Scid vs. PC - Using chess engines

Scid vs. PC allows you to use chess engine / engines when working with chess games.

For any move or position you can call the engine, which will evaluate the position, suggest a good or interesting continuation, or analyze the chess game noting the good and weak moves, suggesting what to play.

The longer the chess engine works, the more confident we can be in its evaluation. Scid vs. PC allows you to install multiple chess engines and use one or more of them simultaneously.

This part of the course is prepared in Scid vs. PC version 4.22 in such a way that the vast majority of this program's capabilities can be used in previous versions 4.x.

(Scid vs PC 4.0 was released in 2010).

Depending on the version of Scid vs. PC you are using dear reader, your program includes one to several engines that are integrated into Scid vs. PC.

The very good news is that...

Some of the pre-built engines for eg. Stockfish plays with a Grandmaster strength that surpasses even the playing strength of a World Chess Champion!

This means, that the results of position analysis and evaluation using the Stockfish engine will be objective and at a very, very high level.

How to use chess engines with Scid vs. PC - that's what this part of the course is about.

Let's start with...

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Coffee for Darius

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Chess engines already installed

To see a list of installed chess engines: - go to Tools - Analysis Engines

Click to enlarge (works with any image)

As you can see, Scid vs. PC version 4.22, which I use, offers several pre-installed chess engines. Each of these engines plays with the power of a champion. Critter and especially Stockfish, are chess engines with playing strength far superior to the strongest humans.

Install Chess Engine

You can install any chess engine in Scid vs. PC that uses the:

• UCI (Universal Chess Interface) protocol

• Winboard/Xboard protcol

Almost all modern, free and commercial chess engines support the UCI protocol.

To install new chess engines, download them, and click New button on Analysis Engines window.

A new window will open: Configure Engine.

To properly add a chess engine to the Scid vs. PC program, the empty boxes:

• Name

• Command

• Directory

Must be filled in.

Let's fill them in !

I am going to add a chess engine called Komodo.

First, let's fill in the first field named name by typing the name: Komodo 12

Next, click to Browse button and let's specify the location and file of the Komodo engine.

Confirm your selection by clicking on the Open button.