Anybody know the differences between Chessbase 11 and Chessbase Light?
I tried the google and all that came up was the obvious: Chessbase 11 comes with a database and depending on the “package” you get more or less stuff, and Chessbase Light has access to an online 5+ million game database [Which Chessabase 11 has access also to], but no main database or any other extras). And price is obviously a lot lower for Chessb ase Light
Any functional differences?
You can’t save games in CB Light. I am sure there are other limitations, but that one is the biggie.
Wow. I know you can’t save a game in the free version of Chessbase Light, but didn’t know it was not available in the paid version.
He must have been referring to the free version. I upgraded to Chessbase Light Premium, and you can save games with it. It’s one of the main reasons I upgraded.
I haven’t used Chessbase 11, so I can’t say how they compare, other than the databases you get with Chessbase 11. It always seemed very expensive to me, and the online database you can access through Chessbase Light has plenty of games.
Jim
i hate to build off this post, but what do you mean save games?
Once you import a game into Chessbase Light, manually enter a game, or change a game (aka, add annotations and/or variations), in the free version, the “save database” is greyed out. I’m glad to hear in the paid version, its not greyed out.
In Chessbase Light, you can enter games manually, and you can also download games from the online database. I sometimes make local copies of the games, so I can analyze the games using Fritz. There is a "Save game as … " function for this.
You can also open a database of games, add some annotations to the games and save the updated games to the database.
Jim
For much less than the cost of CB11, you can upgrade to CB Light Premium and have full functionality that will meet most any serious chess player’s needs. You can then buy the Big or Mega databases and run them with CBLP. In fact you can do that with any of the Fritz programs, as I understand it. CB11 is wonderful but seriously overpriced. You might want to look at Chess Assistant 11 which costs much less and is quite a nifty program. If you were in Russia or Eastern Europe, that would be the recommended choice of most people. You also get forever free access to CA’s chess playing site where you can make comments and such without having to raise your level to Bishop or better to enter certain areas. My impression also is that CA has a more active tournament scene than ChessBase’s Playchess.
Correct. I meant the free version of CB Light.
The reason I was curious, is that someone in another thread was asking about what chess software to buy for research, and one of the responders said to get Chessbase 11 and not Chessbase Light, and that piqued my curiosity as to exactly what you’re getting with the full version of Chessbase over the light version.
Clearly, Chessbass 11 (starter package) is being sold as a bundle with a large database and at least 3 (bi monthly) issues is Chessbase Magazine, so if you deduct the cost of the Big Database + 3 issues of Chessbase Magazine it comes out to nearly the same base price as Chessbase Light (maybe about $20 more? I didn’t use a calculator).
Chessbase doesn’t exactly advertize the light version… the last version to come out was in 2009 it looks. Maybe they’re trying to distance themselves from that. It wouldn’t suprise me if a LOT of people bought the light version over the more expensive Chessbase 11.
It would really seem the market is primed for having Chessbase at a lower price, and try to make up for it with added value stuff like databases and chessbase magazine/extra.
Chess Assistant comes with a database of over 4 million games (Hugebase), a smaller heavily annotated base (Guru), and even more select base (Elite), Rybka 4 and Comprehensive Chess Openings. This is all for <$90. Check out the complete package here chessok.com/?page_id=19894
I think there are old versions of CB Light that have limited database functionality. (Something like 8092 games?) I may be wrong, but I thought one could write to those older versions. Very helpful for students wanting to improve.
ChessBase is indeed seriously overpriced. However, once one bites the (ridiculous overpayment) bullet once, the upgrades are reasonably priced. I think the MegaBase upgrades (from 2010 to 2011, for example) are particularly reasonable given the high quality of the annotations.
That’s data. I haven’t felt a compelling need to upgrade from CB 10 to CB 11.
Nope, been years, but when chessbase light "free first came out, I immediately downloaded and installed it on my computer. (My last computer, that is).
Unless there was some beta versions in the wild, and far as I can tell, they’ve always had “save database” greyed out, and a limit to the first 30,000 entries of a database shown.
-Even with that, and some other hobbled stuff in the program, Chessbase Light free version was still fairly usable… there’s a ton of chess databases on the internet with limit under the 30,000. (Moslty ones devoted to a specific opening, or tournaments.)
I have to admit, and this is a big reason I’d like to get Chessbase 11 (and Chessbase Light would do it also) is that its a pain in the behind to constantly open up different databases when browsing openings. 
I think you may not have gone back far enough. There is a very old version of Chessbase Light that does allow one to create a database and save games in it. I used this software in May, 2010, at a tournament that offered game prizes. I had an old beater of a laptop (running Windows XP) with me. I remembered having seen that version of Chessbase Light before, so I did a Google search for it. I actually found the old version, downloaded it, installed it, and made it available for players to enter games.
It’s old enough that (I believe) it is a 16-bit Windows application. The user interface looks like very old Windows (dating back to Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.1, before Windows 95 – anyone remember File Manager and Program Manager?). It had a limitation of 8,000 games in a database. It was fun to watch players who knew the modern Chessbase user interface try to make sense of it. (I made the mistake of going out for a long, relaxing dinner during the last round without making sure one of the TDs knew how to use it. I came back from dinner to face some seriously confused players.)
I’m sorry, I don’t have the link for the download now.
I didn’t know they had a chessbase light going back that far. I guess it was never a priority until they made a new version a few years ago that they heavily advertized, and even had a series of articles about how to get the most out of it.
I pretty much assumed that was the first version of chessbase light. Maybe its because their current website wasn’t launched until 2001.