I would recommend Positional Chess by Shaun Taulbut

http://www.amazon.com/Positional-Ch...

I have the 1983 edition of this book and it is a really nice introduction for the club player.

I imagine the most recent edition will be even better.

All the basics are covered from:

<Pawns>-weak pawn configurations-doubled pawns- etc right through to the majority and minority attack etc

<Bishops and Knights> -two bishops-good knight vs bad bishop etc

<Rooks>-open files-the exchange sac etc

plus chapters dealing with the <Queen> and the <King>-middlegame-endgame etc.

It is written in algebraic notation and contains good clear explanations, with many diagrams.

As well as classic games by positional masters likes Karpov and Capablanca, Shaun Taulbut also includes annotations of his own games.

These are particularly useful for the improving club player IMO, as he talks you through exactly what was going on in his head during his game and the reasons behind his decisions.

TITLE [Comprehensive Chess Endings]
TYPE [software/DVD]
CATEGORY [ending]
SKILL [advanced]
PRICE [approx. $40USD]
AVAILABILITY [direct from Convekta or through various booksellers]

Back in the day, Fine's <Basic Chess Endings> was the standard English-language endgame reference, but unfortunately was riddled with errors. In the Soviet Union, the endgame theoretician Yuri Averbakh was the primary driving force behind a massive Russian-language body of work, which only began to become widely available in English translation when Batsford started publishing a multivolume series in the 1970s. More currently, the Averbakh material is available in printed form in the <Comprehensive Chess Ending> series. Convekta has brought out the Averbakh material in <Chess Assistant> format. A “light” version of Chess Assistant is included, so no additional software is required. It will work with the Nalimov endgame tablebases (sold separately). Averbakh has updated the material and checked it against tablebase results.

I have the original Batsford series. Why did I purchase CCE on disc? First, the material is updated and corrected. Second, I quite like being able to play through variations without a set, using only keyboard and mouse. I can work through variations and sub-variations and return back without losing my place. Finally, I've been working with algebraic notation long enough that going back to descriptive in the old series slows me down a bit. Assuming one has is working off the computer hard drive rather than the disc, it is possible to save personal lines and notes in the material, much like handwritten notes in the margins of a book (however I'd want to clearly mark what was mine and what what Averbakh's!).

Chess books on any facet of the game can run the gamut from basic beginner's primer to advanced cutting-edge reference work.

<Comprehensive Chess Endings> is clearly geared toward the higher end of that range. Rather than attempting to convey working “rules of thumb” in a focus on common, practical endings, CCE not only attempts to examine typical plans in various types of endings, but also tries to systematically examine exceptions to the “rules.” In my forum I have posted a couple of N+P vs. B positions from CCE. For an example of the goals of the more advanced material, in the section on K+P endings about <The theory of corresponding square systems> (“opposition” and “triangulation” being “simple” examples of corresponding squares), part of the introduction reads:

<”In this chapter an attempt is made to generalize everything of value that has been devised in the theory of corresponding square systems, so as to give practical players appropriate recommendations, which should help them find their way in certain complex pawn endgame positions. Therefore the present chapter is intended mainly for players of high standard.”>

When a Russian GM theoretician says “player of high standard” he's not talking about your typical club player (but see my experience with a much earlier version below). Here's what it says in part about a composition by Reti (1921), Black to move:

click for larger view

<”That which is now considered complicated may possibly, with the passage of time and development of theory, prove to be simple. A typical example is [Reti, 1921], which authors of books have usually explained in lengthy and obscure terms. The key squares here are those on the 4th rank, since the exchange after g3-g4 leads only to a draw. On the base squares d3-e3-f3 we have a normal rectangular system...Zugswang arises in connection with the possibility of g3-g4, the zugswang positions being Kf2/Ke4 and Ke2/Kd4. This is the extent of the complexity. 1...Kd4! 2. Kg2 (2. Kf2 Ke4! 3. Ke2 Kd4! 4. Kd2 Ke4! 5. Kc2 Kd4 – defence on the key squares) Ke5! 3. Kf3 Kf5 4. Ke2 Ke6! -- defence in the basic system.”>

Bobby Fischer
Book: The Wandering King
Pal Benko - "He stored stuff in several places in the United States,including Pasadena.He paid for it.He showed me the cheques himself which he sent to a friend.That guy would pay the bills for the storage.But another company took over the storage space and the intermediary was too late with the payment.All his stuff was then auctioned.Bobby was completely enrage".

Harry Snieder -Bobby live here(Pasadena,World Wide Church of God) quite a long time,I think from 1976 or 1977.But in the period that he was so pampered,something else happened.Dissident people,people who had different views from the church,enetered into his life.They began to share so-called inside information about different personalities.This destroyed his confidence in the church.He began to criticize people within the church.He even criticize me for staying with the Worldwide Church of God.And he began to listen to other religious programming.Those people made good use of him.They interviewed him for their paper.They recorded on tape and they use those tapes for their own purpose.He was very upset about that, and then left(Pasadena).He started to travel inside the USA and later in Europe.He went to Germany to buy leather goods and shoes, and to Argentina,and he was often in Tokyo.He is crazy about electronics gadgets,TV's and cameras.About ten years ago I received a picture postcard from him in Germany: contact was then restored.

Something remarkable happened at that time.There was a Hungarian girl who wrote a wonderfull letter to Fischer.She was wondering why he didn't play chess anymore,because chess players all over the world would enjoy that.In consequence of that letter he started to train again.She saw to it that a return match against Spassky was organized in 1992 for $5million.I came along to that island(sveti stefan),I cannot remember which country(Yoguslavia).Fischer won.He was then very close to that girl.Unfortunately,the relationship brokedown.

<The Rauzer Sicilian, during the mid 1990s, was perhaps only second to the Najdorf. Now the situation has changed. The Najdorf is still supreme. However the opening has lost nothing in complexity, just witness the problems Kramnik is having trying to adopt it.

The Sveshnikov Sicilian has surpassed the Rauzer in popularity, and is now all the rage. It, too, is very concrete and sharp.

The Kan and Taimanov Sicilians remain popular as well. The Dragon has never really caught on (the more it is examined, the more questionable the 9 0-0-0 line looks).

So what happened to the Rauzer? It was very popular among the top players, with Kramnik, Anand, and Shirov playing it often (if one goes back and looks at Tal's games, one finds him playing it quite often in his time as well). I think Kramnik relied on it as his sharpest weapon against 1 e4, in "must win" situations. Well, the defense received a lot of attention, and was thus put under pressure. Kasparov did much to damage various lines. So, the top players moved on to other defenses. leaving the Rauzer battered, but still standing.

Personally, I find much to recommend the Classical Sicilian. It is not as deep and subject to constant change as the Najdorf and Sveshnikov. It allows one to play either 2..d6 or Nc6 (Does one want to face the Moscow or Rossolimo?) It allows a very flexible response to various sixth moves by white. Do you want a Boleslavsky set-up? A Scheveningen? or a Dragon? The choice is yours. Do you want to face the Sozin attack, with 6 Bc4 e6, or dodge it with 6..Qb6? All this is very nice, and gives Black a wonderfully flexible game to work with.

The key to the entire idea of playing the Classical Sicilian is the Richter-Rauzer Attack. Can Black find a viable position here in the mass of variations? That is the crux of the matter. Well, as a quick glance at this book will show, there is some safety in the sheer size and scope of the Rauzer. White needs to cover a vast amount of material. As Black, one need only choose one line. If that proves troublesome, well, then one can try a different line, etc.

The problem, in my opinion, is that the whole Rauzer Sicilian is very sharp. There is no "solid" Rauzer. It is all very dicey stuff. And a lot of it has been studied quite deeply.

Myself, I have only really scratched the surface of the defense. So I must rely on gut instincts. My instinct tells me that it is playable, and, with some study, one should be able to hold one's own against a decent caliber of opposition. I think with mid-level opponents, the Rauzer should give Black enough tactical counter-chances.

There are some lines here, where at Super-GM level, it looks as if Black is busted, or groveling for a draw. But I think there is enough scope in the Rauzer to avoid most of these lines and steer into something else. In short, I recommend the Rauzer as a linchpin defense to 1 e4. This book is the best one out there on the subject. One would need to keep checking in New in Chess and Informator in order to keep up with things. In the last Wilk an Zee tournament, I noticed Timman played the Rauzer with black against Anand. Timman was blown away. But it was still an interesting sharp struggle, quite in character of the opening. I think this opening is a good one for tournament play, as it is well conceived for playing for a win.

Now what to play against the c3 Sicilian? ahh..the trick there is simply to stay awake...good hunting.>

Besides that, I think it has some nice features:

1) The puzzles increase in difficulty over the chapters.

2) There's a short, instructive introduction at the start of every chapter explaining the chapters themes, such as backrank mates, hanging pieces, etc.

3) In each puzzle the position is assesed or evaluated. (to speak with J. Silman: What are the imbalances in the position) Annotations are plenty.

4) Besides the "normal" solutions to the puzzles, there are also pointers that tell you where to look if you don't find the solution right away. I think these pointers are great, because they help you form a habit for what patterns to look in general and understand the tactics.

I can recommend this book; really fun to read.

<hrvyklly>: The book 'Meeting 1.d4' focuses on using the Tarrasch, does anyone have any thoughts about using/studying this book? Quite fancy taking up the Tarrasch...

<Chigorin>: I play the Tarrasch and have the book.

As far as the book goes I think it is very good. It attempts to cover everything White can throw at you other than 1.e4. In other words 1.c4, 1.Nf3 etc. are covered.

The Tarrasch coverage is great. Both ideas and theory are covered. There is no index of variations, so locating a specific line is not always easy, but it can be done. The coverage of theory seems quite good to me though, and the discussion of ideas is great.

The coverage of other lines is a bit more varied in quality. The Reti, London System, Pseudo-Tromp all seem fine. But the Colle, Catalan, English and Veresov coverage is a bit weak. However given that this is all pretty much icing on the cake anyway I don't really care!

As far as the Tarrasch Defense itself goes, it is a mixed bag. It's not a good choice for those who like to feel sure that they are playing the "most correct" line (for those players I would recommend NID+QID or Slav). Nor is it a risky but dangerous counter-attacking opening on the level of the KID, Gruenfeld, Benoni or Semi-Slav. Rather it is a more active but also more weakening way to defend the Queen's Gambit. In other words, this a rather "solid" opening, not a counter-attacking one (at least when played by good players). It's just that rather than trying to equalize by avoiding weaknesses, Black takes a few on voluntarily, arguing that if he is active enough the weaknesses don't really matter. Against a really good player who knows his stuff I don't think Black's winning chances are very good, but until you encounter such players quite regularly I don't think this matters. In many of my games against decent opposition (e.g. 1900-2000) we reach positions where it seems White is quite a bit better, but it is hard to find a way forward. For a 2200+ player the Tarrasch may not be a great choice. However for us mere mortals I think it can be a decent weapon. White really needs good technique and a well prepared line in his pocket to really punish you, and only very rarely do I run into someone who has both.

One nice thing is that there is really only one truly scary line for Black (the kingside fianchetto) and most people at my level aren't aware of this line (and don't discover it OTB). Of course you need to be comfortable against this line to play the Tarrasch, but it is nice to equalize on move 6 in so many games! If you are curious about the absolute truth in the Tarrasch it is probably something along the lines of the game Kasparov vs Illescas-Cordoba, 1994 though Black can improve on move 21 with ...a5 and maybe earlier as well.

<just a kid>: Hey switch have you read play 1...b6 by Christian Bauer?I was thinking of getting it so I can learn even more of the Owen.I am usually able to get a good game because my opponents know little about it.

<SwitchingQuylthulg> <just a kid> Yes I have. It's an excellent theory book, even if some important variations are inadequately covered. At this point of your chess career though, I cannot enough recommend giving preference to endgame and middlegame books over ones on openings. For one thing, you can't really appreciate an opening before developing a touch for the later parts of this game. Remember that the opening has one purpose only, to give you a good middlegame, and the middlegame has one purpose only, to give you a good endgame. (A blistering attack that gives you a king-up endgame is no exception.) Thus if you can't correctly evaluate a given middlegame or endgame as good or less good, you won't know how to play.

Need:
1. Good endgame book. Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual is definitive and you must get it if you're serious in chess. You will not only improve in endgame with the help of this book but you will also enrich your general understanding of the different phases of the game.

2. Good opening Encyclopedia. MC0-15 is the latest in this, it gives you a good preview of "most" of the openings. But if you're okay with openings and want to specialize in a particular opening then get some opening surveys/theoreticals.

3. Classic chess book(s), or a collection of games of some GMs like Capablanca, Tal, Kasparov, Karpov, etc. I suggest that you get a book that suits your particular play (tactical, positional, etc.). By studying the games of, say, Karpov, you will understand positional play better; while Tal will rev up your tactical imagination...

Want:

1. Book on chess problems/puzzles. This will also sharpen your analytical and problem solving ability.

2. Middlegame book. Usually this cover ways to play the middlegame (maneuvering, conducting the attack...).

3. History of chess. This one's for expanding your appreciation of the richness of the game that outlasted several empires and kingdoms. Needless to say, "The Immortal Game" is an excellent book for consideration if you plan to buy anything in this category.

Rather, what’s more important is for an analyst to inspect the position visually, move by move, to pin point tactical opportunities and positional considerations, using standard chess analysis, which can be found in such works as

1. The Middlegame, books I & II. M Euwe & H. Kramer.

2. Chess Strategy. Eduard Gufeld & Nikolai Kalienchenko.

3. Secretes of Positional Chess. Drazen Marovic.

4. My System & Praxis of My System. Aron Nimzowitsch.

5. Creative Chess Strategy. Alfonso Romero.

6. Chess Strategy in Action. John Watson.

7. Modern Chess Strategy. Ludek Pachman.

8. The Art of Planning in Chess. Neil McDonald.

9. Think Like a Grandmaster & Play Like a Grandmaster. Alexander Kotov.

10. The Art of Chess Analysis. Jan Timman.

11. The Secrets of Grandmaster Chess. John Nunn.

12. Chess Master at Any Age. Rolf Wetzell.

13. Mastering the Chess Openings, Vol. I & II. John Watson.

14. Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy. John Watson.

15. The Art of Attack in Chess. Vladimir Vukovic.

16. The Middlegame in Chess. Eugene A. Znosko-Borovsky.

17. Secrets of Chess Transformations. Drazen Marovic.

18. Modern Chess Strategy. Edward Lasker.

19. Chess Strategy. Edward Lasker.

20. Bishop vs. Knight: The Verdict. Steve Mayer.

21. School of Chess Excellence 1, 2 , & 3. Mark Dvoretsky.

22. The Middlegame in Chess. Reuben Fine.

23. Pawn Power in Chess. Hans Kmoch.

24. Understanding Pawn Play in Chess. Drazen Marovic.

25. Pawn Structure Chess. Andrew Soltis.

26. Dynamic Pawn Play in Chess. Drazen Marovic.

27. Silman’s Complete Endgame Course. Jerry Silman.

28. Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual. Mark Dvoretsky.

29. Fundamental Chess Endings. Karsten Muller & Frank Lamprecht.

30. Basic Chess Endings. Reuben Fine.

31. Endgame Tactics. Van Perlo.

32. Batsford Chess Endings. Jon Speelman, Jon Tisdale, & Bob Wade.

33. Endgame Strategy. Mikhail Shereshevsky.

34. Secrets of Minor-Piece Endings. John Nunn.

35. Secrets of Rook Endings. John Nunn.

36. Secrets of Pawnless Endings. John Nunn.

37. 1000 Pawn Endings. Jozsef Pinter.

38. 1000 Rook Endings. Jozsef Pinter.

39. Chess Combination. Chess Informant.

40. Chess Café Puzzle Book I & 2. Karsten Muller.

41. Chess 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games. Laszlo Polgar.

42. 3000 Endgame Problems in Russian.

42. 3000 Middlegame Problems in Russian.

43. CT-ART 3.0 Chess Tactics (Software). George Renko.

44. Intensive Course Tactics 2 (Software). George Renko.

45. Deadly Threats (Software). George Renko.

46. Tactics Training (4000 Positions; Software). George Renko.

47. Chess Combinations Encyclopedia (4000 Positions; Software). Convekta.

48. 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations. Fred Reinfeld.

49. 1001 Checkmates. Fred Reinfeld.

50. Chessbase 9 or 10 with its 3.5 million-game database.

51. Ultracorr2 CC Game Collection (870,000 games). Tim Harding.

Chess Theory

The Art of Planning in Chess (Neil McDonald)

The Art of Positional Play (Reshevsky)

Basic Chess Endings (Fine - Benko)

Can you be a Positional Chess Genius? (Dunnington)

Chess Fundamentals (Capablanca)

Chess Life and Review (1978, Julio Kaplan)

Chess Middlegame Planning (Romanovsky)

Dan Heisman

Elements of Positional Evaluation, 1990 edition (Heisman)

Elements of Positional Evaluation, 3rd edition 1999 (Heisman)

Excelling at Positional Chess (Jacob Aagaard)

Improve Your Positional Chess (Carsten Hansen)

Inside the Chess Mind (Aagaard, 2004)

The Middle Game in Chess (Znosko-Borovsky)

The Morals of Chess (Benjamin Franklin)

My System (Nimzowitsch)

Play Like a Grandmaster (Kotov)

Positional Chess (Taulbut)

Positional Chess Handbook (Gelfer)

Positional Ideas in Chess (Love)

Positional Play (Dvoretsky, Yusupov)

Practical Chess Analysis (Buckley)

A Primer of Chess (Capablanca)

Questions of Modern Chess Theory (Lipnitsky)

The Reviled Art (Stuart Rachels)

School of Chess Excellence 3 Strategic Play Progress in Chess (Dvoretsky)

Secrets of Chess Training (Dvoretsky)

Secrets of Positional Chess (Marovic)

Simple Chess (John Emms)

Simple Chess (Michael Stean)

<The Chess Cafe Puzzle Book: A review Karsten Müller, The Chess Café Puzzle Book (Russell Enterprises 2008). 303 pp., $19.95. Reviewed by Dennis Monokroussos.

There is no shortage of tactics books and discs on the market, but Müller’s offering is a worthy addition to the pile. The book presents 565 puzzles*, the last 160 of which come in the form of ten tests. Before that, the training material is divided into six chapters.

The first and longest chapter, “Motifs”, is one to which I give my heartiest approval. Müller divides the material there into no less than 20 different themes and 234 puzzles. Most of the themes are standard: back rank mates, deflection, discovered, doubled, and x-ray attacks, pins, skewers and so on. But some are a bit less usual in books of this sort, like vacating lines and squares, zugzwang and zwischenzugs.

Some tactics books reject this form of presentation on the grounds that it’s unrealistic – no one is holding up a sign during the game letting you know that a back rank combination is available, so it’s silly to train that way. I disagree. It would be a mistake to always train that way, but as a way to learn, overlearn, master, and refresh one’s learning it’s an excellent technique.**

The next chapter, “Easy Exercises” consists of 100 problems that generally won’t be too easy to the average club player. (My guess is that the chapter will be a good workout for those in the 1700 range.) Here and throughout the rest of the book, the themes are unannounced. There follows a 38 problem chapter with endgame positions, a mini-chapter with 13 opening traps, a useful if brief (21 problems) chapter on defense, and then it’s on to the tests. (A nice feature: one can consult a hint section, though of course it costs one points to do so.)

I like the format and the material is fine, too, though as mentioned earlier it’s not really suitable for beginners or as a first tactics book. An interesting note about the material: most of the exercises date from 2000-2003, which means that almost all the old standards are absent. That’s a good thing for those of us – most of us who go back to the antediluvian age when books walked the earth – who have already seen the standards. (Of course if one hasn’t, then there’s nothing wrong with getting one of the oldies like the Reinfeld “1001” books.) So based on the material and the book’s structure, I warmly recommend the book for B- and A-players, and I think experts and up can benefit as well, though there are other works out more specifically aimed to that level.

I’ll offer one complaint, an aesthetic one. Not only sections but even chapters start in the middle of a page, immediately after the end of the previous section or chapter. Yuck. I’m sure this saved the publisher a few cents (or rather the customer, who’d have to pay for it), but it seems an unworthy sacrifice of production values to me. White space is not wasted space. It’s easier on the eyes, and helps readers to focus on what is more important in the material and to grasp its structure. (There’s a reason we use spaces between words, after sentences and between paragraphs! wecouldsavemoneybywritingallourbookslikethiswith- - outcapitalizationpunctuationorspacesbutitwouldbe-
- revolting) This reservation aside, I’m happy to recommend the book, especially to players in the 1700-2000 range.*** The volume can be purchased here.

* It’s 567, actually, because number 18 has an A, B, and C puzzle, perhaps because they were added too late to conveniently renumber all the successors.

** Indeed, the objection is seriously misguided, and not followed in any other sport or intellectual discipline, or even by the objectors themselves. Are there any tennis players who don’t specially practice their forehands, even though it’s “unrealistic” to expect hitting dozens of forehands in a row during an actual match? Or imagine math instruction where concepts aren’t drilled in distinct units. Finally, just as no one in a real game tells us that there’s a double attack, there’s also no one telling us that there’s a tactic of any sort. So tactics practice is “unrealistic” by this standard, whether the practice occurs by theme or not.

*** I'm also a fan of the follow-up volume, the ingeniously entitled The Chess Cafe Puzzle Book 2. Despite the tactics connotation of the word "puzzle", that book presents and then tests the reader on various positional motifs. It's available here, and I'll have a longer review in a (the?) forthcoming issue of Chess Horizons.>

<My 60 Least Memorable Games -- by WannaBe

My So Called System -- by WannaBe

Pyrotechnics on Board (a.k.a. How My Opponent Burned Me) -- by WannaBe

The Art of Being Attacked -- by WannaBe

Opening Traps and How to Play Right into Them -- by WannaBe

Think Like a WannaBe -- by WannaBe

Interzonal Tournament, Sousse 1967, Why I Wasn't There -- by WannaBe

Interzonal Tournament, Palma de Mallorca, Why I Was Passed Over Again -- by WannaBe

Match of the Millenium (Why My Second Told Me to Bring a Zippo) -- by WannaBe, co-author, Gary Larsen.> (Reuben Fine)

A bit more seriously, though - an alternative to the usual "Best/Greatest Games of..." type is books that focus on losses and failures, which may turn out to be no less instructive.

In this category, I can think of Edmar Mednis' <How to Beat Bobby Fischer> which focuses, as its title indicates, on Fischer's (61) losses throughout his career (parts of it can be viewed through Google's Book Search - http://books.google.com/books?id=cP...), as well as the more recent <Kasparov - How his Predecessors Misled him about Chess>, where the concept is somewhat more elaborate; it's explained in the following reviews:

http://www.chessvibes.com/reviews/r...

AUHOR [ Harding, Tim]

TYPE [software]

CATEGORY [games database]

PRICE [approx 27.50 euro]

AVAILABILITY [direct from Chess Mail Ltd.]

Tim Harding writes <The Kibitzer> column at ChessCafe.com. He is also a strong CC player. What may not be as well known is he recently completed a PhD thesis on early correspondence chess in Britain and Ireland. Over the years, he has maintained collections of correspondence games, starting with the MegaCorr series, now called UltraCorr. The current version is UltraCorr2 (last games are dated Sept 2008).

One use of a game database is for historical purposes. UltraCorr2 contains over 3000 CC games dated prior to 1900. ChessBase also offers a CC collection. Here is a link to Harding's review of ChessBase's correspondence chess CD: http://www.chessmail.com/xtras/CB-C... where he cites examples of errors in their database. Given Harding's academic credentials, I am inclined to trust his historical accuracy despite being the compiler of a competing product.

Another use of a game database is for opening prep, particularly in correspondence games. One <can> do digging through various sources oneself, downloading from ICCF, IECG, etc., but Harding has done much of the legwork. A number of games have comments, and a few are extensively annotated. CC games often have ideas not explored much in the OTB literature, and in the few months I've had UltraCorr2 I've found several useful ideas in CC games that were not in any of the OTB games at my disposal. UltraCorr2 also contains <pdf> versions of two of Harding's books <Winning at Correspondence Chess> and <64 Great Chess Games>.

As advertised, UltraCorr2 <is> a 900K game database, but the chess historian in Harding has led him to include practically <everything> he could find. What does that mean? Well, some older games are only fragments when that was all that was available. While CC giants like Timmerman, van Oosterman, Umansky, and others are included, not all are high-level games. Some are even short, early-withdrawal games included for completeness. When I do a filter search restricting it to games with both players rated at least 2200, I find around 143K games (that <does> exclude games where a rating is missing for one or both players for whatever reason).

One thing I should note is UltraCorr2 is the game collection only. You will need a database program to use it. The disc contains the games in both ChessBase and Chess Assistant format. Given the size of the database, the full commercial versions of either program would be necessary, not the “light” versions that are free. A free database program that can handle a database of that size is SCID (http://scid.sourceforge.net/). I use it to maintain a database currently running over 2 million games. Toward that end, Harding also includes everything in PGN format, but these are split up into over 100(!) files of 8000 or so games each. These <are> small enough for the “light” versions of CA and CB, I believe, but that greatly reduces the usefulness of the database. It <is> possible to add the PGN files to a database one at a time, but that's a nuisance. Better to combine them into a big PGN file somehow, either with a script of some type or a utility such as GroupPGNfiles (http://www.chess.com/download/view/...). One final caution to SCID users: at least one game is annotated too heavily to load into SCID. It has to be edited out with a text editor before that PGN file will load into SCID (it is in the 84th PGN file, IIRC). One of the SCID programmers plays at one of the CC sites I use and this is apparently due to a 32K size limit per game inherent in SCID that is unlikely to be expanded in the foreseeable future.