World largest offline chess database.

This forum is for general discussions and questions, including Collectors Corner and anything to do with Computer chess.

Moderators: Harvey Williamson, Steve B, Watchman

Forum rules
This textbox is used to restore diagrams posted with the fen tag before the upgrade.
Post Reply
codekiddy
Member
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Nov 08, 2015 2:11 pm

World largest offline chess database.

Post by codekiddy »

Hello guys!
I've been looking for largest chess games database for some time all over the internet, and there are people who made such databases by collecting games.
Most of these free databases are not exceeding more than 3 Million games, which is of course a lot, but I wanted larger one, and looked up for commercial solutions, and found some interesting sites offering chess databases of various sizes, such as 5 Million games or even 10 Million or more games.

However these commercial solutions cost money, and that's a big problem for people who simply can't or are not willing to pay, not only that but some websites don't even sell their databases, but instead offer online query only, therefore you have no control.
So I come up with an idea to create my own FREE largest database of games that will beat all other databases found on internet!
So I started collecting OTB games played by humans (not engines, not correspondence etc.) starting from year cca 1500 up until now, that is OTB games for last 500+ years.

I managed to collect over 30 Million games so far by downloading other people databases and PGN files from various websites, merged them all into one big database and started removing duplicate games.
So far this number reduced to some 15 Million games...
I also created a project page on sourceforge to share my super-duper-jambo database with other chess players around the globe for FREE!
I've been using Scid vs PC program to manage database and therefore the database is in scid format, meaning you can download it and do with it what ever you want, such as importing more games.

Please note that this project is currently still in progress and I'm seeking for help from other chess players to collect more games and to help maintain this database!
The plan is to make the database available to everyone and more important the more people there are willing to contribute the larger database we will have, for FREE!
I'm still not sure how could all this work, so if you're interested please either give a reply here or join discussion forum on my project page to share your ideas on how to proceed with this project.


If you're a chess novice you might ask your self:
Q: Why on the earth would anyone need a chess games database?
A: You can use database to do following things:
1. Study games played by chess masters last 500 years.
2. Study openings, mid games and endgames.
3. Create high quality opening books for use by chess engines
4. Search for games played in chess history.
5. play chess against the database (ie. to learn opening variations)
6. Create opening books for specific opening or variation and use chess engine to play that specific opening.
7. Solve puzzles and much much more!

My project page:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/codekiddy-chess/
Discusion forums:
https://sourceforge.net/p/codekiddy-chess/discussion

Thank you so much for attention!
~codekiddy
Post Reply