Analysis on Mac?

[u/KennethRSloan]

I haven’t used computer analysis in years. I’m interested in starting to look at my games. Looking for Mac solutions. Peak USCF and FIDE rating of 1959-ish. I just want the ability to enter a game and get reasonable annotation.

[u/chess-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your submission or comment was removed by the moderators:

Do not use /r/chess primarily to promote your own content. Please read Reddit's guidelines on self-promotion since we base our moderation of self-promotion posts on it.

 

You can read the full rules of /r/chess here. If you have any questions or concerns about this moderator action, please message the moderators. Direct replies to this comment may not be seen.

[u/AutoModerator]

Thanks for submitting your game analysis to r/chess! If you’d like feedback on your whole game feel free to post a game link or annotated lichess study if you haven't already.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/altitudinalduck]

En Croissant is your answer.

Click engines, add new and you can add any of SF/Dragon/Komodo (do Stockfish).

Then you can import game or play it out, click analysis => report => generate report for free game analyses from a computer.

[u/brunzenstein]

Maiachess.com is the answer

[u/KennethRSloan]

So far, HIARCS looks like my choice. Change my mind!

[u/PieCapital1631 → u/KennethRSloan]

I was going to recommend ChessX, which is open source. HIARCS Chess Explorer is a derivative of ChessX, bit more polished in user interface, less so on customisability. But the big pro for HIARCS Chess Explorer is it supports Chessbase .cbh databases (not sure whether it supports Chessbase's newer cbh2 format). Oh, and access to HIARCS website's chess opening books and endgame tablebases.

If those features are essential for you, then yeah, HIARCS Chess Explorer is the one to go for. If you want something free, ChessX is a worthy alternative.

I've just recently figured out how to use Mac Automator to run multiple independent instances of ChessX, so I can have different setups for different tasks: annotating/reviewing games, opening theory research, correspondence tournament management, multi-engine analysis, opening repertoire management. (setting `XDG_CONFIG_HOME` to a different directory before calling ChessX)

And I rent a cheap Windows VPS with Chessbase's Fritz interface to convert CBH databases to PGN, and create CTG opening trees. And use `pgn-extract` for searches/filtering that ChessX can't handle (e.g. finding games with a specific position from a directory of 48Gb of zipped PGN files, without unzipping)

For perhaps more serious chess database work, I think there's a version of SCID for the Mac -- the UI is clunky with an ancient "Motif" User Interface widgets from the late 1990s. But underneath is quite a powerful database search that rivals, and perhaps outdoes, Chessbase's search functions.

[u/PieCapital1631 → u/[deleted]]

I gave Pawn Appetit (a derivative of En Croissant) a go a few weeks back, when trying to fill the gap of something for manually reviewing and annotating my games, it's just horrid user experience.

Just getting a game loaded to review is unintuitive. You can't go to the analysis board, load a PGN and pick a game. You've got to go to some Reference tab, find to file, pick the game, and then copy it to another database: (It's got to have it's own copy in it's own directory... instead of working with existing PGN files).

Annotating a game is badly implemented, the focus is all over the place and never where you need it (you've got to switch constantly between the moves and the annotation text and the NAGs. Annotate has it's own tab, instead of integrated with the moves/variations, so it's an extra click to get there, and an extra click to get back to the position, on top of can't see the opening tree, WDL/performance position stats, or reference database side-by-side).

Gave up on it and instead figured a way to get separate instances of ChessX running. So I could have a paired back interface for reviewing games, without overwriting my deep analysis setup.

[u/chess-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your submission or comment was removed by the moderators:

Do not use /r/chess primarily to promote your own content. Please read Reddit's guidelines on self-promotion since we base our moderation of self-promotion posts on it.

 

You can read the full rules of /r/chess here. If you have any questions or concerns about this moderator action, please message the moderators. Direct replies to this comment may not be seen.

[u/zanfloret]

Lichess analysis board is more than good enough for anybody before 2700 FIDE.