Scid

SCID stands for Shane's Chess Information Database named after its initial author, Shane Hudson.

It is a powerful, comprehensive and feature-rich utility that lets you analyze and study chess matches. It lets you research databases containing a lot of classical, competitive chess matches, while being able to conveniently browse the games and search them by moves and other various criteria. It offers a large collection of chess games that can not only be viewed and analyzed, but also edited. Therefore, thorough analysis that also involves different game endings can also be performed.

The interface is not necessarily complicated, but still quite difficult to use as it is pretty overcrowded. Any new users will need some time to get the hang of all the needed functions and features, as even finding and accessing them is not exactly easy. Anyway, there are plenty of customization possibilities that will allow tweaking and personalizing the look of the interface to suit every little personal need of its users. Simplicity is not a primary attribute or advantage of this application, but comprehensiveness. There are a lot of options, settings, tools and functions that let you control every little aspect of the game analysis. You may thoroughly analyze every game move and its impact. Even though it is complex and powerful, it is fast and responsive as it uses a special database format. Anyway, it can easily convert to and from this special database format and the standard PGN (Portable Game Notation) format.

Last but not least, this app also allows playing online chess games using the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS). I’m impressed by its many functions and features, as it truly proves to be a comprehensive chess game analysis tool that doesn’t lack anything. It is an open source tool, so trying it for yourself won’t cost you a thing.