Darius
- 4 min read

Scid vs. PC - Annotating games

I mostly play chess online. This is a convenient and quick way to participate in a chess tournament or to spend time with a friend chatting and playing chess in a suitable online location.

The database of my chess games currently contains over 3000 games and is an excellent material for analysis and consideration aimed at improving the quality of my chess play.

There is no point in making mistakes if we are not going to learn from them.

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).

How to do annotations - that's what this part of the course is about.

Let's start with...

Coffee for Darius

Annotating game

When reviewing a completed chess game or when entering moves, Scid vs. PC allows you to add explanations to variants, comments, move ratings (!, !!, ?, ?!, etc.) and positions (+-, ±, -+, =, etc.).

Click to enlarge (works with any image)

In toolbar select Windows, then click Comment Editor.

A palette of different symbols will be displayed.

Using the Comment Editor, you can select and add the appropriate symbol for your chess game notation.

You can also recall these symbols by right-clicking on the move and selecting Comment Editor.

After adding the ?! symbol to black's thirteenth move and click Apply button, the notation looks like this:

Adding text commentary and variations

To enter a variation, select Edit on the toolbar and click Add Variation...

Or you can click +V icon.

When you are finished entering a variation, you can click on any field notation (or outside the variation).

Excellent!

Here is the new variation ( 13...Kh8 14.Bxf5 b5 ) after its entry:

To add a text comment, in the Comment Editor window, below the symbol field is a field where you can enter a text comment.

After typing the comment and clicking Apply button, we should get the following notation:

Comments may also exist at the start of a game or variation. To add a comment prefixing a variation go to the variation's first move; then move back one move before entering the comment.

In addition to text comments, Scid can also draw colour symbols and arrows on the board. These can be drawn straight onto the main board, or more detailed drawings can be made in the Comment Editor by pressing icon:

to show/hide a small board and diagram:

Arrows can be drawn in two ways - In the Main Board, hold Control then click on the start square and then end square. Or in the Comment Editor, arrows can be drawn (and erased) by dragging between two squares. The arrow width and length can be altered in the Comment Editor.

Colouring Squares

Similarly, hold Shift and click on the main board to colour a square, or click on any square in the Comment Editor board to add the selected colour/mark.

The comments associated with these diagrams are visible as special % codes in the PGN window, but can be hidden by selecting "Hide Square/Arrow Codes" in the PGN window Options.

Deleting variation.

After right-clicking a variation with 18,,,c5 choose Delete Variation.

A variation of move eighteen has been removed from the notation.

Promoting variation.

When you click on the variation and select Promote Variation, the selected variation will be moved up one step in the chess notation of that chess game.

After promoting the variation, the notation looks exactly like this:

Insert diagram

It is possible to insert a diagram into the chess notation for each selected move.

In the commented chess game in this case, after black's move 13...f4 we will insert a chess diagram.

Click on the move 13...f4 in the PGN window.
In the Comment Editor window, click on the letter D

The inserted diagram will not be visible in the PGN window.

The inserted diagram will be visible when you export the chess game to an HTML file or to an HTML and JavaScript file.

To do this, select Tools - Export Current Game - Export Game to HTML from the toolbar

After opening the file, in the newly inserted diagram we see the position created after black's thirteenth move 13...f4.

If you want to delete all comments from PGN window, you need to select Edit - Strip - Comments from the toolbar.

After that, the notation looks like this:

Insert novelties.

You can label yourself a move that you think is novelty-critical in the opening. For example, I will mark the move 9...Rb8 as a novelty.

To do so, click on the move of your choice (in this case 9...Rb8) and in the Comment Editor window select N.

Then, after confirming with Apply button, the entry in the PGN window looks like this:

Using Scid vs. PC we can add annotations to chess games in many different ways described above in the course content.

This is to make the annotations on chess games as clear and attractive as possible, and to help understand the moves made and the flow of the chess games played.