ChessDB first looks: Ugly but packed with features

I was just trying freeware alternatives to ChessBase and Chess Assistant - ChessDB.

ChessDB is open source and it is FREE to use.

I downloaded ChessDB from Sourceforge with the 4 piece endgame tablebase option. Installed it.

First impression is that the interface is a little ugly looking like the old WinBoard. But after using it to play thru some games, I find it more than adequate. Perhaps we are spoilt by how good Fritz and  ChessBase good looking boards.

Still, functionality is important and ChessDB is quite impressive in this area.

You can even download games directly from TWIC into ChessDB directly.

With free chess engines like Crafty and Toga, analysing games is not a problem. However you can’t analyse ala Fritz where you leave for hours and come back to see a nicely formatted analysed game.

This is the analysis windows you’ll see in ChessDB:

It can even generate a crosstable of results based on the PGN files (similiar to ChessBase)

It’s unfair to judge this piece of software after only an hour use. So I’ll post a more in depth review later when I get used to this chess database.

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