Winboard, Houdini, and Stockfish HELP!!!

woaaah. i've only played through 5 games so far. but. i've noticed a pattern. i can figure out the motives behind the opening sequence of moves. but. as SOON as middle game starts. i get lost. because i try to predict the next move (in response to the opponent) i find i am wrong. the wrongness doesn't bother me. it's not knowing the reason why the played move was better.

do any of you have advice?

I dont think you can automatically open the database.

You might have noticed that under the menu there are shortcut icons on a toolbar. One drawback of Scid is it does not give you roll-over text when you hover over them. But it is well worth trying to figure out what they are.

Go to Search/header (shortcut toolbar magnifyer +abc)

Play around with stuff like White wins, Black wins, draw, ignore colours, Add to filter, reset filter etc.

I would not suggest ignoring games where your favourite opening loses, you often learn far more from these than from the wins.

I think 5 games are not enough :)

you can also download .bin opening bookюююерун are free and very extensive...

thanks again rooper. i definitely do not plan to ignore games where my favorite openings lose. you are absolutely right that one can learn far more from them. i just wish to look at the winning ones first so that while looking at the losing ones, i can say. "tsk. tsk. tsk. you shouldn't have done that."

i'll continue to play round with scid. it's an interesting program.

any thoughts on how to better understand middle game with human-like commentary and not "computer-spat" analysis? or how do i take advantage of the "computer-spat" analysis? i think my problem is i don't understand the things it spits out. i see a list of different sequence of moves but does that tell me? see what i mean?

and again. i say thanks.

Not really....

When you open the engine window, at the bottom there is a control button with a number, normally set at 1. Try changing this to a different number, 4 or 5, say, and it will give you analisys of that many moves. Also, try entering different moves in a game (just choose "discard changes' when prompted) and see what the engine makes of them.

And oh, yeah, I forgot one of my favourite features:

Set up a favourite opening line, and open the OPENING REPORT window from the tools menu. On the window tab you'll see a little arrow for a drop down menu, choose file/print to/Text (or html)

Have a look at this report, and tell me it's not really cool.....

You can actually put SCID on the flash drive to and run it from there. There are some gotcha's with getting the engines to run (haven't found a workaround for that yet); bascially the paths aren't right (they are not relative to the SCID application) so when you go to new machine the drive letters change. So if you want to use engines, just reconfigure them when running off the portable drive.

That # change gives you that many lines, not moves. Also, you can use the trial mode (? with a gavel icon) when the engine is running to play with variations, without changing the games.

wow. scid continues to intrigue me. haven't tried the opening report and the flash drive thing yet though. BUT. reading back at what i posted i can see why you don't get what i mean. lol.

here's the thing. i understand what the analysis tells me. i can see the best and worst moves for a particular position and see possible continuations. the thing i would like to be able to find out is why a certain move is best. in case i can't figure it out myself.

and martin is right. the number changes how many lines are analyzed not moves. and here i have another question. when 1 line is selected, what does the number in parenthesis at the end of each possible sequence of moves mean? seconds it took to arrive at the analysis?

I really suggest joining this group:

http://www.chess.com/groups/home/scid-users

There are people far cleverer than me, and questions eventually get answered, maybe not always the same day, but it gets there...

great. more power to me!

but for the time being my questions on scid have run it's course. i love this program. the next thing i will be exploiting is the training mode. 

i decided not to worry so much about openings and just play the games (open or semi-open. never closed). from playing through them, i should subconsciously, or consciously, learn the openings without attaching myself to any of them and at the same time learn the types of middle games and end games that result from them. 

i'll decide my favorite ones after that :-)

EDIT:oh wow. i have the most HORRID beginnings. i take that back. much studying and more playing is needed.