Problem with my Chess Assistant

[ikalel]

The button the red arrow is pointing to has stopped working. Check the image above. When you click on this button you're supposed to get a list of positions from HugeBase. I only get a message that says "No games found" but no search actually takes place. I click it and the message pops up instantaneously.

I remember I may have deleted a tree (without knowing) when I was working with classifiers. I'm not 100% sure about this. I know it's not the direct tree because I can still see it and navigate it at the bottom-right corner of the interface. Are there any other trees associated with HugeBase? If so, how do I check if they have not been deleted. If it's not a problem with trees what else could be causing this?

The 'Tree paths' under Tools-Options-General is pointing to HugeBase so this is not it.

Help me out here. This is a feature I use very often. Thanks.

[Albert Silver]

The button the red arrow is pointing to has stopped working. Check the image above. When you click on this button you're supposed to get a list of positions from HugeBase. I only get a message that says "No games found" but no search actually takes place. I click it and the message pops up instantaneously.

I remember I may have deleted a tree (without knowing) when I was working with classifiers. I'm not 100% sure about this. I know it's not the direct tree because I can still see it and navigate it at the bottom-right corner of the interface. Are there any other trees associated with HugeBase? If so, how do I check if they have not been deleted. If it's not a problem with trees what else could be causing this?

The 'Tree paths' under Tools-Options-General is pointing to HugeBase so this is not it.

Help me out here. This is a feature I use very often. Thanks.

Your best bet really is to contact Chess Assistant support on this. As a wild guess, you might check to see if you have a tree built for Hugebase. If you updated (added games to it) recently, you will have deleted the tree, and this could be the cause.

Albert

[ikalel]

I have a question about updating HugeBase. I don't access the internet from the laptop where I have my CA which means that I can't use the automatic update feature. I use my brother's comp to download the updates and then I transfer them to my laptop with a usb drive.

What's the best way to copy these updates to HugeBase? I think there are at least three possible ways:

1)Open the latest update (the base with the new games) and then save it as HugeBase. This appends the new games to HugeBase, I believe.
2)Join the base to HugeBase
3)Open the base and then do "Copy current dataset to another base" (I think this is the way it reads. You can find it under the main menu item "Dataset")

I'm sure there's more ways (and perhaps better ways) to do this. Please share with me how do you update your database.

Also, when you update your HugeBase using "Automatic update" the trees that are associated with HugeBase get updated or rebuilt on the fly. I believe what triggers this action are scripts. Am I right? Now, if I update my HugeBase manually how do I get these scripts to run when I add the new games?

[James Constance]

I had a similar problem, and emailed Chess Assistant support, but didn't receive a reply.

I don't have chess assistant on the computer in front of me, but from memory it's very simple to do it manually. I open all the updates so they are in the navigation panel, drag all updates into the first update so that they are combined into one file. Check it for doubles (or I suppose you could do this after adding it to Hugebase - I forget which is best) And then drag that combined file into the Hugebase. You then rebuild the tree - it'll probably ask you whether you want to.

It is actually a darn sight simpler than worrying about scripts!

As a P.S. I'd like to make a suggestion for Chess Assistant 10 - a help file which individually address every file menu, context menu, option etc and says what it is supposed to do. Just some black and white text - nothing flashy. I was playing around with classifiers, and while the basic functions worked, there was a lot which behaved unexpectedly or didn't seem to do anything. Anyway, my point is, without a decent help file, one cannot know whether the program is just plain buggy or whether one is doing things wrong. In my opinion, if they created a satisfactory help file, this would be worth the upgrade price alone!

Another (additional) option would be to have a forum for technical questions as a shared resource, such as on Chess Assistant Club, with the crucial difference that questions are answered!

Anyway for all my criticisms, I prefer the interface to Chessbase's.

[ikalel]

This is another doubt I have. How many trees am I going to need to rebuild? There are several associated with HugeBase. I checked under the tab Base->Properties->Trees for this base and it says that Chess Assistant tree 4 & 5 are built. So I'm going to need to rebuild both. Where do you specify exactly which tree you want to rebuild? Also, on the "Trees for this base" tab it says that Direct Tree is NOT built but then I go check on the C:\Program Files\Chess Assistant 9 folder and I find the two files d2m.elm and d2m.hsh. Doesn't this mean that the Direct Tree IS built?

As a P.S. I'd like to make a suggestion for Chess Assistant 10 - a help file which individually address every file menu, context menu, option etc and says what it is supposed to do. Just some black and white text - nothing flashy. I was playing around with classifiers, and while the basic functions worked, there was a lot which behaved unexpectedly or didn't seem to do anything. Anyway, my point is, without a decent help file, one cannot know whether the program is just plain buggy or whether one is doing things wrong. In my opinion, if they created a satisfactory help file, this would be worth the upgrade price alone!

I agree about the help files. They certainly need a LOT of work! And they should remove the CA 7.1 screenshots from the CA 9 help pages!

Anyway for all my criticisms, I prefer the interface to Chessbase's.

Ha! Now that's something you don't hear very often :-)

[James Constance]

See below

[James Constance]

From memory, there are 3 types of tree - CA 4, CA 5 and the direct tree. I'm not sure what use the CA 4 tree has - I think it has been superceded by the CA 5 tree. The Direct Tree is apparently faster than the CA5 tree but takes up more space, and takes longer to build.

So (again from memory) when I drag the updates base into the Hugebase, it says something like "delete tree? Continue?". I say yes. The CA 5 tree is deleted, the updates base gets appended to the Hugebase, and I have a Hugebase without a CA 5 tree. Now from the Base Menu or perhaps by right-clicking on the base, I asked to build tree and have to choose which type of tree CA 4 (ignore), CA 5 or direct tree. I choose the CA 5 tree, as it's quicker to build. That's all . If you built a direct tree previously, this won't be affected, and will show the statistics from before the updates. If you want this to be updated you can build it in the same way as you have just built the CA 5 tree, or instead of the CA 5 tree. When I replay a game I have the tree panel display the Hugebase (i.e. CA 5) tree and don't use the direct tree for the Hugebase.

Hope this is correct. The best bet is to make a backup of your Hugebase and try it out. Sometimes Chess Assistant with all its options makes even simple things seem complicated!

So, to answer your question, you only need to build one tree. If you want a direct tree for your updated Hugebase, simply build one!

[ikalel]

OK, this CA tree business seems to make much more sense to me now. Thanks.

I just finished updating HugeBase and building the CA 5.0 tree. I play these moves on the board: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Nf3 Bf5. The CA 5.0 tree shows that 4... Bf5 has been played 1495 times. However, when I run a search for the position after 4... Bf5 I get a list of 1644 games. That's a difference of 149 games. Does this mean that the tree missed 149 transpositions or what?

[Vempele]

It means the move has been played 1495 times. If you play the move on the board and scroll down the list of moves, you'll see how many times the position after the move has been encountered.

If a rare move leads to a frequently played position, it usually means the opponent's move order was bad. You wouldn't be able to see that if the tree only showed the game counts of the resulting positions. It's also slower to search for transpositions (unless it's a direct or professional tree IIRC).

[James Constance]

I check that my tree corresponds to my Hugebase by checking that the number of games in the tree in the initial position is the same as the number of games in the Hugebase (although sometimes it's a few games out).

Would the direct tree give 1644 games against the Bf5 move? Is that one of the differences between the direct and the CA 5 tree i.e. does the direct tree show the number of times a position has been reached after the move has been played, taking transpositions into account, while the CA 5 tree only shows the number of times a move has been played in a certain position (like the chessbase tree, I think)??