Chess Assistant - Search Masterfully
Updated: Jan 23
What can help a chess player more than quick access to key information that will help in every area of the chess art ?
In short, an up-to-date database with chess games and software for its effective use.
You will discover how to find exactly the chess games you want.
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.
Thanks to the possibilities offered by Chess Assistant you can find chess games with three duplicated pawns, four Queens, a pawn attack on h4 field in the dragon variant of Sicilian defense, and hundreds of positions with unusual endings - so called chess fortresses - from the last 5 years for chess players with rating over 2300 Elo.
Is anything... limiting us in this search? Only our imagination.
Let's start with...
To begin with, I suggest opening a large database with at least several hundred thousand games.
In this part of the course, I will be using Hugebase provided with the Chess Assistant program.
On the toolbar, click Search - General...
Instead, you can simply expand the magnifying glass icon on the additional toolbar and click General.
Note especially - few tabs at the top of the Search: window.
Each tab represents a different thematic set of criteria that can be used to search for chess games.
Only those games that meet the criteria you specified will remain in the list of searched games.
The remaining games will not be visible until you complete your search.
Big Tips...
You can download chess games from the Internet by adding them to an existing database; with careful and systematic maintenance, the search will be successful. The downside of this solution is the time-consuming nature of the process.
You can also download ready packets of chess games from various websites and similarly to the above described method - add them to the existing database. The downside of this solution is the necessity to verify many (hundreds, thousands of) chess games for correctly entered data and correct them if necessary. This also makes this process very time consuming.
From his own experience the author of this course once a year buys the chess games database he is interested in or updates it from a reliable source.
When you use Chess Assistant, the natural choice is to get the chess games database from this producer.
This way you will get an up-to-date database maintained in a correct, meticulous and professional way, which is 100% compatible with the software you use.
One of the key reasons to have access to a large, very well maintained chess database is to be able to search every field in the Search: window. If the database is properly maintained and updated, you will be able to get reasonable results.
Back to window with Search:. Here's what you'll find in the tabs:
Header
Search for players, tournaments, years, Elo ratings, etc.
Position and material
Search for positional fragments, material distribution.
Advanced Material search in which the material restrictions are set.
Manoeuvres
Search for manoeuvres.
All of these sections are connected with a logical "and". This means that if a number of criteria are defined all of them must be fulfilled in order for a game to be retrieved.
Ok, so let's go ahead and search by setting many different criteria.
Search Masterfully, example 1.
We are interested in chess games that meet the following conditions:
White Elo between 1900 and 2100