SCID vs PC

For me, right-clicking on the board doesn't seem to bring up a menu.  (Windows user here).   But OPTIONS - GAME INFORMATION and then checking or unchecking TOGGLE COORDINATES works for me.

SCID website just provides you the source code, to install it in ubuntu, you need to compile it on your own (like linking other necessary codes).

The following tutorial helped me:

 https://plus.google.com/+TedSummers/posts/CKAXosobyGH

Do as it says from the start, dont miss a step.

It will take time, & you need to be very precise.

Hope, this helps. 

I have Scid vs PC 4.11 for Mac all work fine but when I open a DB it is very very  slow to change directory.

someone has the same problem?

thx

The Steps are tedious, but do them right and you have a neat install (without any piece or engine problem).

I recently installed it. (Ubuntu: 12.04 LTS). Ask me, if you get stuck in any of the steps.

@ vpillay.  I have followed the step by step instruction given by Tedsummers on his blog. I could install scidvspc and get it to work, but i am unable to get more pieces, unable to have shortcut for scid. i have to go to terminal always and load it.

@ Edcollins, right clicking on the board works even on windows.... I use windows and ubuntu both.

Thanks.  Right-clicking on the actual board, or off to the side of it, doesn't work for me.  I wonder why.  However, I did discover that if I right-click on the board TAB, (up to the left and near the top) then THAT will bring up a sub menu with TOGGLE COORDINATES available as one of the options.

A few earlier versions I still have worked the same... right-clicking on the board did nothing.  However, versions 4.7 DID bring up a menu when I right-clicked on that board.   But with that version I don't have a separate tab for the board.

What's the fastest / easiest way to add my finished game, as in the one I just finished playing on FICS, to an existing database? I have a fairly small DB of all my finished FICS games and I'd like to quickly add each game immediately after I finish one.

If you use BabasChess, ctrl+shift+C to copy pgn to clipboard, then import it in scidvspc with ctrl+shift+i.

You can also just download all of your games at once from ficsgames.org.

I have an alternative method than DunnoItAlls idea, which works too.

First, a question... what client / interface are you using when you play on FICS?

The better clients all (should) have the ability to APPEND all of the games you play to an specified existing pgn file on your hard drive.  WinBoard, for example can do this.  This way, you have no games to download and nothing to do... the last game you played is automatically saved on your own computer after the game is finished.

And if you use a shortcut to load Scid vs. PC, you can tell the program to automatically load a specific pgn file upon startup.  (It's my last tip on this page.)

Combining both of these ideas/tips, you can accomplish your task in exactly zero steps.  As soon as you're done playing on FICS, you click on your Scid vs. PC shortcut and viola!  There's your pgn database already loaded, with the most recent game you just played seconds ago as part of it.

You can't get any faster or easier than "zero steps." 

:thumbsup:

Only thing I would mention is that it will not be in scid's database format that way.  PGN should be fine for that type of database, though.

Correct.  For very large databases, (hundreds of thousands or millions of games) you definitely want to take advanted of the Scic internal database format. 

For smaller databases, loading and working with pgn files should be fine on most all of today's systems.  It should not take any noticeable time to load, search, etc.

I've been using Scid 4.4 with Houdini_15a_x64 for a few months now, and just downloaded Scid vs PC 4.11.

However with Scid vs PC 4.1, I cannot seem to get the engine to advance to the next move of a pgn game file. Never had this problem with Scid 4.4. Neither Houdini nor Stockfish will advance to the next move of the game file to analyze, if I have it set for 5 sec per move analysis or 10 ply depth analysis on Houdini. 

I am running Windows 7 on a 5i processor, 6GB of ram.

I must be doing something obvious and stupid wrong...but I've been at this for hours, trying all kinds of options, and I cannot get an engine to advance to the next move in analysis. If I advance to the next move myself, the engine starts to analyze that move. I even tried uninstalling Scid 4.4, but that didn't make any difference.

Help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Happy Holidays.

I hadn't yet tried this with version 4.11, and so I suspected a bug might have popped up with this feature.  However, it seems to be working fine for me.

• Load your PGN file.
• Select/load the game you wish to have your engine analyze.
• Start / select your preferred engine.  (Houdini.)
• Immediately stop it for a moment.  (Yea, I'm not crazy about having to start it and stop it, but I think that's the only wayt to proceed.)
• From that engine output window that appears when you start the engine, now select the Annotate Icon (a clipboard with a pencil), located immediately to the right of that lock icon.  Be sure that lock icon is NOT depressed.  That locks the engine to the current position.
• Select your preferred annotation options.
• Click Ok.

That seems to be it.  As I type this I'm watching Houdini step though the game I selected, my last otb rated game, making the moves automatically on the board, and analyzing each of my moves for the desired amount of time.  (Just 5 seconds for this test.)

To view the analysis, open the PGN window.

If those steps don't work for you, I'm not sure what you're doing wrong.

To analyze in batch mode, follow the steps near the bottom of this page.

It may be a problem with version 4.11.

I uninstalled 4.11 and downloaded 4.10, installed it and ran it, no problems.

I reinstalled 4.11 and the problem came back.

Too bad.

4.11 has a nice feature to limit the search of Houdini 15a by depth, rather than by time. 4.10 doesn't seem to have this feature.

At least Scid vs PC 4.10 works like Scid 4.4.

Now I'll concerntrate on why people seem to like Scid vs PC better than Scid.

Thanks for your help.

In docked mode, you can right click the main board tab to access this menu.

Re general anaylsis problems, I think Houdini aggresively hogs the CPU.

Perhaps selecting Tools->AnalysisEngines->LowCPUPriority should fix this issue.

Re the Annotation Depth feature - this feature needs more work, and if you're having problems, select a higher depth, or use per-time control.

Testing is complicated by engines caching PV from previous runs, so probably best to do Depth Annotation testing on new games, or to clear the engine cache.

Hello, i have two questions.

1
can someone let me know how to add the opening books to Scid Vs Pc.

I downloaded the 40000 book at the bottom of the page here from Scid - Downloads and added it to the books folder in Scids program files but its not showing up in ECO searches.

2
How do I search for games by a player using  a specific opening. i tried setting up a search using General in the search menu but it never returns anything.

Thanks for any help offered and thanks to the developers who provide the program.

(1)  Well, you should just be able to point to the folder where you polyglot books are.  (They must be polyglot books.  (These files have a .bin extension.)

OPTIONS - BOOKS DIRECTORY

To confirm the program sees them, click on TOOLS and then BOOK TUNING.  You should see a window appear, giving you a dropdown box that allows you to select any book in that directory.  You can then tune it as desired.

(2)  Assume you wanted to pull up a list of all of Karpov's Caro-Kann games he won, when he was Black, that lasted less than 40 moves.

Load your database.
Click SEARCH - GENERAL
Enter Karpov in the Black box.
Click NO to ignore Colors.
Cliok 0-1 for the result and uncheck the others.
Click the CHOOSE ECO CODE button, and select the B10-B19, the opening you're interested in.
Enter 0 - 80 in the Game Length (Half moves) box.
Click SEARCH

One database I have returned 37 such games.

Sometimes, for complex searches, I found out it was helpful / easier to break up the search into two or more different searches.  The above isn't a good example, because you can see we did it in one search, but we could have first just pulled up a list of all of Karpov's games, and then from that smaller database searched further.  Or we could have performed a current board search, after setting up an early Caro-Kann position, and then from there searched further, etc.

I will admit it does take a little bit of practice before you feel comfortable in searching.

Note:  When searching, don't uncheck ALL the game results!  (1-0, 0-1, etc.)  You need at least one active, or your search will return nothing.