ChessTempo's Database > ChessBase

If you go into ChessTempo's new Beta Database with a gold subscription ($4 month) to CT, and integrate any engine you want with it, this is by far a better and more useful database tool than Chessbase. I've sat here for a couple of weeks comparing the two extensively before buying that Komodo9/Chessbase combo and ...ChessTempo's just better, cheaper, and less commercial driven. 

Anyone else use CT as their primary database? I dunno...I just think they way it's laid out and how it operates makes it the fastest, easiest, most reliable way to go about analysis when comparing it to using Chessbase materials. What am I missing? What would the pay version to Playchess + Chessbase/Fritz be like compared to the paid version of CT? I just ...don't see what all the fuss is about Chessbase and a Google search yielded tons of other people who felt the same way. 

This Reeks of Shill Spam!

OP wearing the CT logo, doesn't add any credibility

The slick web graphics may have SOME visual appeal, but it can never out-perform a native application.

Anyway, I prefer SCID plus Stockfish.

No, really - I don't have any affiliation with CT. Sorry if it came off as ad spam but no...I was just trying to bring it to more people's attention since it costs pennies a day and is at the least comparable to a product that is extremely expensive. 

I've been using CT + Stockfish Dev and Gull 3. Simply put - what am I missing by not using Chessbase? I made a thread about a week ago about purchasing this Komodo 9 package: http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/komodo-chess-9

As you see, I was kind of left to my own devices on this one. Your two pennies, please? 

Last time I did a similar comparison, I found that ChessBase's database was far more complete and that the software allows me to do dozens of things that will never be part of CT.

I really like CT for tactics training, especially with a paid account that links the problems to the database. Paid accounts also provide enormous data concerning strengths and weaknesses in solving.

However, there's something that I do everyday while researching positions that occur in my correspondence games:

I check my database containing every game ever annotated in Chess Informant for the position on my board. ChessBase is the only software that permits this operation.*

Naturally, having ChessBase software and all Informants in electronic editions costs a little more than a couple of year's membership at CT. But, there really is no comparison between the expensive software and the inexpensive CT membership. Only one can be described as robust.

*Chess Assistant might also.

So...If I still have the option: You would say that package I linked for $99 is good for me? Full access to playchess, chessbase, let's check, etc for 6 months + Komodo 9 and Fritz 64 bit. 

It may be good enough for you.

My needs require the CB database program, which I last purchased for $150 a few years ago. Also, a complete set of Informants is now available for $199 via their new Paramount Database. I paid more than that because I bought them piecemeal, but most of my collection was acquired when I won 500 Euros worth of their software in a contest (see http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2009/05/best-of-best-chess-informant-readers.html).

I paid $45 for the CD and print copy of Informant 125, which should ship out this week. I'm now paying that much every four months. If you want the best information, it comes at a price.

Thanks again for the information and taking the time. 

For me, I might not need all of that although I do see the value in the deal and that's why I've contemplated it so heavily. The thing is that whether a database has 4 or 7 million games really shouldn't matter much to me...playing ~1300 rapid chess at the moment. 

Playchess + Komodo 9 is some deal though. Playchess seems to have stepped up huge lately as a chess playing server. 

edit: Oh and of course, the drool factor is high when it comes to the cloud database. Have you seen that yet? It's amazing. ChessTempo also plans to go cloud based within the next 12 months, too. 

Larger databases do not thrill me as they might. The Week in Chess does not miss any important Grandmaster games. Databases are growing larger by adding more games by weaker players, not by poring through nineteenth century periodicals to assure that they have every known game ever played by masters.

I check a lot of games from nineteenth century periodicals against ChessBase. If they were not part of a major tournament, they are not in the database.

I'm not interested in any game played by anyone below 2000, unless they are one of my students or one of my opponents. I'm only marginally interested in the games of players below 2200.

My main database is 5.6 million. There's not much in a database of 12 million that I want that I don't already have. The ~200,000 in my Informant database is of more value to me for most purposes.

I have been compiling the Greco games from seventeenth and and eighteenth century compendiums of those in his manuscripts. That gives me three times the number of Greco games that are available in any source published in the past forty years (all of which seem to draw from the same 1900 text by Angelo Lewis, "Professor Hoffman").

Another person has done this with Morphy's games and made it available through Batgirl. I have that. 

Komodo is a good engine. I use a free version of Komodo in conjunction with Stockfish in my ChessBase database and in the playing program. I have commercial versions of Rybka, Hiarcs, and Fritz. Stockfish and Komodo seem stronger in the tests that I've run.

I'm playing a couple of games on ICCF at present. These are essentially Cyborg games. A newer version of Fritz (incl. the one that comes with Komodo 9) would offer access to possibly useful data for such play.

I like the Playchess server. I think it is better than ICC, which is better than chess.com.  

I messaged/friended you about this. Thanks again for your help. 

As said in the message, I have definitely seen the tide shift to where PlayChess is the premium pay only chess server out there now ...not ICC.