Maybe it's time to have a forum topic for SCID questions and answers.

Please feel free to ask what you don't know, and answer what you do.

1. SCID can be downloaded here, free: http://www.chess.com/download/view/scid-422
2. It comes packaged with a few engines, but I suggest adding Houdini 1.5 or Stockfish 2.0 ( Or strong commercial engines, if you have them)
3. SCID stands for Shane's Chess Information Database. You need games, a good place to get a lot of games is here: http://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html

isnt't chessDB a newer version??  also last time i used it the database links were no longer working.....

how do you get all the games and openings from pgnmentor or where ever else you can get them, onto Scid?

Setting up your database:

OK, you have a collection of pgn games, you now have to make a Scid database. Scid can work with pure pgn, but to access all the functions you have to convert it to Scid format. I like to have a large main database, which contains lots (millions) of games, and then make smaller ones out of that for training and such.

1. On the file menu click new, give a name for your database, and save it where you can find it again.
2. On the file menu, select Import file of pgn games, and select you pgn collection. It is possible to select multiple files.
3. On the file menu, click maintenance, and ECO classify games. Choose the option with Scid extensions, it just gives you more options.
4. Hey, you got a database!
5. Keep your datbase updated weekly from the TWIC site with the weekly free download.

Things I use in Scid that aren't all that obvious:

- The Clipbase. You first search for the games you want to look at in the main database, and when you have them, you copy them into the clipbase. You do that with the Database switcher window (ctrl-D). Let's say you have 300 Kasparov games out of 1,000,000 total selected in "mainbase", then you would see "300 / 1000000" under mainbase in that window. You can drag the "300" into the Clipbase. Switch to it, and now you can use all the usual stuff like opening reports, trees, searches etc only on the 300 selected games.

- Pattern search. You can actually look for games with a white IQP and black having a pawn on c6 and open d and e files, with a queen, two rooks, two bishops and a knight for both sides.

Here's my scid tip. Try chessdb.

[If you don't know what chessdb is, it's another free chess database, an alternative fork from the same ancestor software]

[EDIT: just noticed others have drawn attention to chessdb]

Why is ChessDB better?

Try it and make up your own mind. I recall the functionality was somewhat superior.

Yeah, the clipbase is an important function.

Chess.com offers analysis of games, where I suppose it picks significant swings in the evaluation of positions from the previous position and follows recommended alternatives.  This is provided as variants to the main-line with +/- type comments.

Is there a way to get Scid to do this for a list of games overnight?  It would be undesirable if there were too many comments.  I think chess.com hits the right threashold for suggesting an alternative line.

Any suggestions?

(btw: great topic)

Last update for chessDB: August 2007

Last update for SCID: February 2011

Also: http://scid.sourceforge.net/download.html for 4.3 instead of 4.2.2

1. choose the games you want to analyze
2. drag them into clipbase
3. make clipbase the current base
4. open the engine window
5. click on the annotate icon at the bottom.
6. click the "Annotate several games from current to..." checkbox
7. The number of the last game is set by default, you can change that
8. For fewer comments, increase the threshold number (default .2 is too small for me)
9. Click OK

And remember that your annotated games are now in the Clipbase, so not saved yet! You need to drag them into a real database for that.