Chess Thread

nihil39 · Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:36 am Post subject: Chess Thread

Hi,

I'd like to use this thread as a sort of hub for the gentoo chess community. I mean: problems with setting an engine, with some particular program, discussions about the state of current chess ebuilds etc. Let me know if this sounds right.

First question:

Can someone please update the ebuild for the new version of scid? After a long time 4.4 was finally released ( http://scid.sourceforge.net/ ). Thanks.

aCOSwt · Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2013 8:11 am Post subject:

1.d4

BTW, the most efficient for getting scid 4.4 is that you fill a bump request on gentoo's bugzilla.
_________________
In theory there are no differences between theory and practice. In practice, there are.
Don't try to understand my posts. Immanuel Kant never did, he thinks that only music and laughter do not have to mean anything.

nihil39 · Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2013 9:01 am Post subject:

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465820 ← I filed the version bump request yesterday, please vote it up if you want.

Is scid the best program for analysis on linux? Can someone give some basic advice (how to analyze, find the best move etc)?

To play on FICS I use eboard, but it seems that its development stopped in 2008 (version 1.1.1). There's a fork though, it is hosted here. We can try to make an ebuild for it maybe to be included in some overlay.

aCOSwt · Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2013 10:17 am Post subject:

nihil39 · Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2013 10:32 am Post subject:

Critter is an engine, scid is a program to analyze and manage databases of games which uses engines like critter.

I'm obviously not asking for algos here... :-)

My question was more like: do you have any advice on how to analyze chess games with scid or any other programs? What do you use to accomplish this task?

I wrote scid because it seems to be the best (free as in beer and as in freedom) choice on Linux as far as I know but I'm kind a newbie in this field. I'm trying to use scid with gnuchess engine.

For the game: do you have a fics handle? Mine is nihiltrenove, I think it's better to play there rather than this kind of electronic correspondence chess. :-)

If you wish we can continue here, I'm kind of a beginner.

cgits · n00b Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 63 Location: Europe

Indeed Scid is a great piece of software. It was developed many years ago and it gives to its trained user (who has to read the user manual) the same features like commercial databases. It lacks the data, and one should find them elsewhere. My solution was to write a small script which downloads PGNs, concatenates them and converts to scid database format, from all the available TWIC issues from theweekinchess.com (1999 - today).

Currently, ChessX is also being developed and might become a very good program. It is based on Qt so it might have a more fancy GUI.

Note: the commercial program Hiarcs Chess Explorer seems to be using ChessX as its GUI.
_________________
Beware of programmers that carry screwdrivers

Logicien · Guru Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 483 Location: Montréal

Hello,

I am an expert in chess in the Fédération Québecoise des Échecs (FQE). I rich 2000 and ever had a rating of 2041, but now I have 1873. I play more on Internet now. I teach chess to, basically from kindergarden to grade six.

I ever use Scid, but not now. I remember I was not able to associate a chess engine to it and play a game.

Because Stockfish is not in the Gentoo tree, I tried some overlays to get it, but I have not been able to emerge it with them. That could be the subject of a post. So, I decide I compile it from Git: