Useful software for OTB tournaments

Hi I am hoping to get into OTB tournaments soon. I wanted some software that will let me store all my tournament games in a database, analyse them, and give me statistics on what openings are played etc. Which software do you think is the best for this?

Chess King Pro with Houdini 2. It is great not only for analyzing but also for training

Several programs can do this.  Not sure any are "best."  A lot of it is just one's opinion.  For example, the software that I like and prefer and use might be considered terrible to someone else.

Ideally, you should try to evaluate as many different programs youself as you can yourself.

That being said, SCID vs. PC can do all of this very nicely.  And it's free. 

Check this forum for an earlier topic on this GUI, which, among other things, shows many different screenshots.

The download link is here:  http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/

I have a PGN database of all of my OTB tournament games.  (Almost 300.)

With Scid vs. PC I can use its database search capabilites to search my games for bishop of opposite colored endings, or queen vs two rook games, or games where I castled kingside and my opponent castled queenside, for example.

I can have my choice of chess engine analyze and annotate my games.

Scid vs. PC can open my PGN file and create and display a graph of rating progress.  See the attached screenshot.

I can simply review and replay my games, stepping through them one move at a time.

I can create a sub database of just the games where I played White, for example, and then check out the statistics on these game.  For example, of the 296 tournament games I've played, I've been White in 152 of them, with a record of 79 wins, 45 losses, and 28 draws.

It can do all of these things, and many, many, many more.

The best is Chess Assistant 12. It comes with 5 million games. And not only let you store your games, and analyze them with Houdini, but can create test positions, prepare on a particular opponent, add also voice and video comments, search the position, etc.

Like every database program you can specify which side has which pieces, and it will look for those positions inside the 5 million games database. I did it for some particular rook endgames I wanted to learn, and got more than 100K positions!

You can add other engines, and also ask the program to discover new opening novelties.

Houdini is pretty good if you can use it without them seeing. I actually had a player pull out a handheld chess engine during a game with me.

What do other people think? Id like to get as many opinions as possible so I can get something that a lot of OTB players are finding exeptionally good.

Scid vs PC sounds good, i take it it can show me stats of which openings are played then?

Does it also contain training etc?

Id love to see a comparison of the best software to figure out the best one for me. 

I use chessbase 11, though not cheap I think it is the best on the market

Here's an example of one of the many different reports Scid vs. PC can generate.

http://www.edcollins.com/chess/example-report.html

Creating this report was easy.  I first I loaded a database of all of my tournament games.  I then clicked TOOLS - OPENING REPORT.

That's it.  Instantly, the above report was generated.  All that I then did was save the report as an HTML file and then uploaded it to my website.

Notice this report is from the start position.  I could have made a move on the board, say 1.e4, and THEN clicked TOOLS - OPENING report.  All of the statistics and numbers generated would have been just with my games that began with 1.e4.

A few of my stats:

65% of the time my opponent and I each castle on the same side.  Only 10% of the time do we castle on different sides.

Queens were exchanged 50% of the time.

20% of the games saw a kingside pawn storm.

1.e4 is the most common opening move, occuring in 89 games, or 30% of the time.

Note that this was an opening report.  Clicking on player report gives all sorts of other statistics, when you enter a specific player name.

Can't really find a more pricise forum thread, so I will try to develope what nate 23 wrote. There is no way that chess.com or any other site can track down if a player is using software during a match. It can be installed locally, on a different computer, but any solid chess software gives complete advantage to one who uses it. Average rating of all chess.com players in standard 5, 10 and 30 min live games is around 1160, and average rating in online 1- 3 days is like 1460. I heard that players get banned for cheating, but I would like to know how and why. Thanks

mr ed colins so I would be able to find out the most common openings I encounter both as white and black. does the statistics differentiate between if you were black or white? e.g. does 1.e4 30% mean you were in that position in 30% of games or that you played that move 30% of teh time when playing white?

220ismygoal, quality is more important than price for me

chessbase product is the best for you

chessbase11

fritz 13

fritz trainer...

30% of my games saw 1.e4 played but in that particular example, it doesn't indicate WHO played them... me or my opponent.  This is because I simply asked for a report on ALL my games. 

If I just wanted to know how often "I" saw 1.e4 played against "me" as Black, I could have simply first created a sub database of all of my games where I was Black, and THEN asked for a report.

I just did so and I see that 78/144 times I saw 1.e4, or 54.1% of the time.

1.d4 is, understandly next, at 46/144 or 31.9%.

The product is free:  http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/

I prefer the software more than Fritz and Chessbase, both of which I have copies of.  It is capable of doing lots of things these programs can't do.

ok i will try it