[Scid-users] how do I do that with SCID? (filtering; database maintenance)

[andrei r. <rae...@gm...>]

Hi,

I need some help with database filtering.  Here is what I would want to do:

I load up some large database (say the 1.74 million games
database<http://www.top-5000.nl/dl.htm?file=dl/Million%20Base%201.74.rar>).
Then, I would like to do the following:

*I) find how many times this exact position *

r1bqkbnr/pp3ppp/2n1p3/2ppP3/3P4/2P1B3/PP3PPP/RN1QKBNR b KQkq - 2 5

can be found in this database. No problem here.  I used the "search->current
board" selected 'exact position' and search in reference database was set to
'1.74 million'. The current filter was set to 'ignore'.  The search resulted
in 292 games.  So far so good.  Now, what I would like to do is

a) select only the games in which both players had an Elo of 2400+

and

b) select only the games in which Kupreichik played White.

How do I do this?

*II) create a single "reference" database for me:*

There are five large free databases out there: the 1.74 million games
database <http://www.top-5000.nl/dl.htm?file=dl/Million%20Base%201.74.rar>,
the ICOfY IB109PGN database <http://sourceforge.net/projects/icofybase/>,
the UAB CIS "enormous"
database<ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/pgn/enormous.zip.>,
the Chess Analysis Project database <http://cap.connx.com/>, and the
Encyclopedia
of Chess Openings database <http://observer.homestead.com/openings.html>.  I
suppose that many of these databases list the sames games, but with
different variations.  I would like to create a single large "main"
reference database which I could then search by various criteria.  Does it
make sense for me to do the following.

a) import all these databases into one huge SCID4 database and then
b) have run a complete 'maintenance window->cleaner' with all the fields set
to 'yes'

Would that give me a good single-source 'reference' database to do opening
reports, player reports, update weekly with TWIC, etc?

Has somebody else already done that?  Would it not be a good idea for the
SCID project to have "our own" database (based on other free databases)
available for download?

Thanks for any pointers and comments,

Andrei