TWIC vs live update for ChessBase databases?

Technical questions regarding Openings, Middlegames, Endings etc.
User avatar
John Upham
Posts: 7179
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2007 10:29 am
Location: Cove, Hampshire, England.

TWIC vs live update for ChessBase databases?

Post by John Upham » Mon Aug 10, 2009 1:47 pm

ChessBase 10 sports a new feature allowing live updates from a ChessBase server.

Has anyone compared the games available via this service with the ones available from the excellent TWIC service for a similar period?

Is one a sub-set of the other or is the Venn relationship more of an intersection?

This is "Geeky Question of the Day" for Monday August 10th, 2009. :D
British Chess News : britishchessnews.com
Twitter: @BritishChess
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/britishchess :D

User avatar
John Saunders
Posts: 1717
Joined: Thu Apr 19, 2007 3:10 pm
Location: Kingston-upon-Thames

Re: TWIC vs live update for ChessBase databases?

Post by John Saunders » Tue Aug 11, 2009 12:02 pm

The long-ish silence since the original post was made perhaps indicates that forum users don't use the latest CB facilities. Personally I still use ChessBase 7 for the great majority of my database work because I learnt to use it many years ago, know it well and find it does 95% of the things which I need a database for. I found CB 8 very disappointing when it came out - various little tweaks which had been added to CB 7 at the behest of knowledgeable people had seemingly disappeared overnight in a misguided quest for 'Windows compatibility'. It felt like using a typewriter on which someone had rearranged the keys. Though things improved markedly with CB 9 (which I sometimes use for connection to playchess.com to watch live games or to create diagrams for webpages), the additional fancy features in 9 and 10 have never managed to lure me away from my beloved CB 7. I believe that quite a number of other chess writers, publishers and editors still use CB 7. That said, I can understand why people who need a database as active players (rather than writers/publishers) probably prefer the latest version.

As regards downloading from TWIC/ChessBase: I have stuck to the old method of downloading a zip file from TWIC and manually adding games to my database. I think it is akin to the way it works with cameras - those who learnt to handle a camera when everything had to be set manually prefer the extra control they get from doing it this way, whereas those who are used to modern automation tend to set a camera to 'auto' for everything.
Personal Twitter @johnchess
Britbase https://www.britbase.info
(I prefer email to PM - contact me via this link - https://www.saund.org.uk/email.html)

User avatar
Ben Purton
Posts: 1631
Joined: Tue Apr 29, 2008 5:53 am
Location: Berks

Re: TWIC vs live update for ChessBase databases?

Post by Ben Purton » Tue Aug 11, 2009 12:05 pm

To be honest, the Chessbase 10 updates from .de thingy and is no where near as extensive as TWIC and takes ages for them to get games up from.

Ben
I love sleep, I need 8 hours a day and about 10 at night - Bill Hicks
I would die happy if I beat Wood Green in the Eastman Cup final - Richmond LL captain.
Hating the Yankees since 2002. Hating the Jets since 2001.