Tactics flag

Selecting Play=>Training=>Find best move, generates the following message:

No game with Tactics flag or no tactics comments found

How do you set the Tactics flag, and what exactly are the 'tactics comments' (besides the "****")? 

I don't know for sure how to do it. The documentation claims any user can do it but I don't see how.

I know if you have a tactics database, then all you need to do is put the bases in the /bases directory and do a Play -> Training -> Tactics.

I thought using an engine to auto-annotate a database with the check box Mark Tactical Exercises then opening it up and chosing the Find the Best Move feature would work, but I haven't been able to get that to work. The help files online show that we should be able to make one, but I'm not seeing how to do it correctly.

The help file within the app claims the same thing:

When annotating games with a chess engine, the engine can search for tactical opportunities within a game. This can be achieve by setting Mark Tactical Exercise in the Annotation window accessible from analysis. In case a tactical opportunity is found, Scid will then flag the game with the T flag (Tactics) and add a special comment that is evaluated in this exercise

However, I haven't gotten that to work correctly, at least not with a database of tactics. I haven't tried it yet with an actual game where the evaluation doesn't start with an advantage already.

Load the game you want to tag, then open the database maintenance window and right in the middle of that screen there is a drop down where you can select a tactics tag, then just click the mark current game button and its tagged.  I believe you also have to add a tag when the game is saved.  There's a place to add "Extra tags".   Try typing Tactics or Tactical exercise in this box and see if that works.

I personally have not tried using tags with the TRAINING > TACTICS of FIND BEST MOVE so I can't say if this works or not.  I just use the tags to visually mark my games for future reference.  i.e. Tactics flag would be used to let me know which games had tactical shots I missed during the actual game, and allow me to filter all of those quickly.

Good luck!

Just looked in scid and now see the first part of what I wrote previously is called FLAGS not tags...lol  So disregard the maintenance window stuff.  When you are saving a game however, the little box at the bottom called Extra TAGS is most certainly what you are looking for.  I wrote TACTICS in one of my games and got that particular game to load from the > FIND THE BEST MOVE feature, however it just loaded the entire game at the beginning, not the actual move where the tactic would be found.       Perhaps using Martin_Stahl suggestion about allowing the engine to annotate a game, then tagging this way will bring about the desired results.

I'm rewriting the doco and tweaking this feature for Scid vs PC 4.9. (Mainline Scid 's Find Best Move adds buttons to the main button bar, but i doubt i'll be doing this.)

The feature is a little more complicated than the existing doco says. This is what i've got so far about rewriting the help.. Changes are in subversion

Find Best Move
 
 The Find Best Move training excercise uses specially prepared databases to train the player to find tactical shots (non-obvious and unique winning moves).
 
 Scid will initially jump to the first relevant position in the current database, allowing the player to study for the tactical shot. The PGN window will close, and Hide Next Move is enabled.
 
 Re-selecting the Play-->Training-->FindBestMove menu, or double clicking to the left of the board, will search for the next position/game.
 
Preparing Databases
 
 Databases are prepared by annotating games with a UCI engine and enabling "Mark tactical exercises". This marks relevant moves a special comment (beginning with ****D and commented in the analysis.tcl source file), and tags the game with the tactics T flag.

For a move to be regarded as a Tactical Shot, it must be a unique winning move, that is not obvious (ie found at depth  <=3)

 
 Mainline Scid mentions the existence of an already prepared base of 1500 games, but the author can't find this base.
 
Updated: Scid vs. PC 4.9 December 2012

Maybe somebody mentioned this

If you anylize the game with TOGA there is a button that will marke the game as tactical if it meets what ever SCID's guidelines.

THAT SAID

If you export games from one DB to another via Export / Import under tools with SCID 4.2.2 the FLAGS DO NOT transfer

If you tediously Edit, Copy to Clipbase then paste from clipbase into what ever DB  you want to import the games into the FLAGS WILL transfer

Either way back up your DB prior to moving stuff around then again after you are finished.

WARNING  with SCID 4.2.2  If you interupt the "Compact Database" function, it has been my expierence the DB will be corrupted and useless.  I am running Windows 7

You can use any UCI engine to search for tactics. Also needs to be mentioned, that number placed straight after ****D is a difficulty of tactic.