Yes scid is just an interface and also an ugly one, but it contains source websites through which you can download a database of 1 million games (didn't work for me) or this site is useful http://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html
SCID for dummies?
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Do I need to download the pgnmentor database, or can I just tell SCID (somehow) to reference that website without having to download anything? (I thought the days of having to download things were mostly over.) If I do download it, how to I tell SCID to look at it?
no, from pgnmentor you can download the databases and open them through scid, as far as I know scid do have an inbuilt site but you will have to download the database manually. I uninstalled scid, it's not good, I use a free version of chessbase instead.
I got my the games from my database from here:
http://www.icofy-blog.de/icofy-base/
There's two varieties of files on that site: Releases and updates. Releases are complete collections containing all the games collected by the maintainer of that site up to a certain point, updates contain newer games that have been collected since the last complete release came out. You want to download the latest release and all the updates that have been released after that.
Releases are available in several formats, two of which are relevant for you: PGN and SCID. If you download the SCID files, you should be able to just click on FILE -> OPEN in SCID and open the database like you would open a document in a word processor. If you go with the PGN files, you need to create a database yourself and then import the game scores from the PGN file. To do that, click on FILE -> NEW, select a name for your database and click on SAVE. Then, go to FILE -> OPEN and select the PGN file. In either case, you should have a pretty large workable database by that point.
Then you probably want to install the latest updates. These only come as PGNs, so after you've downloaded the files, open your database if it isn't open already (FILE -> OPEN -> Select your database), then click on FILE -> OPEN -> select the PGNs containing the updates.
Also, about forks:
SCID is an open source project, that means that anyone can download the source code, modify it, and basically create a new and different version of the original program. This is called forking, because it creates two different versions that are maintained and developed independently from each other. If I remember correctly (somebody correct me if I'm wrong EDIT: Just saw that there's several paragraphs worth of project history on the SCID vs. PC site. Turns out it was way, way more complicated than I had thought.), the original developer of SCID stopped working on the project a while ago, so somebody else came along, took the source code, forked it and created a version called SCID vs. PC. This new version introduced a couple of new features and fixed a number of bugs and usability issues. Most people I know prefer SCID vs. PC over the original SCID.
http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6461
This video is a good start. I have recently downloaded SCID, and i am more than happy with it. I own fritz, but never used the paid version of chessbase database. Currently I don't feel the need to pay $150/200 for chessbase. I have tried free version of chessbase for a while, but I am not sure its really useful for anything meaningful.
Scid is good but ugly and I can't understand the difference between SCID and SCID VS PC can anyone say me that??
please!!
Aug 22, 2020
0
#9
Harishgovindarajan wrote:
Scid is good but ugly and I can't understand the difference between SCID and SCID VS PC can anyone say me that??
please!!
Scid doesn't look too bad to me. You must be pretty demanding in the beauty department. Scid vs. PC is a fork of Scid. I guess you could try out both programs and decide for yourself which one you like better.
I'm trying to get ahold of a decent, free database (as a resource for online chess games). I currently use the ChessTempo website, but it only lets me go 10 moves into the opening (which is usually enough to get me past opening traps for most games).
I'm interested in using SCID, but my computer illiteracy is getting in the way. It sounds like SCID is really just an interface, not a database itself. I keep seeing references to forks (no idea what that is)?? Can someone clearly explain how to get a database up an running in SCID? Do I need to download SCID plus something else? Thanks!