what is the best interface for chess analysis of games

[Uri Blass]

I bought chessbase17 because a chess teacher asked me to buy it and he claims that everybody use it but I wonder if it has advantages relative to free tools.

I practically mainly used arena and banksia
I understood based on reading posts that it is possible to use Chess Scid for database of games.

I know that chessbase has let is check that is based on input of users but I see that often Fritz and not Stockfish is on the top and they seem to order the lines based on engine time and not based on engine quality(I prefer analysis of stockfish for 1 minute and not analysi of Fritz for 10 minutes).

[Sylwy]

ChessBase 17 is OK. Try Chessquid PRO. I like a lot.

[Odd Gunnar Malin]

I bought chessbase17 because a chess teacher asked me to buy it and he claims that everybody use it but I wonder if it has advantages relative to free tools.

I'm sure he wasn't talking about analyzing with engine.
Take a look at this:

[Werewolf]

ChessBase 17 is OK. Try Chessquid PRO. I like a lot.

Where is v.2? It was supposed to come out in March. I think the project is dead.

[chesskobra]

By Chess Scid you mean either scid or scid vs pc? In scid vs pc you can analyse games or epd files. I have done it only a few times, so I don't remember everything. But with epd, it is very simple. Open an epd file, from tools click analyse, and it gives you option to choose engine, time per move, if you want to annotate the file or not, etc. If you want to go over a game, stop somewhere, start an engine (or multiple engines) on a position of interest, then scid vs pc can do it easily. I am sure scid can also do all this.

Other option is to use some python scripts by Ferdinand Mosca. They are easy to use. Usually as simple as

Code: Select all

python <script name> -e <engine executable name> --engine-options <threads, hash, etc> --input <pgn/epd file> --output <pgn/epd file> --movetime <time> 

I prefer command line options, when available, because I often find it difficult to search in a GUI what I want.

[Sylwy]

Where is v.2? It was supposed to come out in March. I think the project is dead.

Probable. Anyway, I like the existing version a lot. A resurrection is always possible. Main developpers are here:
============
https://www.chessquid.com/about-us/
============

[towforce]

Good video by Gotham Chess in which he demonstrates playing a game in Chess.com then clicking the "analyse" button to step through an analysis of the game just played:

[swami]

I bought chessbase17 because a chess teacher asked me to buy it and he claims that everybody use it but I wonder if it has advantages relative to free tools.

I practically mainly used arena and banksia
I understood based on reading posts that it is possible to use Chess Scid for database of games.

I know that chessbase has let is check that is based on input of users but I see that often Fritz and not Stockfish is on the top and they seem to order the lines based on engine time and not based on engine quality(I prefer analysis of stockfish for 1 minute and not analysi of Fritz for 10 minutes).

Nothing comes close to Chessbase.
There's a reason why it stands out, as it's been continually developed for so many years.

As for free alternative, Scid vs PC is good but it lacks the flexibility/convenience compared to Chessbase.

[CornfedForever]

I bought chessbase17 because a chess teacher asked me to buy it and he claims that everybody use it but I wonder if it has advantages relative to free tools.

I practically mainly used arena and banksia
I understood based on reading posts that it is possible to use Chess Scid for database of games.

I know that chessbase has let is check that is based on input of users but I see that often Fritz and not Stockfish is on the top and they seem to order the lines based on engine time and not based on engine quality(I prefer analysis of stockfish for 1 minute and not analysi of Fritz for 10 minutes).

Nothing comes close to Chessbase.
There's a reason why it stands out, as it's been continually developed for so many years.

As for free alternative, Scid vs PC is good but it lacks the flexibility/convenience compared to Chessbase.

+1. I use it every single day. Best by test as Fischer might say.

[Dann Corbit]

ChessAssistant is also nice, and Aquarium is not bad.
I use Arena a lot just because of familiarity and what I use it for (Epd analysis and game contests)
Scid has a compact game format, but even though they keep extending the capability it runs out of steam if you throw hundreds of millions of games at it.
Too bad Mattias' GUI is no longer developed. It had some nice features.
There are some others that are good for high speed contest games and other things.
I don't feel like any of them really meet my needs, so I put my data into SQL Server and use SQL queries to learn what I want to know.