I recently had the privilege of editing the 11th edition guide to Scholastic Chess (http://the80-20td.com/11thEditionGuideToScholasticChess-7-4-17.pdf). Within that document is a list of web pages with free and paid chess services/documents. One site in particular stands out (https://www.chesskid.com/). It is free up to a point. If a user wants to take advantage of ALL of the sites resources then there is a fee, but a lot of stuff is free all the time to all users.
Freeware in chess can do many great things. For example, TWIC Toolbox is great - it automatically downloads new TWIC files and makes them available to the database. topschach.de/chessworx/Topsc … Modul7.zip
However, in terms of the database itself, there is more that can be done instructionally with ChessBase than with some of the other freeware or less expensive databases. All will record games, and do so well but ChessBase annotates better/graphically, publishes, provides cloud functions, easy emailing functions, etc. If they are going to fundraise for software, $600 for downloaded 6x ChessBase without a games-database (may be obtained for free from various sources) may be a good investment. Perhaps for 6 copies for a school, they could get an additional discount from CB also.
Looking for freeware. It’s not safe to assume that these schools will have wifi access in all classrooms. It would be nice to drop a few hundred bucks on software per school, but absent donations, these schools simply don’t have the resources. Chicago Public Schools have been insolvent for some years: it’s a juggling act.
If there is shareware that can be licensed for under $100/school, I suppose we could find donors for that.
ChessBase can be purchased for under $100 per school. Hiarcs for $50. There used to be Chess-DB, SCID, James Coons of Wisconsin developed a database I think called ChessX. sourceforge.net/p/chessx/mailma … /29960904/
We use to have some links on our GPCF web page which pointed to free programs etc, one of which was Bill Walls Chess Page.
In the process of looking for an up to date version I stumbled across and old archived page of excuses or reasons for losing at chess. oocities.org/siliconvalley/lab/7378/lose.htm Don’t know how long it will be there but I have to say I loved this quote. “everyone watching my game agreed I was winning except my opponent”
Then I think I found a current page with some helpful things on it.
I use SCID + Stockfish in Linux, though chess is one of the few things that is better in Windows.
It takes some getting used to for longtime CB users but you can do whatever you need to do in SCID. I do not maintain a huge database of games but that should be doable in SCID.
For Windows, check out the fork SCID vs PC, which comes with Stockfish already set up: scidvspc.sourceforge.net/