Fritz and ChessBase (or CB for short) are software products from the same company. Each has a specific focus on what they are used for but have some overlap of functionality. Both programs can be considered specialized interfaces that sit on top of / let you access a chess database. The database is in a proprietary format called ChessBase format. Both programs let you import and export to the standard known as PGN. CB formatted databases are designed to save a very large amount of other game related data. PGN is pretty much just the bare minimum of information, in text form.
Fritz focuses on you, the user, playing against it. It will give you hints and talk to you. It will do a complete analysis of your game and will let you add your own annotations. The full analysis will find almost any tactic that you missed that would have been spotted by a very high rated player. This feature alone should justify to you the purchase and use of the program.
CB is designed to do searches of games based on players, exact positions, tournaments or material. It also will create an opening tree of variations, tell you how successful particular lines have been and will let you run training exercises.
The Fritz Chess Engine.
A chess engine is a program designed to be used by many chess programs to do an evaluation of a position. Think of it as a different brain that can swapped in or out by you the user. Different engines have different playing strengths and often are designed to excel at specific types of evaluations, such as endgames. Fritz tje chess program has as its primary engine, the Fritz engine. CB being primarily a database program come with several engines including the Fritz engine to do evaluations of a position. So as to not undercut their own product lines, CB comes with a slightly older version of the the Fritz Engine. After all, when you purchase CB, you are purchasing the state of the art for chess database operations. For the most part, the skill of the engine doesn't change dramatically too often so having the slightly older version of the Fritz engine doesn't matter much. When Fritz gets updated, it is usually the Fritz interface that uses the engine that is improved. A nice thing though is that if you do purchase the latest version of Fritz, thereby getting the latest Fritz engine, it will automatically install the engine so that it is immediately available and used by CB.
It makes sense for CB owners will purchase Fritz as well.
Fritz will go through the whole game for you an puts in a single alternate line in as a variation for any move it thinks deserves it. You can set the threshold for how much material will be gained by a tactic and if that amount of material will be won, it will put the variation into the game.
CB will not analyze the entire game for you. You must decide what move you want to analyze and then ask CB to analyze it. This is a very significant difference between CB and Fritz. With Fritz, it will find any important tactics you missed. With CB, if you missed a tactic, either yours or your opponents during the game and you don't spot it after entering you game into CB, you the CB user won't know to ask CB to analyze that move to see what might have been. This is why many CB owners purchase Fritz. Their process would generally be to
Comparing the features
The statements about features in the table below is not intended to be precise or exhaustive. In the comparison chart, when a feature is said to exist in one but not the other, the reader should take it with a grain of salt. The measurement is based on the idea that if you had both programs side by side and tried to do the same thing with both, you would clearly want to use one program over the other. Often, one is designed to make the operation easy, the other is not, because it is not the focus of what the program is all about.
The features of relevance for the comparison with CB are as follows:
| Fritz | CB | |
| Can easily play against the computer | Yes | No |
| Can save a game you enter | Yes | Yes |
| Lets you add annotation to a game | Yes | Yes |
| Will show you all possible opening moves that can be made and comments on them. | Yes | No |
| Will go through the entire game once entered and add annotation text. | Yes | No |
| Will add, without user intervention, annotation text and the best line. | Yes | No |
| Will let you play against it in a particular opening over and over (Fritz 8 and higher only) | Yes | No |
| Will take you to the PlayChess.com online play | Yes | Yes |
| Will let you easily email a game to someone (in CB/Frit format called .CBV) | Yes | Yes |
| Will analyze a position and present best multiple lines that you can add into the game score | No | Yes |
| Has extensive and easy to use Database functionality | No | Yes |
| Can easily filter by player, positions, material, tournament, date, color wining, etc. | No | Yes |
| Produces win/loss and other statistics on a collection of games. | No | Yes |
| Instant Opening Tree from Reference Database | No | Yes |
| Will let you instantly group games by Player, Opening, Ending, Tactics, Tournaments, and more ... | No | Yes |
| Will show you the success rate of a given line in the opening tree | No | Yes |
| Will give you an "opening report" showing the main variations, which players us it and the expected sucess. | No | Yes |
| Will look up and include as variations the main line variations of the opening of your game. | No | Yes |
| Lets you find all games in a database with the same position as in your game | No | Yes |
| Lets you find games in order of similarity to your game. | No | Yes |
| Lets you easily select from among other Chess "Engines" to use for alternate game analysis | No | Yes |
| Lets you create playable games for posting on web sites | No | Yes |
Recommendations
If you primarily want to play and have feedback and have a place to store a bunch of games, then you only need Fritz.
If you are trying to put together optimal play based on the thousands of master
level games out there, then CB is the program you want. If this is the case, you may
want to get Fritz for two primary reasons:
A. To have the strongest analysis engine available for
your CB analysis.
B. To have Fritz go through an entire game or games
and do a first pass analysis for you. Then you merely have to play through the Fritz
annotated game and add or delete your own annotations and diagrams.
If your not sure how much you will use the programs, start with Fritz as it is relatively inexpensive and it will find many tactical misses.
A few more notes:
There are many training packages and opening CDs available for CB. I would recommend that you get CB first and start using it before you purchase these specialty items.
Caution: ChessBase Lite has very specific limitations compared to the full version of ChessBase. If you are planning on using Fritz as your primary tool, you will not find CBLite of much benefit. CBLite is designed to let you see the power of the product but its limitations make you yearn for the full version.
To really get a feel for the power of the two programs, I strongly recommend you check out
ELECTRONIC T-NOTES
CHESSBASE USA'S WEEKLY ON-LINE NEWSLETTER
The articles are excellent and really illustrate the features and are a must for any serious users of the Fritz or ChessBase.