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What's new in V3.0

 

Open ZIP files without need for unzipping them before

Using ChessVU you can access CBF/CBI archives files without unzipping them. ChessVU unzips and opens the selected CBF/CBI files, whenever needed. This new feature saves disk space and makes the chess files archive on your PC much cleaner.

 

Merge databases function

ChessVU allows fast merging of CBF/CBI or PGN files into a single file, by a new function (Merge databases). This is faster than exporting games.

 

Improved Mark doubles function

Mark doubles function has been improved to take into account two typical situations often appearing, for instance, in TWIC files:
- 2 games differ only for 1 or 2 half-moves (this often happens in the last moves of the game, where a second game edition shows e.g. that was the Bishop rather than the King to take a pawn); in this case the only reasonable criterium is to keep the second edition (to allow for this, the games must be in the original sequence)
- 2 games differ because a second edition reports more moves, that is one game is a subset of the other; in this case, of course, the longer game is kept
 

Improved Search Header function

It now also allows to consider marked/unmarked games. In this way you can mix the Clipboard functions with the Search functions.

 

Go to next source (right click on ListView)

This function is useful to go from one Tournament to the next. Of course the database must have been sorted by source (by clicking on the Source column header), for this function to take sense.
 

Go to next opening (right click on ListView)

This function is useful to go from one Opening code to the next. Of course the database must have been sorted by opening code (by clicking on the ECO code column header), for this function to take sense.
 

Definable main line, comments, variants text colors

Variant lines text colors can now be defined up to level 6.
 

PGN files loading faster

The main PGN problem is not the redundancy (zip libraries overcome this easily), yet (in my opinion) its sequential nature. If you want to access a game in a 1 million games file you have to invent smart caching or other techniques, and it's not so fast. CBF (using CBI) at least offers direct and fast access. ChessVU is now faster in loading large PGN archives.

 

Several PGN moves formats accepted

A problem of PGN is that a viewer has to assume some "human" compatibility. For instance the viewer has to understand a sequence like 1.e4 e6 2.d4 Bb4 3.Nd2 Nf6 4.Nf3, even though it is not in the standard format (1.e2-e4 etc.). It's easy to see that it is not direct to know which knight is going to f3... A human, would never put the King under check, so no need to write Ngf3 or Ng1-f3...

ChessVU tries to solve this kind of problems, and to detect all types of move ambiguity.

A second aspect to consider is the PGN standard for annotations, like $ 1 etc. They are not "friendly" (so where is the advantage of being an ASCII format ?) and the list is annoying, the Informant conventions are much better, and CBF supports them (even with some complexity). ChessVU maps the annotations to the Informant conventions, and allows  a very comfortable production of PGN files.

 

 

What's new in V2.0

Book sought during engine analysis

If the Book is in use, book moves will not be evaluated, and ChessVU will show the Book moves after the evaluation of a move different from the Book ones.

 

Engine analysis on ICS Client position (log file)

ChessVU can be used together with ICS Clients like SLICS/Chessbd or Chess Client, that create a logfile. ChessVU analyses the logfile and updates the position according to the last received position from ICS Server. The position can thus be processed by UCI chess engines.

 You must connect to the ICS Server, and activate the file logging on the Client. The logfile name must be typed in the Options window (Engine Options: Internet Chess Server Logfile), as complete path (e.g.: C:\Programs\chessbd\icsraw.log) (it is saved for next program run). 

To start ChessVU replicating the ICS position you have to activate on the Menu the function File: Analyse ICS logfile.

 

ECO and player statistics window

You can ask for statistics about a player. If ELO scores are present, they are displayed in a diagram (bottom right in the Main window).

 All the games in the current file are counted, and a window appears, with colourful bar diagrams.

 You can get, for each Informant code “hundred” (one of the A00-99 to E00-99 “opening books”), statistics about the played games and the player score for each opening code. The values are also shown in a drop down list, that can be sorted either by opening code or by number of games.

 You can click on the graph, and get the statistics of each code.

 Buttons Previous/Next allow moving inside the statistics, while button Score/Games allows changing the displayed statistics.

 You can rotate the graph by first selecting the graph (click just outside the graph axis), and then dragging the mouse with CTRL pressed.

You can also ask for statistics about an opening. The difference is that statistics about the played games and the white score for each opening code are shown.

 

Main line analysis shows difference between engine move and text (in red if blunder)

In the Main line analysis mode the engine evaluation is always inserted as a comment <±XX.XX>, where 1.00 is the value of a pawn; the evaluation is absolute (positive = white advantage; negative = black advantage).

ChessVU will also compare the played move (in the text) with the engine best move; if different, the engine move will be shown in the comment. If the engine evaluation of the best move differs from the engine evaluation of the played move for more than a given value, the move is shown in red. The threshold can be set by Engine Options: Analysis threshold, default = 0.3.

The analysis time per move, in seconds, can be set by Engine Options: Analysis time.

 

Tournament Cross Table; clicking on the table, the game is loaded

This function is available for CBF chess data bases. It must be activated on the current game in the list view. ChessVU will look for all the games before and after the current game that have the same Source. Therefore, the data base should be sorted by Source for the function to be effective.

 ChessVU analyses the Source field of each game, and creates a Tournament Table. For each player in the Tournament all the games are considered, and the score is computed. The table is sorted by player score, and the columns are ordered either by Round number (for Swiss type tournaments) or by opponent number (for round robin tournaments).

 Each cell shows the score of the player, the opponent number and the player colour. The score column also shows the Sonneborg-Berger score, in case of ex-equo.

 ChessVU automatically detects the type of Tournament (Swiss, Round Robin single, Round Robin double etc.) (try for example NY1927.cbf: not all the games have the round number, but ChessVU is still able to extract the Round Robin double Table) .

 The Table is built based on player names. Because sometime there can be slight variations how the name is stored in the game, due to foreign characters (e.g. Chigorin = Tchigorin, Kortschnoj = Kortchnoi etc.), it is possible to relax the test criteria, by Options: General: Consider differences in player name spelling). By setting this option, the Table creation is slower, but more accurate (try for example NY1924.cbf: not all the games have the correct player spelling, but ChessVU is still able to extract the Table) .

 If you click on the Table, the corresponding game is loaded.

 

Opening Table; clicking on the table, the position is loaded

ChessVU can create very useful opening tables. The procedure to create an opening table is the following: 

 A window appears, where all the book lines are organised in a Table, from the most used to the least used one.

 An interesting feature, that you can easily verify, is that ChessVU recognizes moves inversions, and shows only once a position in the Table that can be reached with several move sequences.

 If you click on the Table, the corresponding position is loaded on the board, and you can browse it. From the browse window you can load the games corresponding to the selected position.

 

Version 2.0 is faster, and offers a lot of other improvements, like:

and many other errors removed...

 

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