SCID vs PC

Hi,

I was just wondering on how to best use this chess engine when analyzing a game? There are so many different tabs and suggestions that I find it pretty confusing.

Also, some of the moves the engine suggests don't make much sense? I played around with it and tried using it to play a match SCID vs SCID. That is, I moved what the computer suggested for both White and Black and followed that pattern for the entire game and somehow White ends up with a decent advantage. How does that happen?

Any feedback on the best way to use this engine would be much appreciated!

Well, SCID vs PC is a chess database program and GUI. It includes engines and can have additional ones added but isn't an engine on its own.

As to your experience with having one of the engines playing itself (essentially),  how long did you let it calculate for each move? If you took the the suggestion quickly, that could account for the result.

I have had positions where after making the suggested best move, it realizes after a while that it really wasn't a very good move after all, so you could also be seeing that if you let it calculate longer.

Ah, I see. I think the actual engine is stockfish. I am still trying to get used to using it. Apparently, after some research, I have been using it completely wrong anyway. I didn't realise you could plug in previous games and let the program play it out and show you alternative lines.

Is there a way to install newer engines? I don't now how old these ones are as I have had this program for a little while now.

I think I left it on average around 10 minutes per move so not very long I guess. Maybe that's where I was going wrong with it then. Was actually quite interesting trying to work out why it was suggesting the moves it was.

When you say after a while, how long do you mean?

For all you want to know about SCID vs PC, try this :

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/scid-vs-pc

Well, 10 minutes per move is pretty good, depending on how powerful your machine is. Though, things like the number of cores being used, hash size and number of variations can play a part.

You can add additional engines pretty easily.

When I analyse my games I do a first pass at 21 ply (10 moves by each side plus one additional move by one player). Then I filter things to blunders, poor moves and some more inaccurate ones. 

After spending some time analysing those manually I'll let the engine tell me if my analysis was accurate and sometimes I'll let that run longer but usually not much more than 30 ply (each additional ply starts taking too long for me )

Is Stockfish the best engine to use?

I also don't understand some of the things you are saying so forgive me if these are basic questions;

What do you mean by 'first pass at 21 ply'. How do you filter your search?

Also, a couple of general questions; (I realise there is a thread [thanks for the link, found some interesting stuff!] but there is so much information there that it makes it difficult for me to find exactly what I am looking for.

How do I upload PGNs (or a group of PGNs) onto my SCID vs PC database? Will they always stay there once uploaded and saved?

Is it possible for me to search the games I have loaded looking for a particular opening or sequence of moves? If so, how would I go about doing this?

Again, apologies if these are really simple questions. Thanks in advance!

Stockfish is probably the best free engine but pretty much any modern engine will give you good results. 

My filter is using the auto-annotate feature of the program in conjunction with an engine. Around 20 ply is a sweet spot for me in terms of overall analysis speed. You can set the feature to analyse to a certain depth or for a certain amount of time per move. What you decide on, if you use that particular feature, will depend some on your hardware and how long it takes.

For the program, you really should create a database first. Then, you can import a PGN or enter games into it manually. There are a couple of different ways to do it but if you have a file of games in PGN format, there is a way to import them all at once. When they are saved to the database, you can access them later easily.

Once you have all that, you can search on a number of different criteria. That feature is a bit complex so you'll want to do some testing there.

You could also join the Scid Users group on site for additional questions. It isn't terribly active but might be better than the general forums.

OK, so what is 'ply' and how do I go about changing that setting?

How do I create a database?

How do I import PGNs?

Where would I go to search through my PGNs once uploaded?

I'll join that group as well, thanks.

Ply is synonymous with half-move. e4 by white is one ply, e5 in reply is the second. Two ply make a turn, or move-pair. 

When an engine is running it will display which ply it is on in analysis. You would only configure that setting if you are running the auto-annotate feature and then, only if that is your preferred stopping metric.

I used to do 30 seconds per move but that made analysis take too long. Now, the beginning of a game takes longer but obvious moves and endgames analyze much more quickly and the overall time has decreased for most games.

Ah, I see. That makes sense.

Thanks for all your help Martin.