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I added thousands of games from 2024 to Monsterbase 2023. Click Here for Monsterbase 2024 files for SCID vs PC.

I've created a video and blog post on updating SCID vs PC and keeping all your setups and customizations. Chesstech Blog post

I hope you will join me in the new SCID vs PC club. https://www.chess.com/club/scid-vs-pc/join

I have a 3 part post about setting up SCID vs PC. Here is a link to part 1. https://www.chesstech.info/2019/02/scid-vs-pc-players-pictures-part-1.html

Hi everyone, Quick question, does anyone know how to get the best out of SCID using tree masks for training? I'm trying to get a couple of new opening repetiores underway, but I can't get CPT to work on Linux so I thought I'd try and use SCID, but the learning curve is tough. If there are any articles or videos that people can recommend, I'll be more than grateful to have them. Cheers!

On the Scid webpage, there's a screenshots link. It shows various examples where the different scid windows have been placed in different locations. For example, "variations" has the engine analysis below the game board. I cannot figure out how to do this. You can right click and get "move to bottom, etc", but this doesn't get me there. Also, I can "undock" but can't see how to redock.

Hi, I've been trying to add the last version of Stockfish to the engines list in scid vs. PC 4.22 but I get this error when I run it. I've used the file stockfish_14.1_win_x64_popcnt from https://stockfishchess.org/download/ which is said to be more compatible, but with the "faster version" I get the same error. actually I suspect it might have to do with where are located the installation files. Here is the window of the Engine settings as currently set up. Is there any suggestion to be made on what direction I might try to learn how to set up the engine properly, which I assume is the cause of my problem?

Hey guys, I was unable to find where to change the keyboard shortcuts on Scid. Can someone help me?

Hi everyone, I guess I made something wrong at some point but Scid vs Pc does not have board window anymore. How can I recover it ? I googled it and only find the suggestion of deleting an options data file but the path is not consistent with mine. I am on Ubuntu 18.04. I tried to uninstall and reinstall it, it had no effects. Thanks for your help !

How do I enter a variation in scid on the go? And what is the funtion of the icon with square and star?

Hi. I had taken a hiatus from chess, and am easing back into play and study. I have a new PC and unfortunately lost a good chunk of my chess related data. I downloaded SCID vs. PC, but no longer have a game database. I am having trouble re-creating by previous data ... TWIC does not seem to post its archives before 2012, MillBase for SCID and GorgoBase are no longer available. The links on the SCID website seem broken or no longer available. Any suggestions?

Hi, I want to use a smaller font for the status bar (so that I can see two lines without scrolling). But to do so I have to change the font size of the "regular" font, but then I also change the font size of the moves in the pgn window etc. Is there a possibility to use "small" or "tiny" as font size for the status bar instead of "regular" ? Or can I somehow change the size of the status bar, so that there is enough room for two lines?

Looking for just checkmates in a particular opening. Is there a way to do this?

I tried to load a chess960 game in 4.11 and it died when it got to the O-O-O. Also when making moves in the GUI I can figure out no way to castle...

Hello, scid users! I have a laptop running OpenSUSE 13.1 Linux. I have been looking for a way to analyze my game using scid.I like scid because it is an opensource project and is developing always around the world. And I know scid has tons of attractive features such as- Tactics: Review game- Tactics: Calculation of variations- Tactics: Find best movesHowever due to lack of Help descriptions and the internet sources, I am not able to use them. I spent whole days yesterday and today on how to use them, no luck.The only way I am okay with analyzing my games are this, using Analysis Engine / Annotation.Step 1: Open my game and run an analysis engine (Stockfish on my machine)Step 2: Let the engine annotate my game, with following options {"For White(my coloer) moves only", Threshold = 0.5, Uncheck anything else}Step 3: Move to the position at where those I find as blunders, and play against the engine. You can do this by {Play -> Serious game -> Check 'Coach is watching'}Step 4: Don't look at the Notation window or so and simulate another line play against the engineStep 5: After you are okay with the alternative lines, you could fully see the analysis results or anything you want.Ideally speaking, I expect scid to mark only blunder symbols '?'/'??' to my moves as notation and let me think the alternative moves. But well, the current way is still okay.Could you share your experiences?Thanks!Junji

Hello, I've been trying to get this "Find Best Move" thing working with no success. When I try to "prepare" the database (I have tried default "tactics.si4" and "Auerswald Collection, 3500 tactic" form Gorgonian's Chess Site) and do this.. 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) .. I don't have any special comment marked with ****D and T-flags. (Btw, and what is the analysis.tcl file and where it can be found?) And the question about "Maintenance Window". If I want manually to add that "T-flag" should it look like this: or this: or something else? So, could you guys please explain to me what I do wrong? Thank you!

Saw a reference to Polyglot on another post would like to know what it does & where to get it. Probably some help on how to install as well Still using SCID 4.22

Hello, some of the databases I created in pgn have this attribute\status by default and I can't find the way to change it. Thanks.

After just 10 minutes trying out Scid vs. PC, I'm sold on Scid vs. PC. My main goals for Scid or Scid vs. PC is: 1) View my chess games from Chess.com 2) Step through variations easily 3) Have a chess engine (any strength is fine) show me a few variations that are possible 4) Put those variations into the PGN game Using Scid vs. PC, I was able to find my way around in about 10 minutes to accomplish those things. With Scid, I had immense trouble even finding out how to tell the chess engine to give me more than one variation and put those variations into the PGN. It also seems much easier to navigate a chess game in Scid vs. PC. For example, if I'm in a variation, and want to get back to the main game, there's a button to go back to the main game.

It may come as a surprise, but installing these software is no big deal -- as long as you make the choices I made. In this post, I keep switching the perspective ("you need to do this" vs "I did this"). I hope it won't confuse / irritate you too much. First, the system configuration, etc... I use a 1.5yr old Dell 1525 Inspiron Laptop.OK, this one was not free. I paid good money for it (about INR 36,000/-). I didn't pay for Windows because I've already been using Linux on my older computers for several years. I use Kubuntu 10.04 LTS Operating System on it. This one was and is definitely free. Windows users: No worries. It should be possible to use SCID et al., just as easily in Windows too. Linux users: If you use another flavor of Linux, the software should still work, with some minor differences in the installation procedure. For Software Package Management, I use Adept Manager. This wasn't included with the OS, but was a free download, using the default package manager (that did come with the OS). This I did over a year ago (not for the purpose of the current project). Windows users: This is something like your "Add / Remove Programs" in your System Control Panel. The main difference is that in windows that is the only software package manager. In Linux there are multiple options. Some times it is good to have choice. Sometimes not. In this case, I like the choice. In windows, most of these software come with self-installing .exe files. So you just download and run the downloaded file; no need to visit that "Add / Remove Programs". Linux users: If you use another package manager, that should be okay too. For most users, it is recommended to use a (any) package manager that goes with your Linux distro. You may not get the latest version, but it is worth compromising in that area -- unless of course, you are so serious that nothing but the latest & greatest will do for you. In that case though, I recommend that you consider using the commercial software . If you are a serious Linux developer, you do have the option of downloading the latest software and compiling it yourself (bypassing the package manager). It is not a one-time effort though. Everytime a updates/bug-fixes or a new version is released, you have to manually keep track and do it. Downloading and Installing SCID: OK, since I was using the package manager, I didn't have to search for download sites. I just searched for "chess" in my package manager search facility, selected SCID and told it to install. It was not a big download (< 5MB, if I remember right). Download & Install completed in less than 5 minutes. The latest I believe is SCID 4.2.2, but my package manager had only SCID 4.0. I didn't complain. I just didn't think it worth the trouble to get around my package manager. I didn't do any significant configuring of the sofware. I just changed the board size, piece-style and colors to suit my taste. I tried changing the fonts from the menus -- but found a bug there. It wasn't working. The main hitch was the "non proportional font" used to display the tables (in the db tree). The documentation was useless for this part. I looked around a bit and found a configuration file ~/.scid/config/options.dat. I used a text editor to find the line for fixed width font and changed it to really use a fixed width font: set fontOptions(Fixed) {{DejaVu Sans Mono} 10 normal roman} Then saved the file and restarted SCID. Bingo! I did download the 40,000 positions opening book (from: this sourceforge location) for scidlet (the built-in engine) and placed it in the directory: /usr/share/scid/scidlet/ directory. I also changed the scidlet.ini file in the same directory to use this book. But I think this step was not really necessary because I've not been using scidlet. The spellcheck file appeared useful (I am yet to see the downsides of not using it, because I started using it right-off!! ). I downloaded it from the same page as above. Used the SCID menu (under Tools) to configure it. That was the last part of installation/configuration of SCID. I might do more later, but I guess it will all be unnecessary luxury! Downloading and Installing ICOfY Base: Okay, before trying this, I tried downloading the famous Ed Schroeder's 1.74mil DB. But after several hours of aborted downloads (I don't know whether the problem was with the server or my system), I gave up. Then searched some and found the ICOfY Base (yes, the f is lower-case). The current one is called the IB109, released in 2008. Make sure you pick up the PGN one. It is about 503 MB file compressed download -- has 5 (A-E) large PGN files in it. I used by browser to download it. Uncompressed with the archive tool (Ark) that came with the OS into my local folder. I tried using the pgnscid tool that came with SCID to load these, but I must've done something wrong, because it bombed with a segmentation fault. Fortunately, there was an easier way. In SCID, first make sure you have a new (empty one is a good idea -- so that you know what exactly is in your DB) database. For this, from the opening screen, you simply do a File->New..., choose a directory and a file name. Your new blank DB is ready . Now, Tools->Import File of PGN games... is good enough. You need to do this once for each of the 5 files that come with ICOfY Base. In less than 15 minutes, all the 4 million games were in!! Yooo hooo... I was dancing with joy. Then I wasted some time just browsing through the DB just to satisfy myself that I do really have them on my system!! But my cheap-thrills can be in another post.. so I'll move on! Downloading and Installing Stockfish: Again, the lastest version I think, is 1.7.1. My package manager had 1.6. I went with my package manager just for the convenience. When I selected it, it also wanted me to download polyglot (a Winboard to UCI converter) and fruit (another chess engine). I thought for a while and felt both were unnecessary. I wasn't planning to use Rybka (I think it doesn't use UCI, but I may be wrong) and felt polyglot was included just for that. So I de-selected polyglot. I also didn't see any point why stockfish needed fruit. I just think the developers forgot to exclude it from the dependencies. I was right. When I completed the install, I didn't get any complaints from the software for either of these missing parts. Didn't take long again. Within minutes, it was done. Now, I had to plug it into SCID. That was easy too. Stockfish is a UCI engine (UCI is just a standard defined to interface chess engines with chess GUI). SCID 4.0 supports UCI directly. So in SCID, I did: Tools->Analysis Engine... In the dialog box that opened, I entered: Name:= Stockfish 1.6 Command:= stockfish Directory:= /home/sas3/.scid Selected the checkbox: "UCI". Then I clicked on the "Configure UCI Engine" button and selected in Multiple Variations:= 3 (this will give only the top 3 lines in each analysis). None of the other parameters make much sense, so I just left them be, for a time when I become an advanced user! Then I closed the windows properly (with Save/Close/whatever buttons). That's it!! I was done!!!! Now, how do I begin using it? I hope to write about it soonI hope you find this part useful.