See opening tree on scid

Hi, I installed the latest SCID to my mac, and I want to be able to see the opening table. I understand SCID does not come pre-installed with a database so i downloaded scidlet40k.sbk from https://sourceforge.net/projects/scid/files/Scid/Scidlet%20Opening%20Books/

What I am suppose to do next to import it in my SCID.

Please let me know,

Thanks.

https://sourceforge.net/p/scid/mailman/scid-users/thread/001601c4a986%247c5259a0%246401a8c0%40thelorax/#msg6308963

I dont think I am able to fully understand what is mentioned in this thread 18 years back. They are talking about windows version and the instructions dont seem to be complete.

Right now I tried creating my new database and then "database" -> "import files of pgn games"

I change the file type to all types and try to import scidlet40k.sbk but I get the following error

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Imported 482 games.
PGN errors/warnings:
(game 1, line 0) Failed to parse the move: SBK
(game 1, line 0) End of game, ignored the part after the last error.
(game 2, line 0) Failed to parse the move: 

------------------------

When I try to import database it does not give me an option of "All file types" and only allows me to import si3 and si4 and png file types.

Problem is not solved.

Thanks.

It is looking like you are trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. An opening book file is different than a game database. If my research is correct, you downloaded the opening book for the Scidlet chess engine. If you want to view an opening tree of a game collection, download pgn files. Then import them into the database.

Personally, I like to use Lichess database as it's very good for free. It doesn't have all the games that Chessbase has but it still has its merit

It's an amazing resource. It doesn't have any of the games that CB has -- except, of course, for anything played on Lichess. It's ideal for making an opening book, however, because you can filter everything down to just the best-quality games and still have many millions to work with. That's essentially what the Lichess Elite project does:

https://database.nikonoel.fr/

@OP, that's correct, the scidlet.sbk file is the opening book for the scidlet engine. If you want a games database, you'll need to find and download a games database that's either in PGN or Scid format. Scid treats a PGN database as read-only, so you'll have to convert the PGN database to Scid format if you want to make changes to the games database. (Also, a Scid database is much faster than a PGN database.)

You should be able to find at least one or two games databases in either PGN or Scid format. In case you can't, here's a few suggestions:

Caissabase (Scid format): http://caissabase.co.uk/

MillionBase 3.45 (Scid and PGN format): https://rebel13.nl/download/data.html

40H-PGN (PGN format): http://www.nk-qy.info/40h/

@OP, you can also find PGN game collections on the TWIC chess website. The file might be a zip file that you need to extract, but once you do, you import that file of PGN games into your database.

All I wanted to do was see a opening tree similar to what I can see on lichess,  using the scid platform (for my games with the computer).

Can someone please share instructions on how to accomplish that after installing scid on a mac.

Thanks in advance.

Well, the first thing you have to do is either verify that you have a database of your games, or if not, you need to create the database.

Then open the database with Scid.

To see the opening tree for your games database, click on "Windows --> Tree Window" in the Scid menu.

Hi,

Once again after 2 years I thought of getting an open source free native chess client for Mac and this thread showed up at the top of the search results. Since I know nothing about scid chess servers chess database chess books, none of the responses provided made much sense to me.

All I really want is a Mac native app which would allow me to

- play online on FICS (this I have been able to do this on scid)

- play offline with a chess engine

- see opening book with the names of all the openings and their success, like is shown in lichess

- setup the board for analysis by the chess engine

I just want these basic functionality of lichess in scid because lichess does not work on intel based Macs.

There is not one document on the internet which explains for example that for this particular version of scid follow these steps to be able to accomplish the above goals.

Because people here already have the knowhow on this, is it possible for someone to document how to accomplish the above 4 use cases on scid on Mac.

Such a document would help anyone who is looking for a native chess client for Mac (the chess program that comes pre-installed with Mac is not capable of 3 out of the 4 use cases mentioned above).

Thanks in advance to anyone who will make an effort to document how to accomplish the above 4 use cases on a fresh install of scid on Mac 12.7.

Actually I found Diamond Chess on Mac store has all the above 4 features I wanted from my native client.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/mac-64bit-unsupported/

Yes, I think so, for now I am tired of looking at these clients and just playing chess on lichess and chess.com ...

I've been testing and I agree that chess db managements are all a mess, paid options included. You can find some documentation looking up sourceforge and help pages (under F1). They will not explain every possible usecase, just the basic functionalities, though. It is not the most user friendly program, and the documentation seems to be lacking or outdated sometimes. An "opening book" is only for the engine, as far as I know. I don't know how to play an engine, you would probably first need to download the engine yourself and give it an "opening book". Once you have the engine of your choice, you can also use it for analysis. There is no separate part of the program responsible for openings in scid. You have to download the database and open the window tree (of the database) to see the most popular openings/variations and continuations. Once you have a database, you see the win-rate, can filter games by a reached position and do more cool stuff. Here's an example database: Make sure you download the right format. Scid should detect positions and you should see the appropriate names of the variations Your opening repertoire can be a separate database (or databases) with "games" being the files with moves and annotations. You can for example make a file ("game") per opening with more of a dry overview of the lines, and separate files for the variations you want to play