Shane's Chess Information Database

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SCID

SCID 3.2 on Linux
Developer:	Shane Hudson
Latest release:	3.6.1 / March, 2003
OS:	Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD and probably other UNIX-like variants
Use:	Chess database
License:	GPL
Website:	scid.sourceforge.net

Shane's Chess Information Database (SCID) is a popular free UNIX, Windows, Linux, and Mac database application for viewing and maintaining databases of chess games. It supports portable game notation and its own SCID database format. Scid developement ceased a couple of years back, but updates the web site was updated in mid-2006. There are at least two other projects making use of Scid code - ChessDB and Scid-pg which is a fork of ChessDB. Scid can be used with Winboard chess engines such as Crafty and Phalanx to play chess against or to analyse games. Scid can use up to 5 piece endgame tablebases. Photographs of players may be stored in the database, so they are shown when a game is played.

Some find the interface confusing at first, but it is well worth persisting with. Once mastered one sees how logical it is. One can have multiple databases open together. There is also a scratch database, used for temporary work when the changes are not mean to be permanent. This scratch database is not saved when Scid is closed.

One can add and delete comments, variations to specific games. The tree window is particularly useful if used in conjunction with a large number of high quality chess games, which are easy to find on the internet for zero cost. This makes it possible to see how popular the particular move you played is at the highest levels of chess. For this, one must open a large database, open the Tree Window and then the window to a particular database.

Scid can classify games using the standard ECO code, but since the ECO code is very limited, Scid can use its own extensions to the ECO system. So whilst the ECO code for the any French Advance variation is C02, SCID can add its own letters which allow a more detailed analysis of openings.

One can search for specific endings, such as pawn vs. rook or rook vs. queen.

Scid has a sophisticated search method, where it is possible to specify the names of players, the result, the ECO code. So if one wanted to find all the games where Topalov played Kramnik in 2006 which were draws when Topalov was black, one could easily do so.

Scid has a maintenance window where for example one can delete twin games. (It is frequent to have the same game in a database twice if the games are downloaded from multiple sources.)

Scid can plot graphs of ratings vs. time.

Overall, SCID offers a lot of functionality.

Unlike other free chess databases such as the free version of Chessbase which is limited to just 8000 games/database, neither Scid, ChessDB or Scid-pg have any such limit.

[edit] History

Scid was registeed on SourceForge web site on 2001-05-09. Numerous updates were made, but development stopped by the original author, with the last release in March 2003. There were a few attempts to revive Scid, but in December 2006, a fork called ChessDB was registered on SourceForge. Then Scid-pg evolved a few weeks later. The main developer of ChessDB, a Dr. Kirby, has shown large quantities of C++ and Tcl code from ChessDB were taken and used in Scid-pg without acknowledgement. The Scid-pg developer, Pascal Georges has since renamed his fork as Scid, which could be confusing. At the time of this rather public disagrement between two developers, a new chess database, called ChessX was released. This uses Qt as a graphical toolkit rather than Tcl used in Scid and ChessDB.