Chessbase10 problem : read before you buy.

[Peter Rhodes]

I have owned Chessbase 10 for around 6 months now.

There has been an issue which until now appeared to be sporadic and random, and which I put down to "user error".

The issue is this : everynow and then I open one of my games only to a variation and annotation completely gone.

I know they have been removed because the variation is just empty. For example :
12.g5 hxg5 13.Bxg5 Qxc5
[]
14.Be2

In this example, the variation and annotation are completely gone.

The annoyance is not simply the lost time and effort and the fact that I have no idea what I have lost, but that I often try to capture my thoughts directly after a game and if these are lost - it is usually impossible to ever recreate them


Up until now, I assumed I was doing something wrong, my best guess is that maybe there was an obscure hotkey set for "delete annotation" that I might have accidentally pressed whilst viewing and closing a game.

However, after some "google searching" I have found a thread where other users report the same problem and the OP of the thread actually manages to re-create the problem. ( http://www.chesspub.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/Y ... 1254775306 )

Personally I consider this pretty unacceptable, it's a combination of poor coding and poor testing - and it's impact is pretty significant.

I've emailed Steffen at chessbase. I'll keep the forum updated with the results.

[John Hickman]

I frequent the ChessPub.com forum and the threads there put me off upgrading to CB10. I'm sticking with CB9 until I get further assurance, as at the moment, the benefits don't seem to outwiegh the risks in my mind

[Adam Raoof]

According to the ChessBase guru at Chess and Bridge, there is nothing wrong with CB10 that cannot be corrected by applying the software patch freely available on the site....

[Ian Thompson]

Personally I consider this pretty unacceptable, it's a combination of poor coding and poor testing - and it's impact is pretty significant.

I've emailed Steffen at chessbase. I'll keep the forum updated with the results.

I think you have to accept that software will always have bugs in it. What's unacceptable is that they haven't fixed this fault at least 8 months after they knew about it. I sent them a sample database exhibiting this fault on 9 June 2009. I find it occurs when I've analysed a whole game using an engine. The response I got from from ChessBase was "I`ll contact our developer team and keep you informed." I'm still waiting to be informed.

[Ian Thompson]

According to the ChessBase guru at Chess and Bridge, there is nothing wrong with CB10 that cannot be corrected by applying the software patch freely available on the site....

Time for Chess and Bridge to get themselves a new guru then ...

[Peter Rhodes]

According to the ChessBase guru at Chess and Bridge, there is nothing wrong with CB10 that cannot be corrected by applying the software patch freely available on the site....

Hi Adam,

thanks for the info but my I am pretty sure my version is current.

In fact, I upgraded from the CB magazine shortly before December. That's another story in itself, because when I did that - all the Chess Figurine fonts stopped working. Although to be fair to chessbase - my laptop is running Vista and it wouldn't suprise me if porting any development from XP to Vista is a significantly horrid process.

Anyways, just to be sure I just tried "Help-> Online Upgrade" and after a few moments, CB10 came back with "Connecting" and then "Program is up-to-date".

In fact, it may have been the update itself that caused the problems. MilenPetrov, the author of the thread on the ChessPub forums indicates that the problem only occurs after installing CB10 Service Pack 2. I can't confirm this one way or another as I don't have the time or inclination for a complete re-install, who knows I might lose all my databases !!

[Ian Thompson]

thanks for the info but my I am pretty sure my version is current.

The problem is still present in Service Pack 3, dated 11 November 2009 in Help, About ...

Anyways, just to be sure I just tried "Help-> Online Upgrade" and after a few moments, CB10 came back with "Connecting" and then "Program is up-to-date".

I think you'll find this function doesn't work, either that or the online upgrade version is not kept in sync with the updates available from ChessBase magazines. (It told me my Service Pack 2 version was up-to-date at least 2 months after Service Pack 3 had been released.)

[Peter Rhodes]

Thanks Ian,

do you think that the bug is limited to annotations with "null moves" , games in which the user runs an analysis engine on the game up to an including the last move, both, or do you think there are further scenarios which will cause this problem.

So far I've heard different things and it would be nice to at least be sure of which CB10 features to refrain from whilst we await a bugfix.

[Ian Thompson]

do you think that the bug is limited to annotations with "null moves" , games in which the user runs an analysis engine on the game up to an including the last move, both, or do you think there are further scenarios which will cause this problem

I've only seen it recently in games automatically annotated by engines (which could mean the problem lies in the engine rather than ChessBase). I've seen it in the past in games with huge numbers of variations, where a lot of annotated games have been merged into one (but not since I started using ChessBase 10). I've never seen it in games I've entered myself.

[James Coleman]

The Version Date on my CB 10 (in Help/About Chessbase 10) is Jan 21st 2010.I don't know if they have addressed Peter's problem in the latest update...

[Peter Rhodes]

which could mean the problem lies in the engine rather than ChessBase

That's an interesting angle but I'm pretty sure it's Chessbase10 itself - the guy over at the chesspub forum can recreate the issue directly in CB10 with no engine involved.

[Ian Thompson]

The Version Date on my CB 10 (in Help/About Chessbase 10) is Jan 21st 2010.I don't know if they have addressed Peter's problem in the latest update...

... and mine continues to tell me that my Service Pack 3, dated 11 November 2009 is up-to-date. Did you get your upgrade through an Online Upgrade or some other way?

[James Coleman]

I downloaded it from here: http://www.fritzserver.org/updates/cbm/c10.exe

My previous out of date version had also been claiming that it was up to date as well.

[Nick Murphy]

According to the ChessBase guru at Chess and Bridge, there is nothing wrong with CB10 that cannot be corrected by applying the software patch freely available on the site....

Time for Chess and Bridge to get themselves a new guru then ...

Here here! He doesn't know what he's talking about...

Check out JC's patch link - should take you to 21st Jan 2010.

If you're still having problems, let us know.

[Ian Thompson]

The Version Date on my CB 10 (in Help/About Chessbase 10) is Jan 21st 2010.I don't know if they have addressed Peter's problem in the latest update...

Thanks for this link. I've installed it and it hasn't fixed the problem in the sample database I sent ChessBase last June.