A *HIGH QUALITY* Database?

[MikeB]

I should have added "url2file" does not run under Windows 7 64 bit. You need to run it "Windows XP mode' under Windows 7.

It has 989,771 games all played since 1998 and it should be relatively free of dupes unless the same moves were replayed in separate games. Nice collection of recent Tournaments too.

[shiv]

Databases by chessbase are quite good. The Mega database has annotations by GMs and the Big database is unannotated. They do not have duplicates and names are mostly normalized. They usually have complete information on player ratings, and usually have good game coverage. Recently, they include games by a lot of lower rated players including those with ratings of less than 1000. You can easily filter these games out if you want a high quality base.

Hugebase by the chess assistant team is not bad either. It has less GM annotated games but is cheaper.

Are these in PGN format, or in some undocumented proprietary format? I don't care about annotations, but I'm very interested in a high-quality, up-to-date and reasonably complete PGN file. The opening book for iOS Stockfish is getting old (IIRC it was created around 2004-2006), and I'd like a new, huge PGN for generating an updated book.

An undocumented proprietary format of course One can convert this format to PGN using chessbase and perhaps with chess assistant. I used to convert from cbh to pgn format in about 2 large chunks and then import into scid.

[Kurt Utzinger]

Databases by chessbase are quite good. The Mega database has annotations by GMs and the Big database is unannotated. They do not have duplicates and names are mostly normalized. They usually have complete information on player ratings, and usually have good game coverage. Recently, they include games by a lot of lower rated players including those with ratings of less than 1000. You can easily filter these games out if you want a high quality base.

Hugebase by the chess assistant team is not bad either. It has less GM annotated games but is cheaper.

Are these in PGN format, or in some undocumented proprietary format? I don't care about annotations, but I'm very interested in a high-quality, up-to-date and reasonably complete PGN file. The opening book for iOS Stockfish is getting old (IIRC it was created around 2004-2006), and I'd like a new, huge PGN for generating an updated book.

Unfortunately, the games are in the undocumented proprietary CBH format. http://www.chessbase-shop.com/en/products/5852
Kurt

[Kurt Utzinger]

And where can the "url2file.exe" be grabbed.
Kurt

[MikeB]

And where can the "url2file.exe" be grabbed.
Kurt

http://www.chami.com/

last item listed under archive "URL2FILE"

[Albert Silver]

There are scores of projects around the web-- most dead-- that seem to want to create the largest possible database of games. Same with the latest mega- and huge- and ultra-super-duper-jumbo databases that various entities sell (of which I own a few, and all are littered with errors).

Are there any HIGH QUALITY databases? By which I mean databases that are not only fully de-duped, but also have normalized player's names, have ratings for all players, only complete tournaments, etc etc etc?

I'm willing to pay for such a thing if I could do so and avoid laboriously creating one myself!

I use Mega Database 2011 by Chessbase (Big Database 2011 is the same without the 65,000 commented games). It is a very large database with 4.8 million games, and includes a one-year subscription to their update service. This service (which can be bought separately for 50 Euros) updates the database every week, with headers and whatnot cleaned up.

Regarding the lower rated games one cane find even in ChessOk's base, I had a similar complaint and was given a reply that did actually make sense. Though my personal use desires only strong players, there are equally a large number of players and coaches who want to be able to keep tabs on young players in major youth championships, for example. So in the end, the base really has to attend to the needs of all. BTW, as to correspondence play, I would recommend UltraCorr, which is the largest and best such base on the market.

[Ozymandias]

One of the 3 best sources for human games out there, BTW when can we expect an update on the 2007-2010 DB? (2011 already)

You can take a look at my pgn collection of games at my page (click www below).

It is in PGN and does not include computer games.

[perejaslav]

ICOfy Base 2010.1 (September 27, 2010)

http://icofy.blogspot.com/

4,757,277 games for free (from sourceforge.net)