ChessBase Reader and Fritz Trainer: What They Are and How They Work

Two names, two kinds of product

The two names in the title are often mixed up, so it helps to separate them. Fritz is a chess program, first sold in November 1991, with an engine written by Frans Morsch and ported to DOS and Windows by Mathias Feist. Fritz Trainer is something else. It is the name of ChessBase’s line of video training courses, which play in the Chess Media format described below. Wikipedia’s article on Fritz does not mention the training line at all, which shows how separate the two things are.

ChessBase Reader is the free program that connects the two worlds for people who own the courses but not the full software.

What the Reader is

ChessBase Reader is free Windows software for opening chess games and positions. ChessBase described the 2017 edition in an article dated 27 October 2017. According to its download page, the Reader opens files in the .cbh, .cbf and .pgn formats and lets the user watch ChessBase training videos. The first of those formats belongs to ChessBase’s own database system, and PGN is the text format common across the internet. The program can also open other database formats, such as the Mega Database, and play through the games on a board.

The Reader can also link to a UCI engine to evaluate positions. The ChessBase article stresses that the program has many functions of ChessBase 14 but not all of them, since the full program has more functionality. The article describes it only for Windows PCs.

How a Fritz Trainer course plays

The courses use a format called Chess Media. A lecture video plays inside the program, and the board next to it stays synchronised with the speaker. The board remains independent and playable, so a viewer can stop the video, try a different move and continue, with many of the program’s tools at hand. ChessBase recommends the Reader for anyone using Fritz Trainer DVDs.

The practical steps are short. The installer is an .msi file, available from the Support area of the ChessBase site under Download, and is installed by double-clicking it. When a DVD-ROM is inserted, the Reader should start by itself. Where it does not, the main menu has an entry called “Show Contents of DVD”.

The 2017 version added the MP4 video format, which the article says works within web pages and on Android and iOS tablets, and it still supports the older Windows Media Video format. ChessBase’s support page makes the same point and adds that the Reader is the tool needed for the Fritz Trainer courses or for reading ChessBase Magazine if the user owns neither ChessBase nor Fritz.

Where the courses are sold

ChessBase GmbH of Hamburg operates the company shop. A 2018 article about the shop’s redesign lists training videos and DVDs searchable by opening, topic and level, with authors including Daniel King and Wesley So, together with software such as ChessBase 14 and Fritz 21, magazine issues and books. The prices on the page are in euros. The company itself is the subject of a separate article, ChessBase: history and products.

What the Reader leaves to the full programs

The pages consulted describe a division of labour. The Reader plays and reads: it opens .cbh, .cbf and .pgn files, plays Chess Media lectures and can link a UCI engine. The full ChessBase and Fritz programs offer more functionality, and ChessBase says so directly about ChessBase 14. The Reader is therefore the lighter tool, meant for people who own courses or magazine issues but not the full software.

For other tools in the same area, the computer chess hub is the place to start, and a note on reading ChessBase CTB, CTO and CTG files covers a related file-format question. The chess history section covers the people behind the early programs.

Questions