By Albert Silver
This is the first article in a column that proposes to teach users how to make the most of their software, by showing them not only how to do things, but some of the possibilities the program offers for both beginner players to professionals. It will try to illustrate situations and tasks that can be accomplished, with detailed step-by-step instructions included.
A question that I see asked over and over again is how one can play online with Chess Assistant and then organize and analyze one’s games with it. Many users enjoy playing online as this is one of the wonders of the Internet: the possibility to always find someone somewhere in the world who is ready to play. CA (both CA6 and CA Light) supports online play through ICC (http://www.chessclub.com), the most significant online chess club, where grandmasters and masters play and teach, and where numerous events around the world are relayed live. CA provides a number of powerful options to not only make playing and watching games more enriching, but allow one to integrate it into the database, making use of numerous analytical tools. Here I will show you the basics of playing games on ICC using CA as well as step-by-step instructions on how to organize them in CA and analyze them. These instructions will work for CA Light as well, though there are some minor limitations in it that I will highlight when necessary. Don’t hesitate to skip over parts you don’t care for or already know.
Here we’re going to quickly select our preferences as well as set account information.
or even Text Comments which adds and saves messages sent during the game. This is particularly interesting to follow and save the comments of other players such as in GM commented games or classes. The other options (Depth, Score, etc.) are for use with computer accounts.
Finding a game to play is very easy and there is more than one way to go about it. If you want to send out a ‘seek’ (ICC lingo for a game request) with specific conditions that you customarily use, such as game in 5 minutes, game in 2 minutes only for players rated below 1800, etc. then you will most likely want to customize a few buttons. So let’s enter ICC and do that first.
to enter ICC. Click on the arrow if you wish to select
the account to use.
I made a few of my own using the Change styles…
Click on Edit and enter the options to be saved for this button. If you want to add more buttons with different settings then click on Add icon.
If you see a request that you want to accept, just double-click on it, and if you don’t see what you are looking for, try changing the Filter options to show only what you want, such as only showing blitz challenges, bullet challenges, etc. To do this, right-click on the screen in one of these windows (Seek List, Players, etc.) and select Filter.
The purpose here isn’t so much to teach you how to play, but to suggest a few tips that may make playing with Chess Assistant more enjoyable.
Personally, I like to play with the largest board possible, but unfortunately, this isn’t the default in CA, so I must set this as my preference in order for it to appear everytime I open a game.
Right-click on the board to increase or decrease the size of the board (I also minimize the video buttons under the board) then at the bottom of the same menu select This Window’s properties .
In the option window that opens click on the large button Copy to global options at the bottom and you’re set.
If you are using Chess Assistant 6 then it should normally save your games
automatically in the ICC base (you can set a different base in the ICC options), however
if you are using Chess Assistant Light, you will have to manually save the game after it
is over. To do this, click on the Save game button at the top left. 
Chess Assistant will automatically save your online games in a base called ICC, though you are more than welcome to create a separate base to place your games. If you choose to do that, then transfering your games is done by dragging and dropping the games from the ICC base to your new base. Here’s a small example:
Chess Assistant offers numerous options for analyzing your games, whether manually or automatically, and you should absolutely not hesitate to use them. Here we will take a quick look at what some of those options are. Users of Chess Assistant Light will be pleased to know that all the automatic functions work just as in the full version. The only limitations being the engines (CA Light can only use Crafty and Winboard engines) and the tree functions which are necessary for automatically finding the novelty.
Before analyzing with an engine, my first suggestion would be to set the hash tables because the default is usually the minimal 2 Mb. If your system has very little memory, then skip this step, otherwise:
Still in the Chess Engines Setup, I’d also suggest changing the Evaluation from Symbol to Absolute or Relative numbers. (I prefer Absolute).
With Absolute numbers, any negative value (ex: -0.28) given by the engine is an advantage for Black, whereas in Relative it depends on the side to move, so a negative value would be a disadvantage for the side to move
This is the perfect moment to become familiar with the shortcut Ctrl-C or the Panel
button at the top left 
. Click on it a few times to open and close
the panel. You’ll probably want to close the panel when using an engine and the tree as
it let’s you see more analysis and information.
To manually analyze a game with an engine, all you need to do is have the game open and
press the <Spacebar> or the Monitor button 
. You can then
select the engine you want to use by clicking on the drop down menu where you see the name
of the engine.
You can also see the engine’s analysis on the board by clicking on the moves of the variations. Click on one and then use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move around in the analysis window. You can move up and down as well.
If you want to add a line to the notation without interrupting its thinking right-click on the engine window and select Insert Line or use the hotkey Shift-Space.
And if you’d like to see not only the mainline but alternate ones as well, then right-click on the engine menu and select Multivariation mode.
I should point out that there are other options including the very powerful Interactive Analysis feature, but that is beyond the scope of this article (though it may constitute a future one). If you wish to know more about it, please refer to the manual or the Help file (the CA Light Help file is the same as that of CA6).
After you have finished playing your game You can analyze your games automatically with Chess Assistant, having it search for opening novelties, analyze the game at several levels with an engine, examine it with the tablebases, or analyze specific moves in which you choose what moves it should consider as possibilities or not. However, as stated above, the purpose here isn’t an exhaustive explanation of all the possibilities (and there are others) but a quick run through of a couple of the main ones, being the search for a novelty and the blundercheck.
NB: The base must have a tree built for it in order to be used. If this hasn’t been done already, right-click on the name of the base in the panel and select Operations and then Build Tree. A base’s tree only needs to be built once unless changes are made to the base.