Chess Assistant - Efficient work with a chess database
Updated: Jan 23
Chess databases are essentially tools for working with lots of data. Chess Assistant is essentially a tool for storing, organizing, analyzing, sharing, chunking, ..., etc. data - that is, chess games in many different ways.
This part of the course is prepared in Chess Assistant version 20 in such a way that the vast majority of this program's capabilities can be used in previous versions.
I'll show you how to organize your work and access to data in Chess Assistant well.
Let's start with...
After launching, Chess Assistant welcomes us with a panel with open databases (on the left side of the screen) and a window named Games with a list of chess games (on the right side).
Click to enlarge (works with any image)
To switch from one view to another, you can make a change by selecting Window on the toolbar and clicking on one of the available options.
For example, when you click Tile, the view will look like this:
By selecting Tools from the toolbar and then View options...
A new window will open:
Among the very many possible options, we can, for example, change the appearance of the chessboard or enable the Game progress window, etc.
After clicking on the OK button, we will see the changes effect.
According to information in the Chess Assistant help file: The Game progress section in the bottom part of the window presents a graph that shows the changing evaluation, allowing one to easily locate blunders. When we click on a move in the graph, it will appear on the chessboard and the tree will switch to this position. The cursor in notation will also jump to this move.
After clicking on the button located in the upper right corner of the chessboard:
More personalization options are appearing (Enlarge board, Shrink board, Pieces, etc.)
The Chess Assistant main screen can be customized to your preference by choosing from a variety of options.
Create a new database
Go to the toolbar and click Base - New...
In the file window that appears, select the directory in which the database will rest, give it a name, and then press create new.
A new window named Create new base will appear.
Especially if you will be using multiple chess databases, you will probably want to give the chess databases an adequate comment. To do this, you can write your text in comment field.
By default, Chess Assistant takes the library from the last base you worked with. To copy a library from another base, click Browse and select a base in the Select base dialog box. To clear the selection and create a new library, select Clear.
If you want to create a new database in CA 5 (Chess Assistant 5) format, select the appropriate check box.
When finished, press Finish and the name of the new base will appear in the object bar.
When creating a new chess database, we can choose the format in which this new chess database will be created.
The default Chess Assistant database format is *.CDP. I recommend this format for creating and using chess databases because it allows the fastest work while maintaining optimal size.
Other chess database formats used are:
*.PGN (Portable Game Notation) is a non-proprietary database format that is used by almost all chess applications.
*.EPD (Extended Position Description) describes a chess position.
Folders
The folders panel will always contain open / previously created chess databases.
At the bottom of the folder tree is a newly created database named New Database
The Folders panel can be hidden or shown by clicking on the icon Show panel with opened bases (marked with a red border)
Open chess database.
Clicking on the List icon -> displays a list of all the chess games in selected database (Hugebase).
Some of these databases are small, but many are large. Some of them may even contain millions of games (Hugebase).
If you want to open chess databases that are not in the Chess Assistant Panel, then select Base on the toolbar and click Open...
To open a database, you can (like in windows explorer) highlight it (single click) and press the enter key.
Delete a chess database
To delete a chess database, go to Base on the toolbar and click Delete...
In the new window called Select base to remove, choose the chess base and click on the Open button.
