every game has to be replayed and every position has to be examined. A fast
computer can handle about 600 games per second. I found a very interesting use of this feature. Let's say I have been very keen to study the games of Alexander Alekhine. So I open my Mega Database and search the games of Alekhine. I now select all the games of Alekhine and paste them in a new 2CBH format database. The Mega Database 2023 comes in 2CBH format, so you would not even need to create a new database for using the set beauty button on the games of Alekhine. I have 2328 games of Alekhine in a new database now. I go to the games tab and click on Set Beauty button as shown above. It takes roughly 2 seconds for the entire process to be done.
Alekhine being an amazing aggressive player has so many attacking games to his credit. There are several games with three medals here.
I selected the game Duras vs Alekhine. Now I can trust the Set Beauty button and click on Replay Training button, take the black pieces and guess the moves of Alekhine. In this way I am guaranteed that the game I am looking at will surely be an exciting one.
But there is another thing that can be done in ChessBase 17, which is Detect Sacrifices! There is a red button to the bottom of your screen.
Once you click on detect sacrifices, all the moves that have a sacrifice are automatically marked and I can use this as training material for myself.
The bishop comes to b7. How did Alekhine as Black finish off the game?
Black pushed his pawn down the board to f3. and after Bxd5 f2 is just game over! You can see how with just two clicks - Set Beauty in the Database and then Detect Sacrifices when you open the game, can give you the key moments in the game of any top player. This is a great bit of training material and can help you go over the games of many world class players.
The above functions are only available in the new 2CBH data format. On all database types
(also Cloud or PGN) you can search for beautiful games:
To do this, click on "Beautiful games" in the advanced search mask. This will find all games
with at least one beauty medal:
The advanced filter helps you to find beautiful games even in cbh or pgn format
2. New Engine Analysis
The new elements in the engine window
The output of engines has been running unchanged for a long time in the form we introduced
it with ChessBase 2.0 under MSDOS over 30 years ago: variations, evaluations, all of this quite dry. In
ChessBase 17 this is approached anew. Earlier you would see variations and the engine would tell you what the best move is. However, ChessBase 17 describes in words what is the meaning behind a move and why is it winning or losing. It explains it's evaluations and the moves and the logic behind it.
Exciting are statements like: "White gets a dangerous passed pawn on e6". Or "White sacrifices
a runner", "Black has a resounding attack", "White gets the majority on the king's wing".
"Both kings are weak". "White plays a lever". "Maneuver Nd2-f1-e3-d5."
A few more features are:
1. You move the mouse arrow on a variation and the position appears on the main board.
2. Alternatively: You can play your arrow on the engine variations and then play the moves with arrow keys. The chess board's background
turns slightly light in colour to signal that you are not moving in the game. As soon as the mouse arrow leaves
the engine variations, the starting position is back on the board and the arrow keys act again on
the continuation of the game.
3. Buddy engine: The more colorful, the more exciting
Do you notice those coloured squares in the notations? This is a key feature of ChessBase 17 and we call it the Buddy Engine.
The buddy engine analyzes the positions of the engine variation and determines whether moves
are forced. Forced moves are commented with a colorful square. The square is the well-known
symbol for the "only move". A forced variation is immediately recognizable: it looks quite
colorful.
It is exciting to discover forced variants: For example, you could play a slightly "worse" move
in the opening preparation, but it demands the highest accuracy from the opponent because
everything is forced. This has higher practical chances of winning than a move, which is
perhaps 0.3 pawns better but easy to handle.
For years, it was recommended to analyze having at least two variations. If you have two lines on, then you can see if the best
move is the only possible one. This has a price: A multi-variant search runs slower than the
single-variant search. With Buddy in ChessBase 17 the one-variant search makes sense again.
The buddy simply looks at the starting position and then provides the information to what
extent the best move is forced, i.e. the only one.
Buddy is so named because he acts as a buddy of the main engine. It takes a quarter to a fifth
of the hash and CPU resources, leaving the main machine with almost unlimited power. In
most cases, the auxiliary engine is sufficient to check that the main move has a large distance
to the second best move. The main engine then goes much deeper in the same time in
single-variant mode.
Buddy calculates slower than the main engine:
1. He should look at many moves and
therefore has less computing time per position.
2. It has only one CPU available. This can lead
to discrepancies if the main engine only detects another sharp pull at great depth. However,
this is not a problem in practice, because you grasp it immediately and it is also an interesting
property of the position (complexity). Then you simply switch (with bulging hash tables) to
the two-variant search.
Buddy's comment icons are two-tone and there are three geometric shapes: The left/top color
shows the rating of the best move. The second color corresponds to the second best move:
Green = move leads to advantage / Yellow = roughly balanced / Red = loss.
A vertically split rectangle shows that the best move is trivial. Diagonal from left to right
bottom means: Not trivial, but easy to find. Diagonal from right to left bottom: Move appears
later in the search, so it is harder to find. In the above image: 21.Nf4 is a winning and the best move. After the second best move, White is also good. 23.Nxh5 is clearly the best. If white does not take on h5, the advantage is gone. Black has to take back, but that is still losing as shown by the red mark.
4. New Data Format
The CBH format, which has existed since ChessBase 6.0, reaches its limits everywhere. The
new format removes these boundaries. For example, there are no more limits on player names,
tournament identifiers, etc.
The "2CBH" format requires fewer files and uses modern caching methods of the operating
system. Furthermore, there is no longer any need for search boosters, the updating of
which repeatedly caused comprehension and performance problems.
2CBH is conceptually simpler and therefore more robust. Functions such as reorganizing
therefore sometimes run twice as fast as in the old CBH format. The new format requires
more space on the disk, which is relatively unimportant with today's disc sizes.
With the new format comes new functionality.
The little button at the bottom can be used to show End of Game
In this position White took the pawn on d3 with the queen and Black resigned.
You can use the End of Game button after Qxd3, so that the result 1-0 is put up. After that you can analyze the position and it is shown in slightly dim font.
You have an option to save as a game or as Analysis
The ChessBase Mega Database 2023 is the premiere chess database with over 9.75 million games from 1475 to 2022 in high quality. Packing more than 110,000 annotated games, Mega 2023 contains the world‘s largest collection of high-class analysed games. Train like a pro! Prepare for your opponents with ChessBase and the Mega Database 2023. Let grandmasters explain how to best handle your favorite variations, improve your repertoire and much more.
We like to call the Mega Databsae as the flesh and blood that runs through your body (ChessBase 17). Hence, we high recommend the combos which have both of them together.
This is the combo that can power your chess to the next level
ChessBase 16 upgrade to ChessBase 17- Go for this only if you have bought ChessBase 16 from the ChessBase India shop and can provide us the serial key.
Mega Database upgrade from 2022 to 2023 - Go for this only if you have bought Mega Database 2022 from ChessBase India shop and can provide us the serial key
ChessBase 17 Mega Pack- A powerpacked ChessBase 17 Mega Pack that gives you ChessBase 17, Mega Database 2023, ChessBase Premium Account, 1 year of ChessBase Magazine and 250 ducats. A total saving of over Rs.6,000
ChessBase 17 Premium Pack - ChessBase 17, Mega Database 2023, ChessBase Premium Account, 1 year of ChessBase Magazine, 250 Ducats, Power Fritz 18, Opening Encyclopaedia and also a ChessBase India t-shirt. A total saving of above Rs.10,000.
Note: All the products that involve ChessBase 17 or Mega Database 2023 are pre-orders and will be delivered to you by 24th of November 2022.
Power Fritz 18
Fritz has fascinated the chess world for 30 years. And the success story continues. In Vienna, the most popular chess program ever was once again able to underline its premier position: the newly developed neural engine with NNUE technology won the official Chess Software World Championship! With Power Fritz 18 you have the world champion program on your PC.
The Fritz Powerbook 2023 contains 25 millions opening positions, derived from 1.7 million high class tournament games. Together with each position all relevant information is stored: all moves that were played in the position, by players of what average rating, with what success and performance results. The games from which the Fritz Powerbook 2023 were derived (except the Corr Games) are also included in the download version. The Fritz Powerbook 2023 represents the state of the art of current openings theory. The FritzPowerbook was derived also from the best 100,000 games from the Correspondence 2022 Database to enhance even more the theoretical value of moves given by the book. With the 2023 edition you get 3 Books: Fritz Powerbook, Strongbook and the CorrBook. Discover exciting and tricky new lines and practice them against Fritz. In addition the download has a small but very exclusive book with the strongest GM games (ELO >= 2550) from the past 100 years (2.7 Mio positions) and StrongBook Games Database.
Children's Book
ChessPa in Chess Adventure Park is the first ever book published by ChessBase India and it was launched on 14th of November 2022
Get to know more about the book in 90 seconds
When Amruta Mokal, the co-founder and COO of ChessBase India, sat down to gift her 3-year-old nephew a children's chess book from the internet, she could find absolutely nothing appropriate. That's when she decided to take things in her own hands and come up with a Children's Chess Book developed by ChessBase India itself. It took nearly two and a half years for that dream to come to fruition, but it did and we launched ChessPa in the Chess Adventure Park. You can read all about the book and its story here. The book was launched on the Children's Day on 14th of November 2022.
After the success we have received with the t-shirts, we are proud to announce that we have introduced Hoodies, Zippers and Sweatshirts in our shop. The couple sweatshirts is definitely something that you should be looking at!
Arjun in action in a ChessBase India Sweat shirt at the Tandem Simul in DreamHack Hyderabad
Gukesh meeting the cricketing legends in a ChessBase India sweatshirt!
One of the best selling products in the ChessBase India shop is the ChessBase India Premium Chess Set. For a long time we did not sell chess sets in the ChessBase India shop. The reason was that we did not want to add another chess set to the already existing sets out there in the market. We wanted to provide something of value to our customers. We are proud to say that this has been one of the most loved products in our shop. We have this same chess set at the ChessBase India Chess Club at the Phoenix Marketcity in Mumbai. And people just love playing with the weighted pieces and the chess board squares being slightly bigger than a normal chess board.
The beautifully designed chess set comes with a pair of extra queens
And then you get a pouch as well as a bag to put your chess board as well as the pieces
ChessBase India Premium Chess set - Own it with pride
The best selling product in the ChessBase India shop. Membership to over 12 features for an entire year at just Rs.1768. That's less than Rs.5 a day! You get access to Playchess (online playing platform), Tactics Trainer, 1000s of hours of top class training content in video format, live database with over 8 million games. play against an chess program - Fritz online, learn the openings through the openings trainer, save your games and analysis in My games cloud, try to solve some beautiful studies, and follow the live games.
ChessBase Magazine is released once every two months. If you subscribe to this service for a year, you will get 6 copies starting from the latest ChessBase Magazine. It is an amazing resource for chess improvement. Just to give you an idea of what one issue of ChessBase Magazing contains, check this out with regards to CBM 210 (the latest edition).
I fell in love with ChessBase and its products thanks to Daniel King's Powerplay series! It's one of the most beautifully crafted series out there for chess improvement. If you want to expand your horizons in a way that is fun, engaging and interesting Daniel King's PowerPlay series is the one for you. I would recommend you to start with vol.1 and 2 and then steadily go up the ladder. But I am sure your money will be well utilized even if you decide to buy the entire combo.
One of my favourite videos where I am together with the man who taught me so much at chess! :)
ChessBase Classics
One of my favourite sections in the ChessBase India shop. There are some gems here. There are lessons recorded by Vishy Anand, Vladimir Kramnik, Garry Kasparov, Nigel Short! Once you get this, just lock yourself in a room and enjoy yourself for the next 1 week with some of the best minds that the world of chess has ever seen!
Vishy Anand on his career!
How Vladimir Kramnik became a World Champion!
A glimpse of Kasparov on Queen's Gambit
Nigel Short on the greatest hits of his chess career
Karsten Mueller is arguably one of the greatest chess experts of the modern era. He has a very scientific way of looking at things and this stems from his background in mathematics. That's why when he decided to make a complete series on endgame training, you know that it is going to be comprehensive. Karsten begins in volume 1 with Basic knowledge for beginners and then goes to rook endgames, followed by Major piece endgames, strategic endgames, endgame principles of activity, initiative, domination, prophylaxis, weakness and fortresses. There are also volumes on interesting material imbalance like rook vs knight or rook vs bishop and so on. One thing is for sure, if you have the patience to go over all 14 volumes of what Karsten Mueller teaches here, you are sure to become an endgame expert.
If you were thinking of getting to know about the greatest masters of the past then the Master Class series is a very good idea. Four strong players come together and dissect different aspects of the games of a top player. For example, let's take Bobby Fischer - GM Rogozenco will speak about his openings, GM Mueller will deal with Endgames, GM Marin on the strategies used and IM Reeh on the tactics. At the end of 4 hours you have a very firm idea of what kind of player Fischer was. This is a very unique way to study the material related to great players of the past.
Ivan Sokolov's Understanding Middlegame strategies
Ivan Sokolov is a well-known chess trainer. Most recently he helped Uzbekistan win the gold medal at the Olympiad 2022 | Photo: Lennart Ootes
When a player like Ivan Sokolov works seriously on a series of training material, you have to pay attention to it. In this series, he has addressed an important element of the game, Understanding Middlegame Strategies. There are 6 volumes to this.
Vol.1 deals with Dynamic Pawns
Vol.2 deals with Practical Play
Vol.3 deal with Hedgehog structures
Vol.4 is dynamic pawn structures
Vol.5 is Sicilian Rossolimo and Maroczy Structures
Robert Ris (in the background) is a well-known chess trainer from the Netherlands
Robert Ris pays special attention to improving the calculating abilities of his students. That's the reason why he is able to come up some very instructive material that addresses the common errors made by the players. Fritztrainers like Calculation Training, Calculation Booster Training, Calculation Training and Attack and Defence are some of the materials that can really benefit you.
Let's assume you have got yourself a brand new ChessBase Fritztrainer - Understanding Middlegame Strategies Vol.6 and you would like to play it through your tablet or mobile phone. Is it possible? Earlier it was not possible to do it with ChessBase Fritztrainers. However, now it has become possible. How? Whenever you purchase something from ChessBase India shop, you get a serial key. Now you go to the ChessBase.com shop and create a new account. Once you have done that, go to My Downloads. If you have never bought anything from ChessBase.com shop, it will be empty. However, there is a small + button at the top right.
The small + button at the top right of your My downloads
Once you click on the button it asks you to enter your serial number. As you enter the serial number and press add, this product gets added to your list. Now go to ChessBase Account homepage. And login with the same credentials that you used to create your chessbase shop account. Click on the Video portal and you will find that your fritztrainer has already been added here. This is browser based so you can access it from your phone, your tablet or any device!
Understanding Middlegame Strategies Vol.6 is now available on your video portal!
Please note: The Fritztrainers launched from Caruana's Ruy Lopez (in September 2019) and all of them subsequently released will work on the video portal, the older ones are not compatible with this feature.
Highly recommended Books:
The ChessBase India shop has so many books now that it is difficult to make recommendations. But before launching this sale, we rearranged our catalogue (you can find it below) so that you can get the books that you want in different categories like Openings (divided into 1.e4, 1.d4, other openings, as well as from black), Middlegames (attack and tactics, calculation, positional play) and Endgames. We also have books that deal with all phases of the game. Here we are going to recommend to you some of the best sellers in our shop.
If you are a beginner and looking for a structured way to improve, I would greatly recommend Praful Zaveri's Chess Course. It comes with 1 main book and 6 workbooks. All concepts are sufficiently drilled for you to move from a complete beginner to a level of a strong rated player.
Get to know more about Chess Course
A lot of people want to learn how to improve their endgame. There are four books that I would recommend for it. The first book that you should seriously consider is Silman's Endgame Course. The reason why this book is very good for people who are just getting acquainted with endgames, is because the author never assumes that the student knows things. He drills it down in words in the most basic form and you learn the endgames in a way that remain in your memory for a longer duration of time.
Once you have done a sizeable chunk of Silman's Endgame Course, I would recommend you to switch to 100 endgames you must know - main book and workbook:
There is a new book by Jesus De Villa which deals with Endgame Patterns that one must know. Playing endgames is a lot about pattern recognition. If you are able to understand the patterns in a deeper sense you would be able to make the best use of them in your games.
If you want to improve your positional play, then Silman's Reassess your chess is definitely something you should think about. I have created two extensive training playlists on YouTube based on what I learnt from this book - Improve your chess with IM Sagar Shah and Imbalance Theory with Comedians
If you are looking for a comprehensive course to become a strong player and improve your overall chess understanding in all phases of the game, then a very good course is Yusupov's 10-book series called Build up your chess, Boost your chess and Chess Evolution.
Onkar Jadhav, a chess trainer from Nashik, speaks about how he worked with his student and the Yusupov book series
If you want to understand the mechanism behind each and every tactic in a deeper sense, you should definitely work with Martin Weteschnik's book on Understanding Chess Tactics. Through this book I realized how a pin actually works, how you need three pieces in a line. I knew it intuitively, but it was this book that broke it down into words.
Amruta absolutely loves this book and always tells me to recommend it to anyone who is serious about chess. It has a very unique way to teaching you different openings through pawn structures. And it is so much more than just an opening book - Chess Structures - A grandmaster guide by Mauricio Flores, is sure to give you new tools in your arsenal when it comes to understanding different pawn structures and what plans you should adopt.
Konstantin Landa and Sakaev's two books on positional play have been very well received by players all across the world. If you are looking to improve your positional play, you should definitely look into this one:
AI engines are changing the way we play chess. Alpha Zero games of beating Stockfish created quite a wave a few years ago. This is well documented in the book Game Changer by Matthew Sadler. Now a new book has been written by Sadler. It's called the Silicon Road to Chess Improvement. The English GM tries to explain how you can learn from the ideas of the top computer programs and use them in your own games.
Jacob Aagaard's books for long have received critical acclaim not just from improving players, but also from grandmasters. If you are a player who is rated above 2000 Elo FIDE, you might want to seriously start working on his books. (Vol.2 on positional play can be used by lower rated players also).
If you have always wondered how Vishy Anand managed to win three World Championship matches in 2008, 2010 and 2012, then you must read Anand Files. Vishy is nothing short of a CEO, managing a team of workers who are all singularly trying to get most work done before the big clash - the World Championship Match!
Nigel Short has played the World Championship with Kasparov in 1993. For many years he was considered as one of the best players in the world. He has travelled extensively all across the world playing in several open tournaments. Recently he wrote a book called Winning for Quality Chess. Nigel's idea was that instead of focusing only on his best games, he would chose his 8 best events and cover all the games from that event. His idea is to show the readers how a tournament is won, how someone handles ups and downs during the course of a tournament. It's a fresh concept.
One of my recent favourites is Think like a Super-GM by Michael Adams and Philip Hurtado. 40 positions are given in the book and players from all levels - from 1300 to Super GMs try the same position and record their thought process. With time stamps also given it shows how fast or slow player of a specific level thinks. It will help you to compare your thinking to players of various levels, including super GM Michael Adams, who solves each of the positions and also discusses in depth. It can help you to understand the gaps in your thinking.
If you want to understand how Magnus Carlsen has evolved as a player, there would be no better material than this one:
If you want to improve your calculation, you should definitely get the book by R.B. Ramesh. Ramesh is the current trainer of some of the best talents of India including Praggnanandhaa, Karthikeyan, Aravindh Chithambaram. The book is not at all easy by any means, but it is sure to make you a better calculator if you work with it seriously.
The all time classic - Woodpecker Method. The book has 1100 puzzles. This is how you should work with it. Get the book and aim to solve it in 1 month. Once you have finished it, open it again and try to finish it in 15 days. Once done, do it again in 7 days, then 3 and finally you should reach a stage where you can complete all the 1100 positions in a day. But I would know all the answers already, you may ask. The point is to make these patterns stick to your mind. It's just like how a woodpecker creates a hole in the wood - constant pecking! The woodpecker method can help you to become tactically stronger and learn a lot of patterns if you follow this advice given by the authors.
If you are looking books of the highest quality, coming straight of the mind of one of the greatest thinkers of our era, you must seriously consider 4 books written by Boris Gelfand. Boris would have extensive calls and online sessions with Jacob Aagaard and together the duo have written 4 books that can help even the strongest of players in the world.
If a book is written by players of the calibre of Jan Markos and David Navara, you must pay attention to it.
While all the books above were related to improving your chess, if you want to get something which you can just place in your living room on your coffee table and flip through the book at peace, we highly recommend you this book which covers Magnus Carlsen life in a series of pictures! Beautiful book!
Recommendations based on Level
This is something that we launched in our shop where you get some of the recommendations based on your level of play
We decided to add some of the most popular books, softwares based on your Elo. Sometimes we have added a few products in multiple rating categories because we feel that a ChessBase 17 is useful for a player who is 1500-2000, also for 2000-2200 and also for 2200 and above!
