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The other day I was thinking about the old “desert island” question, “If you were going to be stranded on a desert island for a long period of time, what one chess book would you want to take with you?”  I decided that if I modernized the task a bit and took a laptop computer along with me, then I wouldn’t settle for a mere book as a companion; I’d want the software collection Six World Champions, from Convekta – those good folks who have brought us Chess Assistant, and, more recently Openings Instructor.  In the 4-CD set are the games of Emanuel Lasker, Jose Raul Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal and Boris Spassky.  Plus there are photographs, tournament crosstables and position quizzes, where you get to “Play as Alekhine” or “Play as Tal” (or Lasker, Capablanca, Botvinnik or Spassky) by choosing the correct move and continuation from actual games the Champions played in.

Six World Champions is a regular candy store of a software package.  There is so much in it, it’s hard to cover it all.  Let me give you a quick tour.

Some good news is that program installation is relatively easy.  It took me 15 to 20 minutes to get everything loaded, but, truth be told, things sped up a whole lot when I actually read the manual.  It turns out that the 52-page instruction booklet, while having its occasional gaffe (“Hose Raul Capablanka”, for example, is easy to figure out) is very helpful.  What will they think of next?  (No, seriously: hats off to Convekta on this one.)

With eleven icons facing me, six with the name of a World Champion and five titled “Play as” that champion (the “missing” icon will be explained below), I decided to take a peek at Lasker.

The core of the setup is Chess Assistant Light, an “abridged” version of the well-known database program, so I double-clicked and found myself facing a rather familiar screen.  If you have any experience with Chess Assistant (or ChessBase, or SCID for that matter) or Convekta products you’ll grasp most of your options immediately.  If you’re new to chess databases, it’s still pretty easy to figure out – with the manual.

In the center of the screen is a thumbnail sketch of Emanuel Lasker.  To the right you can see the Contents, strung out as an expandable/collapsible “tree”.  (For illustration purposes, I have used the “tile” command to set the two windows neatly next to each other, although it is just as easy to have them, in a larger size, on top of each other.)  The Contents starts off with a set of pictures of the World Champion, so I clicked to expand the Photographs and then clicked on one of the numbered icons.

I then decided to take a look at the 1889 match Lasker – Bardeleben.  A few clicks to open and tidy up, and I had the following windows in front of me.

In the lower right is the full list of 624 Lasker games, any one of which I could click on and bring up.  In the upper right is the match crosstable.  In the lower left is the list of the match games.  In the upper left is the game itself.  Again, it is possible to simply focus on a single game (I admit, I’m a bit of a button-pusher) – in some cases, I like setting up the “split screen” mode while I’m browsing games.  Below, I’ve left the Lasker – Bardeleben match and taken a peek at Lasker’s game against Bogoljubow at Moscow, 1925.

 Note the ECO-style comments.  Some are contemporary (e.g. Bogoljubow), some are more recent (e.g. Shereshevsky), and some are provided by GM Khalifman for Convekta.  These are pretty representative of the notes in the Lasker file, as well as those throughout Six World Champions.  This is an important point: you can probably buy some SuperMegaWowie Database that might have most of the games in Six World Champions – or spend considerable time on the internet tracking them down – but what you’ll have when you’re done is a pile of just-plain-games.

For comparison purposes, I hopped over to the Alekhine file (1300 games), again by double-clicking on its icon.

Here we have a picture and the Contents.  Instead of a separated Pictures folder for Alekine, different shots pop up when you click on different folders, such as “1928-1935”.  Also, when I wandered through the tournaments and randomly clicked one time on Bradley Beach 1929, I got in interesting position from one of the games (in this case, Alekhine – Steiner), below.

When I further double-clicked on Bradley Beach, I got the familiar list of games from the tournament – again, any one of which I could have brought up and wandered through.  See below.

By the way, I found small differences between the presentation of each World Champion, reflecting the fact that each started as a stand-alone offering, in the Great Players’ Games Collections.  First came Tal (1999), then Alekhine (2000), then Lasker (2001) and Capablanca (2001), followed by Botvinnik (2002).  All five World Champions were available in the Great Players Kit (reviewed here at Chessville by Kevin Bidner).  Then along came Boris  Spassky 10th World Champion (2005, reviewed here at Chessville by Prof. Nagesh Havanur), and then the resulting Six World Champions.  The differences were of no concern to me as a User of the product, and I mention it to be a bit more “complete” in my role as Reviewer.  (I suspect that CDs of Smyslov, Petrosian, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov and Kramnik will each come along one of these days; followed at some point by the Twelve World Champions compilation.)

Anyhow, I hopped on over to the Capablanca program (which, for the record, has a Photos folder, crosstables of each tournament and what I’ve called “interesting positions”) and its 641 games.

It suddenly dawned on me that, if my memory wasn’t failing me, the great positional player had once played the wild-and-crazy Sicilian Wing Gambit, 1.e4 c5 2.b4!?  I couldn’t remember his opponent or the event, so I decided to do a Search, using the position.  It was easy to do.  The databases can be searched by players’ names, year or place of  play, opening name, ECO index, and a whole lot more, including a search for particular piece maneuvers or a search for positions with a certain material advantage, say endgames with Rook vs two pieces.

In no time at all I had the game (in split screen mode) right in front of me. See below.

Capablanca – Black, New York, 1911.  Hmmm…. I saw that at move seven Khalifman mentioned 7.c3!? Nf6 8.Bd3 – but without evaluation.  So I decided to have Chess Assistant Light do some of the Analysis for me, and called upon the assistance of the hardworking Crafty engine, asking for 30 seconds of its time.

Crafty complied, and a half-minute later added its comments to the game, even “signing” its handiwork (below).  If I didn’t like Crafty’s conclusion, I had the option of playing the game out against the computer, too.

I was given the option of saving the line, if I wanted.  For that matter, I could have printed the game out, and I was surprised at how much control I had over the layout of the output.  Newsletter publishers, take note.

Well, time was flying by while I was having fun, but I was already a week past deadline on my review, so I thought it best to hop on over and visit Botvinnik (1069 games, photos folder, crosstables with occasional comments, interesting positions).

With Tal coming up next (2592 games), I decided to test the “Play as” feature (as if I could ever play as Tal!)  I double-clicked on the icon, and set myself up as a “user”.  There does not seem to be a limit on the number of “users” who can be listed, so it’s likely a whole class of students, or members of a chess club, could get involved – a very nice feature.  In the meantime, I was ready to go.  The “course navigator” showed the kinds of positions I could try my hand at, including practicing my endgame technique, and gave me the choice of taking a “test”, or of “practicing” for a while.

With the mouse, I made the move that I thought was the most Tal-ish.  When I played a correct move, the piece in the diagram moved to the proper square.  When my choice was wrong, the board “refused” to change, and I got a hint (with the graphic of a light bulb).  When the critical choices had been made, the game animated to the end of the combination.  In a position from Tal -Auer, Porz 1992, I scored 25 of 50 – which was a nice way of saying “try again, pal.”  The program actually keeps track of your progress, and provides you with helpful statistics.

I could have stayed on the “Play as” programs all day, despite the steady bruises to my ego, but I had one more World Champion to check in with – Spassky.  (He rates 50 photos in a folder, and usually has interesting positions related to the year of play, with most tournaments showing crosstables.)  You can tell it’s the newest title, because it doesn’t open with an Introduction or photo of the Grandmaster; rather it has a copy of the software license agreement!  Also, you can find “Play as Spassky” by going down along the Contents tree:

So there you have it: over 8,600 games, with notes, of a half-dozen World Champions.  If you spent an hour going over each game, you’d have almost the entire year on your “desert island” covered!  Fiddling with the “Play as” feature would push you into the new year.  For everyone who’s been encouraged to “study the Masters”, this quite the place to begin.

A few final comments:

As might be expected, the cost of Six World Champions is about 60% of what it would be if you bought the titles separately – a significant savings, and worth saving your pennies for.  (There is also the “tidiness” benefit of four CDs vs six CDs, and one package of CDs vs six packages.)

The different “birthdates” of the Champions’ individual programs raise the question: which version of Windows is required?  The printed manual suggests that the run of Windows 95/98/2000/NT/ME/XP will work, while the back of the CD package starts the low end at Windows 2000.  It seems best to be “conservative” and be sure you’re running Windows 2000 or newer.  My own experience is that Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik and Tal seemed to run fine on my Windows 98 machine, while Spassky definitely did not run.  All run well on XP.

Finally, I have not had the opportunity to examine ChessBase’s “Monograph” series which includes some of the World Champions, so can form no judgments or make comparisons.  (Frankly, unless ChessBase wants to “remedy” this situation and send me review copies, I don’t think I’ll be looking into what they have on the World Champions – I’m really quite content with my Convekta treasure trove.)
 

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