HIARCS Chess Explorer tips

[Mark Uniacke]

Since HCE is new and has many useful features I thought I would start some regular posts to help people discover features of HCE they may not of known existed.

I will start with a basic common operation...

When HCE starts it has two main modes of operation
1) Game entry and analysis
2) Game play

Each collection of games is called a PGN database and each PGN DB has its own tab.

So for our first tip I will explain how to enter one of your own games:
1) Open (or create) a PGN database for your games (File->Open or File->New)
2) Select Game->New to get a new game starting position ready to enter the moves
3) You can now enter moves and HCE will try to help you by guessing which move you want to play
4) You can enter moves for both sides so a complete game can be entered quickly
5) If you want analysis from the computer while you are entering moves this can be done by choosing View->Analysis Explorer and a pane will open under the game notation and you can select an engine from the selector and start analysis using the computer icon next to the engine name.
6) During analysis you can get a history and stats view of the analysis by clicking on the pie chart icon in the analysis pane.
7) Once the game is entered you can save the game to the database by clicking the floppy disk icon in the top right hand corner (or Game->Save menu item)

I hope that is useful.

[PawnCustodian]

Say I've played a game against Hiarcs now and I've got my games file open. Is there an efficient way that I can filter games in one of the other databases as I scroll through my game?

[Mark Uniacke]

If you have played a game it will automatically be saved in the PlayedGames database. This can be accessed from the Play menu -> View played games. Alternatively you can open the DB from the File->Open.

Once loaded the game can be compared to any other played game in that database.

To work with the game in another database, for example to use it with TopGames, copy the game (Edit-> Copy->Game) and click on the tab with TopGames and paste (Edit->Paste->Game). The game does not need to be saved in that database.

HCE will of automatically made a opening tree out of any database you open and when you play through the game in that context it will automatic cross reference the position with any games in that database. You can also have the filter automatically set from the current position.