Chess Academy software

Since 1991, our Chess Academy team, led by Witali Braslawski, has played a decisive role in shaping developments in the gaming software market (in particular as chess software for the world-famous Chess Academy series). Always at the cutting edge, we see the huge progress in this field as a real challenge for our work and meet it with several Chess Academy products that can inspire beginners, club players, advanced players, and chess professionals alike.

Chess Academy programs are available on the chess software market in 8 languages (German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish and Russian).

Chess Academy Professor

Chess Academy software offers chess players a unique opportunity to increase their playing strength in a simple and particularly fast way. The program combines the special possibilities of the computer with effective learning and training methods. The user is guided through the individual lessons and must actively participate. The most instructive games and game fragments from top players have been used to illustrate their strategy and tactics. Numerous combinatorial possibilities, calculating variations, positional subtleties, working out the smallest advantages, and exploiting them are all dealt with in detail and presented perfectly.

Whether it is a question of data application or management, search options, entering new games, analysis, computer chess, or simply perfect learning and training: the Chess Academy programs provide an interesting, efficient, intuitive, and professional solution for every area of application.

The Chess Academy software series includes professional chess databases and database management systems, teaching and training programs, and playing programs with huge engine books from the opening, middlegame, and endgame. Our programs help you to learn and analyze chess to achieve better game results.

Foreword by the author and project manager of the Chess Academy program

Dear chess friends!

This introduction gives you an overview of the integrated working environment of the Chess Academy 7 Office Deluxe program. It will help you to use this product immediately and show you where you can find more information about the Chess Academy.

We are pleased to present the new Chess Academy 7 Office Deluxe program.

Chess Academy 7 is the latest version of the chess playing, teaching, and database program for Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 95/98/Me and Windows NT4x/2000/XP, which has been specially developed to meet the needs of chess players of all levels.

The program was developed by Witali Braslawski (founder and head manager of the Chess Academy Software and Book Publishing House, Düsseldorf, Germany), in cooperation with Intelinvest Co. Ltd, Informator Publishing House, and well-known top chess players such as Vasily Ivanchuk, Iosif Dorfman, Oleg Romanishin, Adrian Mikhalchishin, Arshak Petrosian and other grandmasters and international masters.

The program combines the special possibilities of the computer with effective learning and training methods. These were all developed by Witali Braslawski and implemented and extensively tested between 1987 and 2024.

Chess Academy consists of several extremely productive tools for learning and training. These tools use the latest programming technologies and perfect algorithms. Chess Academy thus offers a complete system to increase the fun of chess and make your chess training much more effective.

Chess Academy offers chess players a way to increase their playing strength easily and quickly. The Chess Academy user is guided through the individual lessons and must actively participate. All tutor examples are of course carefully selected and fully annotated by top players and their coaches. The most instructive games by top players have been used to illustrate their strategy and tactics. Combinatorial possibilities, calculating variations, positional subtleties, working out the smallest advantages, and exploiting them are all covered in detail.

Chess Academy contains a huge database of chess games (approx. 2,100,000 games are included in the Chess Academy 7 Office Deluxe program as a professional chess database) and carefully selected and annotated learning examples on various topics and for different levels of play.

The learning and training modules available in the Chess Academy program depend on the Chess Academy edition used (available either as a Starter, Professional, or Exclusive package).

The opening databases and learning and training libraries (optional) are also available for optimal opening preparation.

The program offers a whole range of useful tools that are available at any time. Your entries and settings are of course all displayed and thus allow you to easily work with the chess windows, the game lists, and all other elements. It is also up to you whether you prefer to use the mouse or the keyboard. Both options are available.

You can also change the colors, the size of the chessboard, the communication language of the program, the set of pieces, and many other settings according to your wishes.

The program shows a structured view of all components of the learning library and their relationships. It is displayed in the structure window at the bottom left of the library browser. All topics/subtopics/examples (games) in the learning library editor are displayed as nodes in the left-hand project window. Below this, all examples for the selected topic/sub-topic are displayed as a list in the top right-hand window, where you can select a game (click once) or execute the learning example immediately (double-click). The starting position of the game is immediately displayed in the bottom right-hand window.

As several testers and chess experts report, hardly any other working environment offers you the opportunity to use the variety of features of the chess program (as a database system, chess database, tutorial, and training program with tutorial modules, playing program with integrated chess engines, opening books and middle game book for chess engines – all in one program) as efficiently as Chess Academy.

To make your work easier, the program displays context-sensitive online help. This is direct information about the Chess Academy user interface from which you have called the help.

You already have a basic knowledge of chess, perhaps you have even achieved your first successes. But of course, you want more… You need a solid theoretical basis, carefully selected teaching examples and lessons, a user-friendly program interface, and a modern design. And all this at the same time, of course! You have decided to get serious about chess, but you are not yet a grandmaster? Now you finally have the chance to change that: You are now working with the professional Chess Academy database, learning and playing program in its current program version 7!

Have fun learning and practicing!

Witali Braslawski

Dipl. Sportl. (SU) / Chess coach, Mag. Pedagogy
Author and project manager of the Chess Academy program
Owner and head manager of the Chess Academy software and book publishing house
Owner and head manager of Witalex Webdesign Marketing and Advertising Agency

Chess Academy 7 OfficeDeluxe: The most important innovations at a glance

  • New installation program with new interface
  • The new and extended Chess Academy help system in HTML-Help format
  • The improved format of the tutorial program, now with multimedia support, graphical comments, quiz options, and with advanced settings.
  • Built-in editor of tutorial libraries is included with the program: You can create or edit your learning libraries conveniently and quickly – happy sharing of examples is now child’s play.
  • It is possible to create your own middle game books for Chess Academy engine.
  • Creation of own opening databases in the extended Chess Academy database format is possible.
  • Conversion of tutorial examples to PGN format is possible.
  • New version of the Chess Academy chess database, the database has been updated and completely re-edited.
  • The database program and the tutorial program have been further improved and functionally extended, and the Chess Academy playing program also offers greatly expanded opening and middlegame books. Two huge Chess Academy opening books and a greatly expanded middlegame book are included: A special gambit book (with about 2,255,000 positions, of which about 38,000 are rated and contain ratings from experts), a powerful and greatly expanded ChampionBook (with about 10,500,000 positions (!), of which about 750,000 are rated and contain expert ratings) and a unique middlegame book, generated from about 14,000,000 rated middlegame and endgame positions.
  • A built-in opening book editor has been enhanced to give you full control over the opening books. Not only can you easily create your own books and use them comfortably when working with the game program, but you can even link your own user books to the original Chess Academy book, which is very important for training purposes.
  • The speed of the program has increased once again, e.g. variation calculation in the Chess Academy engine, all search and sorting functions of the database program. The speed of the Chess Academy chess engine has been significantly increased.
  • Chess Academy 7.0 offers professional support for more than 150 UCI and WinBoard engines that can run under the Chess Academy interface. Chess Academy 7.0 includes configuration files to register multiple engines. Current (as well as previous) versions of these engines have been pre-tested under the Chess Academy interface, but are not part of the Chess Academy program and are only included as free add-ons (courtesy of their respective authors) to Chess Academy 7. Please note: We support, but assume no liability for such add-on components, nor do the respective engine authors guarantee that corresponding engines and corresponding (if available) engine books (previous, current as well as future versions) can run smoothly and error-free under the Chess Academy interface.
  • The print and print preview functions have been improved once again.
  • The program now offers 8 languages to choose from: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish and Russian.
  • Conversion to HTML format has been improved. Clipboard management has also been greatly enhanced.
  • Chess Academy database utilities are also extended or newly developed, such as the game header editor (now not only for the whole database but also for a single game) as well as the new backup and restore options for quick compression/decompression of game sets, which allows free and easy exchange of chess games (also with comments).
  • The game program now includes such features as auto-analysis mode, trainer option, direct hint option (hints when a possible mistake was made during a move), unlimited search depth, etc.
  • Support of Nalimov endgame tablebases (3-4-5-6 pieces). Overall, the program has become much more “intelligent”: The learning program now stores extended information on individual tutor examples. The program remembers examples that have already been worked through and no longer displays them in the list if desired.
  • Chess Academy 7.0 not only comes with its own Chess Academy playing program (an improved version compared to Chess Academy 6) but also with LGoliath 3, Crafty, Arasan, etc. (complete list is included separately as ENGINES.TXT file). Chess Academy 7.0 also supports (through the configuration files) such Millennium Chess System Engines as Shredder 3, WChess 2000, and Zarkov 5. These programs are not included with the Chess Academy program and can be purchased separately from specialist dealers.

How was the previous version rated by experts?

In his test report (published in ChessBits magazine issues 11/2001 and 12/2001), an experienced computer chess expert Martin Schubert discussed the Chess Academy Office program in detail and rated it accordingly.

He writes: “One of the decisive strengths of Chess Academy is its enormous variety, especially the learning modules, and engines”. A program as versatile as Chess Academy offers the user excellent help, implements many good ideas, and also shows very stable running behavior. Chess Academy also has many advantages over the established competition in the database area, especially in terms of search speed and excellent search options. Our service was also described as “exemplary”.

Program comparison at CSS (Computer Chess and Games)

In this issue, you will also find a test report with a program comparison: who plays chess better? Hundreds of programs (including practically all the top programs that are commercially available) were extensively tested (WM2002 test). Our program Chess Academy 6 Office (incl. middle game book) shares first place in the endgame category with the well-known chess program Fritz.

Further test reports and press reviews:

Chess expert Wolfgang Battig in Rochade Europa Magazin 3/2001: Price-performance ratio “excellent”

Publisher Werner Rätz in Schach Markt Magazin 3/2001: Price-performance ratio “excellent”

Chess expert Frank Quisinsky in the Gambitsoft software catalog 12/2000: Price-performance ratio “very good”.