ADDITIONAL UTILITIES

and Chess Software

1. Convert Chessbase Files (CBH) to PGN or Si3 (scid):

Some web sites provide games to download in a chessbase format, mainly CBH and not in zipped pgn. You can convert these CBH files with the free ChessbaseLight (CBL) software, which is a kind of demo version of commercial products. ChessbaseLight as demo has some limitation as it handles files only up to 8.000 games. So a typical database with more than 500.000 games cannot be built with CBL. However, you can use CBL as a converter of CBH files to PGN which thereafter you can load in the free SCID program and convert them to Si3 (scid). Download CBL from www.chessbase.com .

Open it and at Menu>database press open and load the CBH games (select temporary symbol). The again Menu>database>New and create a new pgn database. Click on the icon of the previously opened CBH database to select it. Then go to Menu>Edit>'Copy games ....' and press it. A window appears telling you the source of copying and the number of games. A red bar below shows the copying. You will find your new PGN in the folder you had opened it as a database. This pgn can now be loaded to any program as SCID, Arena, etc. Back to CBL main window you can delete or unload the databases mentioned above, provided you have moved (copied) the new pgn away. Some older chessbase files as CBV can be converted to PGN with a DOS utility CB2PGN (put cb2pgn.exe and the cbv files in the same folder and press cb2pgn, it asks you the file names and then creates the pgn file).

2. 3D Chess Experience:

All chess playing  here is made using a two-dimensional diagram. This means that in real three-dimensional games you may have some difficulties to adapt yourself. For this reason it is advised from time to time to use a PC three-dimensional chess board to exercise.

There are several free 3D software chess games. For example Chess Free  that was mentioned in the beginning in HOW TO - I page, but this does not import PGN games and makes no analysis. What we need is a software that can import PGN files for our study. One such software with a 3D board is JOSE (to download from: http://jose-chess.sourceforge.net/ Its 3D board has a variety of settings and size-orientation settings. You can e.g. set it as a Wood Classic, etc. Left is a picture with the marble settings. It imports PGN files and has a setup board. JOSE is designed to be a Database and is Free and Unlimited.  You need to have Java in your PC to view it. See the Help File for details on how to use it. Jose is supplied with Crafty, but you can install also other inboard engines using an xml file you can ask from the Author.  Jose runs also a Forum now. As a Database has search facilities and many useful options.

JOSE FAMILY PICTURE

Another software you can use is BookUp Lite to download from bookup@coil.com This is a free to use software with limited features (offered as demo), but those features supplied free are sufficient to help us work with a good three dimensions board. There is no requirement for Active X or Java to play it. Here at right is a small picture of the 3D board. Bookup Lite offers some free books to see some games. But to play against Crafty and solve puzzles or positions see here How to use it for your own purpose:

1) Open Bookup Lite. When you open it, it calls you to open a Book. Select Cancel and close it. In its menu you will see at this start up window that  there is no 3D board selection. Fine. In Menu: Click  File>New Book.  Create this new book by saving it with a name StartPos (Starting Position). It is saved as StartPos.2MD. Click Save. Now the BOOKUP presents a) a starting chess position and b) an extended Menu with selections. Go to Commands and select 3D Diagram. (White at bottom - if you like). Now you can start playing against Crafty (and read his mind and/or use his hints from the engine window). Click the chip icon (engine) and engine analysis appear. Make your move and click under engine icon at the left side of the window one arrow to make the engine reply. Double arrow is to make engine play against itself. To the top right there are several arrows, to move back, etc.

{ The number at the top shows the numeric assessment of the diagram position. By convention a positive number means that White stands better, and a negative number indicates that Black has the advantage. The units are centipawns; an advantage of +100 means that White stands better by the equivalent of one pawn. This may not mean that White is up a pawn; rather the engine believes that the factors of king safety, space, mobility, etc. are worth a pawn.
The box immediately following the numeric assessment gives the engine's current principle variation, or suggested line of play for both sides. To the left of the Informant rate symbol are statistics on the current state of the analysis. The engine shows Nodes, or number of positions analyzed, Nodes Per Second, Seconds elapsed in this analysis, and Depth in plies searched.}

NOTE: When you open again the Bookup Lite, this time in the open book window, select StartPos.2MD and you get your start position. Remember to close the Book before exiting the program, otherwise it stores the last played position in the Book StartPos you have created.

Both above programs require that your game is imported in PGN format. If you have a puzzle to solve, or a middlegame or an endgame position to introduce in the JOSE or Bookup Lite and make the Crafty engine active, you have to introduce it in a PGN form (Jose and Bookup does not take FEN from clipboard). In this case open Arena (or Winboard) setup in Arena (or in Winboard) the position manually -or get its FEN from clipboard if you have it. Then go to Menu > Game> Export to Clipboard > as PGN. (in Winboard >File>Copy Game to Clipboard).
Back to Bookup: Menu>Edit > Grab PGN from Clipboard. Click the Crafty engine on and make your moves in the 3D Board. 

In general, if you have many positions to deal with, normally given as EPD  files, instead to convert each separately, you can convert in PGN the entire EPD file as follows in point 3 below.

Using the 3D chess board (as well as the 2D):

You can exercise using the famous 2180 positions from the test suites ``Encyclopedia of Chess Middlegames'' (ECM, 879 positions), ``Win at Chess'' (WAC, 300 positions), and ``1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices'' (WCS, 1001 positions) to download from various sites, as e.g. from http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/2640/pgn/tests/
This way, using the 3D Board, you can keep your visualization sufficiently good to play real games.

3. Convert in PGN an entire EPD file of many positions at once using the Utility:

EPD2diag: Is a Freeware utility to deal with EPD files of  positions to create diagrams, etc. as well as to save an opened EPD file with positions in a PGN file (acting in this case as an EPD to PGN converter). You can download it from    http://www.rebel.nl/epd2diag.htm  Open your EPD file, you will see all positions selectable at a window at left. If you are uncertain about their correct form press at Menu EPD>Normalize. Then click File>Export>PGN.. and you have all your positions each converted as playable game in the same PGN file. EPD2Diag has several other functions, e. g. you can set Crafty to analyze a given position (set Crafty at Options>Analyze and click EPD>Analyze).

4. Convert a collection of FEN positions to PGN:

Suppose you nave collected positions in FEN from puzzles on the net, test positions e.g. from Computer Chess Club, etc. and you want to analyze them in a chess software that either does not accept positions as FEN or accepts only one at the time. To convert your positions that you have on an editor (Notepad) save them in this notepad as "myfiles.epd". Load this epd file in above EPD2Diag program. This program accepts them as alike to epd format and converts them at once to PGN files with the procedure described above. It is better here to show some details. Suppose you have the following test positions as FEN (they can be hundreds) in Notepad editor:

4r1k1/8/2p5/2p1Rpq1/6P1/1PP4Q/P5K1/RN1r4 b - -
5K2/p2p2pp/2pQ4/rp4pr/4k1B1/n1b5/1R3P2/2n3N1 w - -
4b3/2N1P1Bn/3p2pP/n2N1kP1/6R1/7B/7p/1Kb5 w - -
........................... etc. .................................

Save them in the editor as: "Testpos.epd" (this is a text file that you can always open with the Notepad). Use the EPD2Diag program as explained above (a picture of EPD2Diag is shown below). Save the PGN file as "Testpos.pgn". Now if you open this PGN file with the Notepad you will see:

[Event "Computer Chess Test Suite"]
[Site "EPD2diag V1.5"]
[Date "2003.10.23"]
[Round "?"]
[White "?"]
[Black "?"]
[Result "*"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "4r1k1/8/2p5/2p1Rpq1/6P1/1PP4Q/P5K1/RN1r4 b - - 0 1"]

1...*

[Event "Computer Chess Test Suite"]
[Site "EPD2diag V1.5"]
[Date "2003.10.23"]
[Round "?"]
[White "?"]
[Black "?"]
[Result "*"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "5K2/p2p2pp/2pQ4/rp4pr/4k1B1/n1b5/1R3P2/2n3N1 w - - 0 1"]

1.*

[Event "Computer Chess Test Suite"]
[Site "EPD2diag V1.5"]
[Date "2003.10.23"]
[Round "?"]
[White "?"]
[Black "?"]
[Result "*"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "4b3/2N1P1Bn/3p2pP/n2N1kP1/6R1/7B/7p/1Kb5 w - - 0 1"]

1.*

--------------- etc ..................

Import now this PGN file in your chess program that accepts only PGN. You will find there all your positions to analyse.

FEN or EPD: You may note that the new version of PGN to JS program can import large EPD or FEN files and converts them in PGN -before converting them in HTML format. The PGN is created automatically with the same name of the EPD or FEN in the folder of the latter. For each EPD/FEN position, comes out a clean minimum PGN game of the form (result 0-1 means it is black to move):

[Event "?"]
[FEN "r4rk1/pp1n1pp1/2p2np1/2b5/2PBp1Pq/1PN1P2P/P1Q2PB1/R3KR2 b Q - "]
[Result "0-1"]

5. Clean large PGN Files: The database program CDB among others has a feature of 'Cleaning' a large PGN file. CDB has a good Help File and you can see how. Simply, use File menu>Convert to Clean PGN...CDB displays the File Open dialog box so you can identify the files to read, then the Save As dialog box so you can name your output cleaned PGN file. A 'Sanitization" window opens where you can select a silent deletion of those PGN that are wrong or not readable. CDB add all relevant Tags. At the same time CDB can clean your duplicate games (twins) in a given PGN file. To do this go to Menu Game>Combine new duplicate games and check it. Then go to File>Import... and import the pgn file to clean. Then go to Game>Export PGN file... and save it. At the import stage you will see on top left the number of the cleaned games in your imported PGN. CDB Homepage is probably out of use. If you cannot find CDB send a message to eurocon2000@hotmail.com to get it from this site. Following is a picture of CDB. This Database can be useful for other functions as well.

 ** Clean - Strip Comments or Variations from PGN Files: Open your PGN in free software SCID. Transfer it in the Clipbase (50.000 games per time) using Windows>Database Switcher. Select Clipbase (becomes yellow). Then got to Tools> Export All Filter Games > Export to PGN file ... Then opens a window Exporting: Select Export Comments?: NO, Export variations? YES or NO, etc, Save the striped PGN with another game. Check it with Notepad. For very large files much above 50K games, can convert them in si3, remove comments and save it as PGN. There is also the selection Edit> Strip> comments for single games. A future version of Arena shall also have the possibility to strip comments, but each game at a time and not of the entire PGN file. Strip Tags: Unecessary Tags (info in square brackets [ ] in the header of a Game) can be deleted from a file of one up to millions of games using  SCID Windows>Maintenance Window>Strip Tags. There you can select which tags to strip. After deleting the tags press compact database to delete them physically. PGN files are imported in SCID as read-only, so you have to open a 'new" scid database, transfer your PGN there, clean it and then export the game or the Filter in PGN form. Delete the provisional 'new' scid database. Read also "Hints} about SCID in the Download section.

6. Split - Add - Sort PGN Files:

- Split PGN files:In several circumstances you need to split a PGN files in smaller PGN files, either due to volume/file size problem or because you need to sort out specific games. There is no actual windows utility to do that, so one solution is to use SCID database program following the simple instructions given here.

Example: Suppose you have a PGN file with 60.000 games and you want to split it in smaller ones of 20.000 games each. Open SCID and open the 60.000 games PGN file. This opens as Read-Only, so you cannot ruin accidentally your original PGN file. Open Windows> Database Switcher, you will see your PGN file there and also selected (yellow square). Go to Menu: Search>Header and open it. In the middle is written Game Number 1 to -1. Write: 1 to 20000 (no dot) and press Search (operation on current filter must stay as: IGNORE). After the blue bar searching, look in the Database Switcher and you will see the PGN file saying 20,000/60000 (20,000 is the Filter according to SCID language).  Now go to Tools> Export Filter Games  >Export Filter to PGN file, an "Exporting" Tab appears and you make your selections, press OK (if wrong selections, the original PGN as read-only is not changed and you can re-do your operation) and save the 20,000 Games with a new name.

Now, go back to the Database Switcher and on the yellow selected PGN window right mouse click on it and select RESET FILTER so your selection now is on all 60,000 games and you can see it as all/60,000. Do not Sort the PGN at this stage. Again, as you did above, go to Menu: Search>Header and open it. In the middle is written Game Number 1 to -1. Write now: 20001 to 20000 (no dot) and press search (operation on current filter must stay: IGNORE). After the blue bar searching, look in the Database Switcher and you will see the PGN file saying 20,000/60000, but this time the 20,000 games are other ones. Save them as above with a different name. Note that when in the Header Search you write in Game Number for example 546 to 382, the filter created includes the games No 546 and 382, so for a next search of following games you have to write 547 to whatever. At the end, close Filter and exit SCID.

Note here that you can SPLIT your PGN file in various ways. In the Search Header select for instance the Year periods, or specific Players, etc.  You can SORT the PGN file (Maintenance Window > Sort) while no other operation as delete etc. is possible as it is a read-only file. Splitting your PGN you can also put/select in your Search Header additional requests as e.g.. first you search games of Kasparov with Operation on Current Filter: "IGNORE (Reset Filter)" and you get them in the Filter, secondly, you want only the ones of a specific Opening, so, in the Header Search mow select  Operation on Current Filter: "AND (Restrict Current Filter)", set in the ECO Codes window the Opening you search (press button to see the Codes) e.g. 1.e4 and press Search. Look now in the Database Switcher and you will see a smaller number of games. Export them (this filter) as a PGN file.
In the same way you can ADD requests. For example you have all games of Kasparov and you want to add in this PGN also all games of Karpov that you have in this PGN file. In this case you search Kasparov games as before and as next you select Operation on Current Filter: "OR (Add to Filter)" and search Karpov files. After search the number of games in your Database Switcher is increased as to the games of Kasparov are added those of Karpov. You can Sort all these as you like (per ECO, year, etc.) and save this set of games (filter) with a new PGN name. Attention: If you search just a Player' games set after his name in the Header Search: Ignore Colors (to find all games of the Player and not only the ones he played as white).

- Add PGN files: There was a Dos utility described in How-To III that it does this fast when you have many or large PGN files. If you want to do it with SCID you can do it but with up to 50,000 files using its particular feature called CLIPBASE which can only accept up to 50,000 games. In this case, open the PGN files (up to 4 per time). Open Windows> Database Switcher. You will see them there. Now with left mouse drag and drop them in the SCID Clipbase Window of the Database Switcher, select the Clipbase and export it as a new PGN file. Another Windows application is PGN PLUS to get from  www.wbholmes.de  You can add 2 PGN files of any size at a time but you can append any new one to an existing one. For more special works on very large PGN files, this requires some time as you should use a Database program as SCID, etc, convert the PGN file in the database format, do all your operations and convert (export) the final file in PGN format. 

- Sort PGN files: Easily done with SCID, as explained above in Split PGN files.

(You can see more on SCID use HERE).

7. The use of JAVA programs:

Java based chess programs are mainly used for web publishing, although some of them can be used off line if you want to use them as Game Viewers, etc. Java programs description will be found here in the pages of the section Chess Publishing. Such software is PGN2JS, Jose, MyChessViwerer22, Jester, Lokasoft, etc.

8. View and  to Create FICS-'Lecturebot' -style files.

 A non-Java free chess program for this purpose is WINBOT,  to download from  http://webplaza.pt.lu/public/ckaber. Together with the program you obtain a series of lectures (tactics) that you can see setting the time of viewing it at wish. There is a Readme Doc with full instructions. The program works also with Win XP. With this program you can also create lectures or annotate a game with an easy and fast way. The lectures created are saved as text (*.txt) file.

9. Colours for your Chessboard and Pieces.

There is a free Utility that helps you to select the desired colour for your Chessboard (for black and white) and your Pieces. This is Pixie, to download from  http://www.nattyware.com. Pixie is a colour spy plus a mouse tracker. Run Pixie, simply point to a colour you want to copy and it will tell you the RGB, hex, HTML, CMYK and HSV values of that colour. You can then use these values to reproduce the colour in your favorite Chess programs. To change a colour of your Chess board open the Colour Mixer window and set the values Pixie has found out for your desired colour.

10. Chess Diagrams: Print or Export.

Here is a list of several Chess programs and what they can do in producing diagrams. There are many diagram options to select. You can try some of them to see what fits you best. One selection can be:

Print: CBLight, Arena (here you can print together many positions of a game if you mark the positions of a game clicking right mouse button on the game list).
Export HTML: PGN to JS, EPD2Diag, FullChess
Export RTF (Rich Text Format): CBLight, Arena, ChessPad
Export Picture: Arena, EPD2Diag, LChess,
Write-Paint on Board: Wilhelm
- In case of RFT selection, you need to have installed chess fonts (to get from http://www.enpassant.dk/chess/fonteng.htm).
- There is an attempt here to give a brief description of what known Free programs can do. Please send us a correction, if   needed,  for the related features of these programs.
Each known program provides:
SCID: Latex, HTML
ARENA: prints multiple diagrams, exports to Word or FrontPage (for HTML) - exports  coloured BMP.
MateMaster: Prints, exports bmp no colours
MatPlus: export diagram to clipboard (word, etc)
Problemist: prints diagrams
CB Light: RFT, TTfonts.
LChess-Lokasoft: prints, exports board as gif with coordinates
BookUp Lite: prints, exports diagram (fonts) or bmp
ChessDiag: bmp, NPG (not pgn) HTML, RTF (fonts?).
Fullchess Feneditor: exports bmp, NPG, HTML
EPD2Diag: HTML, RTF, NPG, BMP
GenDiag: HTML
CHESSPAD: BMP, no coord, RFT, HTM
WIlhelm: Write and paint on board -export bitmap
PGN to JS: HTML

 Move now to Additional Utilities Part 2 

Return to HOW TO - III

Return to the HOMEPAGE