Chess Assistant 6.0

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Chess Assistant 6 Review

03/19/01

Convekta (a company based in the UK and Russia) recently released a new version of Chess Assistant. For those that are not aware, Chess Assistant has been around for some years, and has always been known for it's fast operation, and focus on unique functionality (for example, their many chess tree features). Version 5.1 came out last year, and it has been very popular. I have to admit at being amazed at the huge progress that was made from version 4. Now version 6 is out, and I was wondering how much more functionality could be added to the program.

It turns out that the answer was "quite a bit". Just about every functional area in CA has been improved and upgraded. There are large improvements to the areas of usability, engine analysis functions, search features, and updates to the included games and opening theory databases. There are also several totally new things that you can do with the program. For instance, there is now a new ICC (Internet Chess Club) interface, which has some unique features not found anywhere else. There is a comprehensive test suite mode for all the techies and engine testers. The program also supports multimedia now, along with something called folders/classifiers, which are similar to the themes used in Chessbase software. Generally speaking, the program has a number of new features for electronic publishing of chess material, be it distributed over the web, or via other electronic/paper means.

Unfortunately, this review will only scratch the surface of the new features and changes to the program. Before I get bogged down in all the details, I think I can boil it down to the following statement:

Existing users should upgrade. Serious players should take a look at this program, I think they will find that they will not be disappointed. The only group of people that I would not recommend this program to are people that are just learning to play the game; because I think they may be a bit overwhelmed.

Ok, I'll try and start with an extremely brief summary of what CA 6 can do. I'll then follow with a discussion of some of the totally new functions, and move on to the improved ones.

Overview of CA 6 Basic Functions

Simply put, Chess Assistant 6 is a tool for analyzing games (your own, or others), managing chess games and databases, playing chess on the ICC, viewing electronic texts in Chess Assistant format, or playing chess against the computer.

For game analysis, Chess Assistant provides various chess trees for opening study. These trees provide statistical information, GM/IM evaluations, and computer assessments of much of the opening phase of the game. In addition to this, Chess Assistant also has an electronic ECO of sorts that contains GM and IM analysis. You can use these tools manually, or you can rely on the built in Chess Assistant tools that will automatically comment the opening phase of the game for you, using all the above sources of information (!).

For middlegame study, the program provides analysis by a wide variety of chess engines, including Tiger and Gambit Tiger, both of which are incredibly strong. You can also use the current microcomputer world champion program Shredder, although you have to get Shredder separately. Furthermore, there are a host of different analysis modes that the program supports, including automatic blunder checking, deep analysis of positions or entire games, time based analysis on positions, etc. You can use two engines at the same time to analyze a position. And you can analyze games in the background while you do other tasks with the program.

For endgame analysis, there is support for tablebases, and tablebase information is also incorporated into the chess tree as well. Both Shredder 5 (optional) and Tiger 14 (available via free download) engines can use the included tablebase information, so you have this option as well.

And of course, you have all sorts of search tools at your disposal, like search for material, pawn structure, position, players, sacrifices, piece movement, statistical analysis, etc. etc.

Database and game management is also facilitated by a drag and drop interface, and navigation/database browser window, which should be standard for programs of this type. There are also tools for keeping player and tournament names consistent, and removing doubles from your collection.

In terms of internet play, Chess Assistant provides an interface to the ICC, which has the biggest membership of any chess club on the internet. It's also where you will find the highest rated players. The interface allows you to play games online, or watch the games of others. While online, you can use any of the other functions of Chess Assistant that you want (the only exception being that you cannot cheat while playing on a human account). So you can conduct game searches, opening analysis, talk with others, comment a game, whatever you want.

Chess Assistant now supports electronic texts. This is significant for users, since it allows them to view chess texts created by others. It also allows authors to self publish texts if they so desire. This text system is implemented very much like the Explorer in Windows, and because of this, is fairly intuitive to use.

And as for playing, you can use Chess Assistant with its built-in engines (Tiger 12/13/14, Gambit Tiger1/2, Crafty, Russian Dragon), or with a wide variety of other engines (Shredder 3 or 4, and other MCS engines). Chess Assistant also supports Winboard engines. Many Winboard engines are available for free on the internet. UCI support has also been added (to work with Shredder 5, SoS, and others).

Well, that concludes the top-level overview. I'll now discuss the improvements in the program.

The New ICS Interface

Ok, when I first found out about this feature, I thought to myself "Big Deal". Frankly, SLICS did everything I needed. And for those that did not like SLICS' sometimes arcane user interface, there was always Blitzin, which has a very easy to use interface. So if Convekta had simply duplicated the existing feature set of the currently available user interfaces, it would have been a non-event. However, this was not done, and I have to admit at being very impressed with what I saw.

All the normal ICS functions are present within the Chess Assistant interface, even a telnet window if you want to use it. However, Convekta has added a very large tabbed window, which allows you to see nicely formatted lists of who is online, who's playing, and the current set of matches. Clicking on a handle, ad or game opens a board window or match dialog. I think that even beginners will like this interface, because it is very intuitive.

So, the ICS interface sets a new standard for ease of use. But it also sets a new standard for functionality. In fact, the whole interface is very well integrated into the rest of Chess Assistant. So anything you can do in the main program (which includes annotating games, database searches, chess tree analysis, engine analysis, etc), you can also do within the ICS interface. That means no more cutting and pasting engine analysis when observing games, and no more toggling between your chess program and ICS interface . That means instant opening analysis and searches while observing a game. It means that your analysis (variations, comments, etc) while observing a game online are recorded for later use. I cannot stress how powerful and what a big time saver all of this is. If you use ICC for lessons, or for observing games and lectures, then think about what all this means, and you will understand.

There are other features for improving the online ICS experience as well. For instance, the interface includes filter and highlight commands. How many times have you been watching a game, and wished that you could filter out the comments of some guy that's talking about the latest episode of Baywatch? Well, now all you need to do is filter this person's handle, and he is gone. You can also highlight the comments of another person, so they show up better in a sea of comments. This is handy when everyone is kibitzing, and you are trying to pick out the comments of someone in particular.

Within the tabbed interface, there are also buttons for observing the highest rated game being played, getting information on other players, and setting up graphical buttons for commands that you use a lot. And oh, I should mention that there is one type of button that I will affectionately call the "insomnia button". Simply put, you can set up the interface so that you can automatically renew any ad that you place for a game. And since there are typically over a thousand users on ICC at any one time, it means that you can play game after game without a break - especially if you are into fast games.

Chess engine developers should also take note that it is trivial to setup an engine, and play automated games on ICC. I had never done this before, and with the CA interface I never had to consult the manual. CA supports UCI, Winboard, Chess Tiger 12/13, Gambit Tiger, Crafty, MCS, etc engines. You can even use auto-232 in conjunction with the ICC interface, if you desire. So I think this is the program you want for testing your engine.

Owners of the DGT board should note that they can play over the internet as well. There is no audio announcement of moves as yet, but this feature will be in an upcoming service pack (I do not know the date for this yet).

I should also mention that you do not need an ICC membership to use this part of the program (i.e. you can log in as a guest). My personal opinion is that members will certainly get more out of the interface, but a membership is certainly not required. At this point, I think I should also mention that CA 6 users will get a one month membership to ICC for free (the normal trial period is one week).

It also would be nice to have support for other Internet Chess Servers (like FICS). Time will tell whether this is in the cards or not.

One thing this interface does not have is premove or smartmove. If you don't know what these are, then don't worry about it. However, if you are a bullet addict, you will find that the CA interface may put you at a slight disadvantage when playing against people that do have this. My personal feeling about premove and smartmove, is that it's cheating. And you can also screw up your game pretty easily if you don't know what you are doing. But that's all beside the point.

New Chess Engines and Chess Engine Interfaces

When you buy CA 6, you get Tiger 12/13/14 and Gambit Tiger (versions 1 and 2) chess engines. And, you get Crafty and Russian Dragon as well. In addition, CA 6 still supports all the legacy DOS engines, like Mchess, Hiarcs and Genius. Internal engine support has also been extended to include even more engine protocols including UCI (proposed by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen). Of course, support for MCS and winboard engines is also present as well. Simply put, CA 6 supports more engines that anyone else. The only engine protocol that is not supported is that of Chessbase, for obvious reasons.

Tablebase support has also been included. This is in the form of a separate tablebase engine, which can be set to run automatically when a 5-piece (or less) endgame results on the board. The format used by the engine is the Nalimov compressed format, which has become the standard today. This engine is most useful when used in conjunction with other engines that do not already have tablebase support built-in.

For those that like engine vs. engine matches for programs that are not supported within CA, there is now auto-232 support. You can also use this feature to play games over the internet, by using CA as a sort of "shim" between the external chess program and the engine you are playing on ICC. Note that I do not have auto-232, so I could not verify that this function works. But I have every reason to believe that it does.

New Analysis features

The blunder checking function has been improved, with the upshot that more blunders are caught in less time. Many people remember that CA 4 introduced this feature, and CA 5 modified it to use a three-pass approach. This worked quite well over 90% of the time. However, there were some instances in the endgame, where the initial ply based searches could not catch all the blunders. Because of this, I lobbied Convekta to put in a time-based blunder search, since I thought that this was the only way to catch these endgame errors.

However, the approach chosen was to modify the existing blunder check so that the ply depth is increased in the endgame. Furthermore, the new Tiger engines have better endgame knowledge than before. And the results are surprisingly good.

Furthermore, when doing "normal" time-based searches, position evaluations are now inserted for very move so you can even follow the engine's evaluations as the game progresses. And so this gives you the same information that a time-based blunder check, only this approach is more flexible.

Many existing CA users are aware of the novelty check, opening commenting, and interactive analysis features. In CA 6, these functions have all been folded into a single dialog box. The effect of this is a time savings on the part of the user, in addition to providing enhanced usability. You will find in this dialog box that there are places to specify various advanced settings for the interactive and batch analysis functions as well.

You can now open up two engines at once when analyzing positions or games. Clearly, this is most useful with a very fast machine. You don't need multiple CPUs to use this feature, but those lucky enough to have such a machine will finally get their money's worth out of their hardware ?.

One point of confusion that some CA users initially experienced was the use of games versus datasets. For instance, in CA 5, a blunder check could only be done on a dataset. So if you only needed to check a single game, you had to make a dataset out of it. This was no big deal, but it was an extra step to take. Now all analysis features work on games or datasets (collections of games).

All in all, the analysis functions are very comprehensive, and have received quite a bit of reworking and fine-tuning. There are plenty of things that I have not mentioned in this summary. And there have been other changes and modifications in the underlying code that are invisible to the user.

Test suite mode

This mode provides the most comprehensive environment for testing chess engines that I have seen to date. You can test any internal engine that is supported by Chess Assistant. This includes Winboard, MCS, UCI (Shredder, SoS, others), Tiger (all versions), and Russian Dragon. In this mode, you can construct your own test suites from existing games based on a number of criteria and process any EPD file that you or someone else has created.

Essentially, a hierarchical view of all your test results is created for you. This view is first organized by test set, and then by engine, end then by hash size. The view is automatically updated as new results are run, and it provides a convenient mechanism for keeping track of all your results. Table columns can be moved around manually, and you can display the full analysis of the engine in addition to the key move (available in the lowest line of the display when you double click a key move). A diagram of the FEN position is even available via mouse-over.

If you so desire, you can then generate HTML or Microsoft Excel tables of results. Furthermore, there are tools for generating EPD files based on a number of criteria that can be applied to lists of games. For instance, I am in the habit of creating my own quiz positions from my previous games. What I do is place a diagram in the game score, along with a question. Coincidentally, you can now search through game scores for diagrammed positions, and create EPD files from them for later processing.

And finally, you can create archive files of test data very conveniently. This mode is extremely comprehensive, and will be a great asset to anyone developing their own chess engine (or to anyone trying to benchmark engine performance via test suites).

The New Classifier and Multimedia System

While this section of the review is somewhat short, don't let that fool you. These functions are extremely powerful and are very important to those looking to publish electronic chess texts. You can picture this system as a windows explorer-like interface into any object that Chess Assistant can create, be it a game, position, variation, graphic, dataset, search result, search dialog, annotation, movie, audio, a picture or a tree. This system allows you to link all these elements together in hypertext or hierarchical fashion.

So if you are creating any kind of electronic text, it allows you to organize your material in a logical way, while providing little extras like audio, video and graphics. Any of these elements (graphical, sound, video) can be incorporated into a game score. All the more important formats are supported, including gif, wav, mp3, avi, mpg, bmp, and jpg.

Using the classifier functions, you can also save search dialog boxes, which means that you can create folders for games that are automatically updated when new games are added to a database. This is very similar to the approach that Chessbase uses, only they call this function a theme. You can also compose folders containing collections of games that are static, even if games are added.

New Web Functions

CA 5 introduced the ability to output games and game collections as HTML. This function still exists in CA 6, but you now also have the ability to create DHTML output, which means you can have some very nice web pages, indeed. In fact, the output looks like what you would get out of a good chess book, with the added bonus of having a board available for playing out the game.

There is excellent control over HTML output, with the ability to toggle DHTML, HTML 4, use of fonts or GIF files, etc. Altogether, this function is quite impressive and easy to use. All necessary directories are created for you, and you don't have to know any HTML.

Search Enhancements

There are a number of new search features also, which as many people know, form the core functionality of any database program. In addition to all the different types of searches that you could do previously (like header (players, tournaments, etc), material, position, advanced search (material equations in regions of the board)), you can also now search through comments for any conceivable symbol, word, etc. You can do substring and exact searches. All the searches work through variations as well.

There is also a new maneuver search that is very easy to use. For those that do not know, a maneuver search allows you to look for a specific piece movement within a game. So for example, you can search for the greek gift (Bxh2/h7). When searching for a maneuver, you can also have the option of setting and imprecise beginning or ending square. You can search for sacrifices using constraints on material imbalance on the board as well.

Existing searches have also been improved with the ability to specify opposite colored bishops, the ability to mirror flanks and white/black to move positions. All the new and old search types can be combined without any trouble.

Furthermore, there is now one-click access to an automatic position search in hugebase. This is one feature that I used quite a bit. This is especially handy when you are looking for middlegame plans. And since Chess Assistant puts out monthly electronic updates to Hugebase, it is an easy matter to keep up with the most recent games.

Other Odds and Ends

Users of CA 5 will remember that there was a separate program for building the direct tree. This program was somewhat complex and difficult to use. Now there is a built in utility with a more compact set of controls. Building a direct tree is not something that one normally does that often, but this new tool should help.

There have not been too many changes to the playing module of Chess Assistant. Of course, the new Tiger and UCI engines are supported, in addition to all the previously available engines. But other than that, the only new thing is support for the DGT board. Support for the board is decent, but the version of CA 6 that I tested did not yet have move takeback and audio announcement or moves. So this function could still use a little improvement. But I know for a fact that these features will either appear in a service pack (free upgrade), or in a future version.

And speaking of the playing module, it is still difficult to create your own user books for engines. This function still uses an external program, which does not have much documentation. I have been told that there may be a function for creating books in an upcoming service release. Do not quote me on this, because there has been nothing promised as yet.

There is also a new function for making a report (using the folder/classifier feature) of a player's tournament performance. Part of the output is a calculation of that person's international title norm and rating.

It's easy to miss, but in the options dialog box, there is a small checkbox for the tree and engine that is called "show best moves". What it will do is paint small arrows on the board showing you what the best moves are according to the tree or chess engine. When you use this feature, you really don't need to look at tree display or variations, unless you want to. So it speeds up game analysis, especially in the opening. Overall, this is a pretty neat little function.

There are also new piece sets and backgrounds that can be used with the program. Some people will like the change, others will like the existing boards. You can also now use any graphic for board backgrounds as well.

There are also tweaks that improve game entry. For instance, the user can quickly and easily incorporate library information from hugebase when entering games. And, you can now enter full dates (day, month, year) using a nice calendar app.

Dataset handling has also been improved, and the user can now sort by a variety of criteria (including drag and drop of games within a dataset - are you reading this Izya?).

You can now produce tournament tables with CA, the results can be exported to RTF, or printed directly.

There is now a facility for packing and compressing game databases into a single file. This is good for shipping your databases around via electronic means. There is also a built-in e-mail client (!) for sending and receiving compressed and archived games via POP-3 and SMTP mail servers. Users of web-based mail will not be able to use the e-mail functions, but the archiving and compression will help these folks out.

Incidentally, there was some talk among the beta testers concerning win98 resource usage. For those that are not familiar with this topic, "resources" is a term that refers to some internal programming limitations on win95/98/ME systems that can restrict the complexity and power of the applications that you run. Happily, the resource usage of CA 6 has been decreased to a level below that of CA 5. And this is a good thing, since you will probably want a few more windows open if you intend to use the new ICC features that CA 6 provides.

Statistics functions have been tweaked a bit as well. For instance, it is now easier to rerun statistics on a dataset.

The printing functions of CA have also been updated. Some fonts have changed a bit, and there is more control over text formatting. Direct printing, and creation of RTF and HTML documents is supported.

Disclaimer

If there was an enhancement to the program that you wanted, but you did not see it here, I would suggest you e-mail Convekta to see if it made it into version 6. It's entirely possible that I missed something, because there were an awful lot of changes from version 5.

Furthermore, I was heavily involved in the beta testing of this version. Every bug I found has been fixed in the final version. I'm sure though, that others will find bugs in the program, since no program is perfect. However, Convekta was extremely good about a service pack for Chess Assistant 5, and I expect them to be equally responsive with this release.

Also note that in 2003, I started a Chess Assistant help site at www.chessassistance.com.

Conclusion

Chess Assistant 6 has many new features, along with improvements to existing ones as well. Most people will be more than pleased with this tool. Its analysis functions are truly comprehensive, and its internet and publishing abilities set a new standard. The developers at Convekta have been extremely busy with this release, and have come up with a winner. I consider this program to be a "must have" for serious players.

Copy Protection:

Must be installed from original CDROM, no refueling needed.