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Scid vs. PC's Main Window

This section describes the main board (showing the current game), the game information area below it, and a few other widgets. Also see separate help pages about the menus, board customisations, other colours, how-to enter chess moves, keyboard shortcuts for navigating games, and drawing arrows and marks.

Right-clicking the 'Board' tab, (or the whole board in undocked mode), allows one to show/hide many elements described below. See Scid's Tip of the Day for more helplful hints.

Main Button Bar

Key bindings for each button are shown in brackets.

Toolbar

At the top of the main window is a row of small icons called the Toolbar. Hovering the mouse over each will show their name, and selecting which icons are shown is done in Options-> Toolbar. Right-clicking the Replace Game icon does a quick save.

Game Information Window

The Game Info window can be hidden/unhidden by pressing Control-i

Below the main board is general information about the current game. It includes Player Names, Ratings, Event and Site fields, and ECO codes.

If Scid can find a suitable photo file then player photos will appear here. Clicking on them will make them smaller.

The game information area also displays player photos and tablebase results.

Display options for this window are in Options-> Game Information.

Score Bar and Material Values

On the right hand side of the board the Material Balance is displayed by small chess pieces.

Beside it is a Score Bar (if enabled - toggled via Control-Shift-S), which shows the first engine's evaluation (if one is running), or a Score found in the position's comment. Score Bars are also optional for Fics observed boards and Game Browser boards. They can be configured via Options-> Score Bar menu. Evaluation time is given in milliseconds, and is the short time Scid's inbuilt engine will spend, analyzing the current board to obtain a score.

The Status Bar

The Status Bar shows information about the current database and game - including game number, game flags, and whether the game has been altered or the DB is read-only. Occasionally other information is be shown - such as matching moves (when entering moves with the keyboard) and occasional Fics notifications.

Autoplay Mode

In autoplay mode, Scid automatically plays the moves in the current game, moving forward until the end of the game. The time delay between moves can be set from the Options--> Moves menu

Right-clicking Autoplay allows autoplay to progress through all filter games.

Autoplay is also started when the game is being annotated, and pressing the autoplay button will stop annotation.