SCID tutorial?

I'm a new user to SCID (just downloaded it three days ago.) This is the first database I've tried, so I'm pretty unfamiliar with how they work. I guess I'm just feeling my way around.

Is there a decent tutorial out there somewhere for SCID?

One thing I am trying to do is have SCID analyse my games and have the complete analysis inbedded in the game file. Is it even possible? Perhaps I am missing something obvious.

Well anyway, if anyone can point me in a direction to learn more about this software, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Nimzovich. I found those sites, but for the most part, are not all that helpful. I did use the "Free as in Chess" site for some basic usage, but the "official" tutorial at sourceforge is practically more incomplete than complete. 15 of the 31 topics at that site are "Not Started."

If there are other resources out there, it might be a bit more helpful.

Not sure how active it is, but there is a SCID users group here.

Thanks rigamagician. I joined the group and will poke around to see what I can learn.

Assuming you want an engine to annotate for you  its tools analysis engine and then choose the engine. This opens the analysis window from which one of the icons on bottom is for "Annotate" that will allow you save the engine analysis to the game file. You will have to save it when finished ... though you can also auto annotate which allows you to do multiple games in the db.

The help in scid 4.0 ( assuming thats what you have) will help you with some of what you need but you are pretty much on your own to discover quite a lot of functionality which is not that "obvious" to see.

These are two good intro tutorials on how to use SCID:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6461

http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5532

 Thanks for these gmonster.  The first link in particular is very very helpful!

in the help tab in scid, there is an index, its fairly comprehensive as what you can do, etc.  chessbase software (i have fritz only and at one time used cbase light) is aesthetically more pleasing, but functionally they are similar and in fact scid database searches are very fast as long as you keep database sizes under 2 million games. u can sort games by opening, position, ECO, etc. plus i like the cleaner function (deletes twin games, etc.) and player search and statistics, etc. cool stuff.

I'm still a bit green on the whole database thing, so I admit there's been a learning curve just using the thing.   The vids are nice because they walk you through it.   I'm still not fluent with it.

My main purpose is to store my games, and compare what Master are doing in their games as opposed to what I'm doing in mine.  I really wish someone would do some more tutorials on SCID or any database for that matter, just to see how its being used.   I'm still scared to use delete twin games for e.g., because I'm not real sure exactly what it's going to delete.    I really need to dig into the help index I guess.

I suggest if you have specific questions, ask in the SCID user's forum.

Just a few tips, from my point of view:

Find a large collection of quality games, which you can use as a reference.

Do not store your own games to this database, save them seperately. The reason for this is that like most players, you often play the same openings, and as your games start increasing, you skew the results of your database.

If you want to compare, 1st open your reference base, and a tree window for that base. Now open the database for your own games.

As you step through the moves, the tree window shows you how often that move has been played, until you eventually reach a point where you game deviates.

Stockfish Engine works very well with SCID, you can use this to analyze your games, blunder check etc.