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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.

Hello! I'm using Scid vs. PC on Linux (Opensuse 13.2 32bits). I tried to run an analysis using Stockfish DD but I had 2 problems: -A lot of times it annotates an empty variantion this way "()" -Some variations looked absolutely wrong (bad moves) I have seen on the Internet that the hash was 32 Mb by default and I read thats way too small, taht it should 2048 or so. So I'd like you to help me tune the rest of parameters to get Stockfish to analyse my games properly. Is it normal the "()" thing? Finally, I'd like to ask you what engine you usually use, since I hace installed Critter, Crafty, Stockfish, Phalanx, Scidlet,... but i don't know which one is better. Right now I'm experimenting with the engine tournament. We'll see which engine wins! Thank you in advance!

Hi, I'm trying to install SCID onto my laptop running the above Linux flavour. To install the latest version I downloaded 4.3 from sourceforge (as the package manager that comes with Linux only has a really old version of Scid), and when I try ./configure Scid into my SCID directory I get the following error: configure: Makefile configuration program for Scid Renaming "Makefile" to "Makefile.bak" Tcl/Tk version: 8.5 Your operating system is: Linux 3.2.0-23-generic Location of "tcl.h": /usr/include/tcl8.5 Location of "tk.h": /usr/include/tcl8.5 Location of Tcl 8.5 library: /usr/lib Location of Tk 8.5 library: /usr/libLocation of X11 library: not found Checking if your system already has zlib installed: yes. Using Makefile.conf.Not all settings could be determined!The default Makefile was written.You will need to edit it before you can compile Scid. I've found a fix here for Ubuntu 11.04, but this work around has been added to the config file already, so I'm wondering if anyone here has had any success getting it up and running on the latest version of Mint Cinnamon? I'm a bit of a noob with Linux, but I have tried to find the libx11 stuff, without much success, so any pointers would be very welcome! Thanks in advance.

Lately I've been watching the chessexplained youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEy99vNm_as In his videos his program (Fritz?) is annotating the game as he plays it, allowing him to immediately review the game after he finishes. It seems like an extremely useful feature, as long as you weren't able to see the computer's analysis as you played. Is there any way to do this with SCID? I'm using SCID vs Mac 4.12. Edit: on a related note, could anyone tell me how to remove the engine generated balance evals without removing the comment-based number evals? Chess.com's chess interface does not accept +, -, nor the D that is put at the end of some lines.

Been expiermenting with this and have some questions about the output results. Went to the stockfish site and wasn't able to find answers. Example 12...Nd4 + = red D Whait does the red D mean? 30:-0.04 Understand the -0.04 BUT what does the 30: mean? Lastly stockfish will return results on most moves but not all even though I thought I aksed it to anylize all moves (may need to recheck this). Any wordds of wisdom??????

Hello all I have recently begun using Scid and I was delighted to find the auto-annotation feature which allows me to set the engine analyzing and annotating all the games in a database. I was even more happy to find that I could supposedly have the engine create tactics puzzles for me from my own games, which could then be accessed through the Find Best Move feature. However, whenever I set the Mark Tactical Excercises option in the annotation window, I always get an error message when it reaches a tactic. I have copied an d pasted: Invalid command: sc_pos has the following minor commands: addNag bestSquare board clearNags fen getComment getNags hash html isAt isLegal isPromotion matchMoves moveNumber pgnBoard pgnOffset probe setComment side tex moves Invalid command: sc_pos has the following minor commands: addNag bestSquare board clearNags fen getComment getNags hash html isAt isLegal isPromotion matchMoves moveNumber pgnBoard pgnOffset probe setComment side tex moves while executing "sc_pos analyze -time 1000 -hashkb 32 -pawnkb 1 -searchdepth $depth " (procedure "markExercise" line 42) invoked from within "markExercise $prevscore $score "?" " (procedure "addAnnotation" line 240) invoked from within "addAnnotation" (procedure "autoplay" line 14) invoked from within "autoplay" ("after" script) I am not a great computer person, so it could be that the answer is obvious to everyone else. I cannot figure out how to fix it though, and I was wondering if everyone else had similar problems. Thanks

I have been comparing Chessbase and SCID on and off, and so far I am sticking to SCID actually because I like the Interface better. Chessbase opens new windows for everything. SCID's way of doing this as kind of tabs that you can move where you want appears more user-friendly. Still there is one feature that chessbase has and I thought I had seen in Videos of the original SCID (nod SCID vs PC):When you open chessbase it shows you an overview of all the databases you have ever opened (if you did not remove them from that view again). In SCID I have to open my database every time by navigating to them with the file explorer.I wonder if the feature is somewhere and I just overlooked it, but I cannot find it in any menu or window. Yes, I can give a custom Icon to every database. But SCID does not remember where it opened the database from. Maybe this would be a feature request I should communicate to the programmer if it is indeed not there. It would close another gap to Chessbase and improve the ease of use a lot.

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 "****")?

Anyone using this version??? I put it on another computer to try before committing. Initial screen format remindes me of ChessBase (I have the older trail version) Haven't had time to get serious with it. One initial question. If I edit a game in 4.5.2, add comments & run the Stockfish anylisis engine (save the results to the game ) will I be able to open the same game with and older version of SCID. Same concern applies to Repetoir & Tree Masks.

I maintain a large database and I get games from various sources. However I would like to look for multiple games and then remove them. How to do that?

Yesterday I downloaded SCID and it appears to be a great program. My main purpose for downloading it was in order to develop an opening repertoire. Anyway, with the amount of features SCID has (both a gift and a curse of the program, I'd say) it's hard to figure out how to do anything. So my question is how would (or can) you use SCID to build your opening repertoire? Can you, for example, enter in your rep. moves and then practice them? I'm just looking to get started with it and not anything fancy. Any tips on this and SCID in general would be helpful and appreciated.

Hi. I recently downloaded SCID vs PC and installed Stockfisk. I have been testing out how to use SCID to analyze my games (following this "tutorial" ->http://blog.chess.com/delatbabel/ubuntu-linux-and-chess----using-scid-for-analysis). I set the engine to annotate my game. The followig is an example of the annotation generated: 11...cxd4?! += D +0.80 / +1.49( 11...Nfxd5 12.dxc5 Nxf4 13.exf4 Nd7 14.Rac1 Rc8 15.Qa3 Nxc5 16.Rxc5 Rxc5 17.Qxc5 Qxd3 18.Qxe7 Qd5 19.b3 Rc8 20.Qe3 a6 21.Rc1 Rxc1+ 22.Qxc1 Bf6 23.h3 Be7 24.Qe3 += ) I assume that the text in red represents the engine's score of the position? If that is in fact the case, I am confused as to why there are 2 scores? Can someone help me understand? Thanks.

Hi, For those scratching their heads, Chessvideo.tv has a great collection of videos about SCID by a user there named Katar. First episode can be seen here (registration required, though free!). Katar really does ease in the noobs, beginning with installation and then going onto explain how to get the best from the program. (Disclaimer: I am not Katar, nor do I know him; I'm not affiliated with the above site - just thought y'all would be interested.) Enjoy!

SCID 4.4, Win 7 64bit. SCID doesn't save the analysis engine settings. i.e. if I add a new engine, then quite SCID, I have to configure the engine again when I restart SCID. Any useful, problem-related suggestions?

Hello I upgraded my Scid to version 4.4 released March 2013. Here is the link :- http://sourceforge.net/projects/scid/files/Scid/ Looks like interface has changed here is the opening screen:- Enjoy!!

hi :) i need help i have a huge database in scid with games i have played . if i want create a small database and /or export games and follow the process to do this ; at the end it is a ms dos file not pgn file that i obtain if someone know how to resolve this prob thanks to reply

Many thanks to the vidios that have been posted. Finally added another engine TOGA II by Fruit Which brings up a question. When I set up the anylisis I have to manually set the "Threshold" to 3 each time When I looked at the "Configure the UCI" I don't see any way to pre-set the threshold????? In the "Configure UCI" page there is a depth setting at 0 Any advise as to what this does??? Would a higher setting be better???

From the site we can download free progam but wich choose ? chessbase 10 - chessbase ligth 2007 chessbase ligth 2009