PGN freeware for beginners?

All Things Chess
1

What’s good freeware (web-based is fine, download is fine) that you & your students are using right now (or have used in the past) to send pgn files back and forth? Students should be able to create PGN files, send them, and read the PGN files they get in return.

The ability to display variations is essential.

Good documentation that a bright sixth grader can understand would be appreciated. Ease of use is important: students should be able to create a text file with a pgn extension without too much juggling.

Vendor-agnostic freeware would be a plus, but isn’t essential.

Thanks!

2

I’ve used WinBoard first as a PGN reader, but found it can create files as well. It can also create information for creating a diagram which can be printed, see earlier thread.

3

Here is a free web based one, It seems to do everything except variations.

caissa.com/chess-tools/pgn-editor.php

4

SCID (scid.sourceforge.net/) is a free database program that has installers for Windows, Linux and Mac (I use Windows). It can handle PGN files without blinking an eye, but sadly might be a little too feature heavy for your purposes, giving it an at-times steep learning curve. Still, it might be worth a shot if you can’t find anything else, and would be good for students who want to use it as a more in-depth tool (it includes a few engines for analysis/training games).

5

Ouch: there doesn’t seem to be anything simple that fits the bill, (I can play shogi in WinBoard, but I can’t create variations??? Or am I missing something…?)

All three suggestions are good ones.

6

members.shaw.ca/lapides/pgnedit/pgnedit.html never used it before, just googled and came across it from

enpassant.dk/chess/softeng.htm#JAVAWEB which may have some other interesting possibilities.

but it looks to be fairly old.

7

playwitharena.com/?Welcome_to_Arena

I was doing other stuff and came across this which is free and does PGN and variations and much more.

Maybe a small learning curve, but doesn’t look that bad on the surface of it.

8

Arena looks like it!

Not much to figure out:

  • To turn off the default opponent, click the “analyze” button in the notation window
  • To enter the PGN header info (who played White, who played Black, what event, etc), Game/Game Data from the menu (or F8)
  • Right-click on a move to upgrade/downgrade variation (if the move played in the game is inadvertently entered as a variation, e.g.)
  • PGN/Save current game in PGN Format

And it’s a great & free analysis tool to boot!

THANK YOU!!

[Event “Test”]
[Site “BILL-LAPTOP”]
[Date “2013.02.25”]
[Round “?”]
[White “Good Bill”]
[Black “Bad Bill”]
[Result “1-0”]
[BlackElo “600”]
[ECO “C25”]
[Opening “Vienna”]
[Time “22:54:11”]
[Variation “2…d6 3.Bc4”]
[WhiteElo “1200”]
[TimeControl “240+6”]
[Termination “normal”]
[PlyCount “13”]
[WhiteType “human”]
[BlackType “human”]

  1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Bc4 (3. d4) 3. … Bg4 (3. … Nf6 4. Ng5) 4. Nc3 h6 5.
    Nxe5 Bxd1? (5. … dxe5 6. Qxg4) 6. Bxf7+ Ke7 7. Nd5# *