From: "World Chess Championship", INTERNET:newsletter@mark-weeks.com Date: 01/01/16, 18:14 Re: Chess History on the Web (2001 no.2) Site review - Britbase (and cousins) Last year, in Chess History on the Web (2000 no.10), we looked at two sites -- one by Lars Balzer and one by Klaus Wrba -- dedicated to Chess Downloads. One of my personal discoveries during that review was the Britbase family of archive sites and I made a note to take a closer look at these sites when time permitted. The Britbase ('British chess game archive') site is at address... http://www.bcmchess.co.uk/britbase/ ...where we find 'Free downloads of British games available here in Zipped PGN format'. The site is a part of the British Chess Magazine site at www.bcmchess.co.uk. On the front page of Britbase we learn that its founder and archivist is John Saunders. A reference at... http://www.circuit.demon.co.uk/links.htm ...gives contact information for Saunders and remarks, 'Runs an excellent web site at www.bcmchess.co.uk'. The Britbase page says, 'BRITBASE is a national archive of British chess tournament games in PGN format. [...] I am pleased to say that many other people worldwide are now collecting and making available chess databases on the web. [...] National based databases have an advantage over worldwide archives in that the archivists are "closer to the ground" and can provide greater assurance that the data is accurate, names & identities correct, etc. Remember - quality, not quantity!' The section 'Notes & Policies' explains what falls under the definition of 'British' and provides guidelines for respecting intellectual property and copyright. The archive is organized in the most straightforward way. One page is for tournaments from the 1920s, another for the 1930s, and so on. I loaded the page sources into a database and counted 525 events plus three links for photo pages. Of the events, 246 had associated ZIP files containing games from the event. I'm missing some games from my Anand and Kasparov collections and hoped to find them on the site. For Anand, I looked for a 1987 match with Levitt and a 1990 tournament in Manchester/Prestwich, but found neither. Having a few unidentified games from 1985-86, I downloaded all six ZIP files from those years, looked for Anand, and found nothing. I also need details on a 1987 match that Kasparov played with Short in London, but this was not in the archive. I suspect that it was an exhibition match. One of the valuable features of the Britbase family is that the sites link to each other. Since no two sites have the same list of related links, I guess this is done informally, which means that the site archivists follow the others' activities. I searched through Balzer's list of 164 links for descriptions 'like *britbase*' and found 34 entries, which I merged with the Britbase list of 18 sites. How are these others sites structured? RUSBASE at... http://www.ruschess.com/Rusbase/main.html ...covers only major events held on Russian/Soviet territory. It lists 14 World championships (1896-1986), 18 Candidates' matches (1965-1986), 3 Interzonals (1973-1982), 1 European Team Championship (1977), and 11 USSR Championships (1934-1976). These last span the 9th championship through the 44th. This means that the great bulk of USSR chess history remains to be made available on the Web; it is a huge task which may never be done. Considerably more advanced is the Yugoslavian Chess Games Database (YUBASE) at... http://user.tninet.se/~rhl458j/yubase/ ...with chess legends, Yugoslav championships, tournaments, team matches, individual matches, World & European championships on Yugoslav territory, and Olympiads. 'Chess legends' include the careers of 19 players, including Dr. Milan Vidmar (1885-1962). After merging the Yubase links with the links I had already collected from the Britbase and Balzer sites, I decided that wandering at random through the sites was not a very efficient way to look at the family. I decided to approach the subject more methodically. One Yubase section summarizes all Olympiads, starting with the 1924 Paris event for men and the 1957 Emmen (Netherlands) event for women. The summary lists the three top teams, which helped me to calculate which countries which have won the most medals in official Olympiads. Those which have won five or more medals in the 34 official Olympiads are:- Tot Country 1st 2nd 3rd 19 USSR 18 1 - 16 USA 5 5 6 13 Yugoslavia 1 6 6 10 Hungary 3 5 2 7 Poland 1 2 4 6 England - 3 3 5 Russia 5 - - 5 Argentina - 3 2 We've already looked at England, USSR (including Russia), and Yugoslavia. What about the others? The USA and Hungary have no Britbase links. I performed a few Web searches to find archives for these two sites. The best I could find for the USA was... http://www.uschess.org/features/yearbook/yearbook98/ ...which, as the address implies, is a recent United States Federation (USCF) yearbook. It lists the names of champions without giving crosstables, games, or other details. I found nothing for Hungary. This may be a language problem; if a site exists in the Hungarian language, I'm not likely to find it by searching on English words like 'chess championships'. Polish Chess Tournaments are covered by POLBASE at... http://members.nbci.com/polbase/english.htm ..although there is a newer version at... http://republika.pl/polbase/english.htm ...The older version at members.nbci.com is still alive and says, 'Database contain 42 Ch, 30 ol and 8 It (6.06.2000)'. The newer version says, 'Database contain 57 Ch, 31 olympiad and 51 It (30.12.2000)', which allows us to see the evolution of the site over the last half year. The site covers Polish championships, Polish players at the Olympiads, and international tournaments. There are also sections for Akiba Rubinstein (12.12.1882 - 14.03.1961), the 37 Polanica Zdroj tournaments (Rubinstein Memorial), and Polish champions (Dawid Przepiórka 1926 through Michal Krasenkow 2000). Much of the text material is in Polish. ARGBASE is linked from BRITBASE at... http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Mound/7762/jag/base1.htm ...where there are 56.297 games classified by the year in which they were played. The site's 'Salón de la Fama' covers the careers of Miguel Najdorf (1890 games) and Oscar Panno (1611 games). 'Argentina en las Olimpíadas' provides details about Argentine participation in the Olympiads, like team members. ArgBase has no links to other sites, so I decided to look around the neighborhood. A parent directory points to the 'Best Chess Related Site at Geocities'... http://www.geocities.com/~ajeinteg/ ...The first time I accessed this site, I received an error message -- 'Whoops! We can't find your page! The web page you are trying to access doesn't exist on Yahoo! GeoCities.'. A few days later the address worked and I discovered that the site is 'Círculo de Ajedrecistas Postales Argentinos' (CAPA), for Argentine correspondence players. This site links to 'Ajedrez de Estilo' with two addresses... 1) http://www.ajedrez-de-estilo.com.ar which redirects to http://us2.toservers.com/ajedrez-de-estilo.com.ar/ade/index.htm and 2) http://ajedrez.w3.to which seems to be the same as us2.toservers.com with a bottom frame ...This site has a links page at /jag/links.htm. I noted that 'jag' means 'Julio Alberto González', who seems to be at least partly responsible for most of the Spanish language sites in the Britbase family. The links page points to 'ARG-Base' at /jag/base1.htm, which returns a 'not found on this server' error message. It also links to 'América-Base' at /jag/ambase/ambase.htm (89.256 partidas). This page lists games collections for 18 countries:- Argentina 56.252 Bolivia 18 Brasil 6.846 Canadá 5.308 Colombia 2.421 Costa Rica 621 Cuba 2.690 Chile 1.431 Ecuador 138 Estados Unidos 5.710 México 1.746 Panamá 100 Paraguay 790 Perú 1.654 Puerto Rico 164 Trinidad Tobago 219 Uruguay 1.376 Venezuela 1.132 Other countries are listed, but have no information. The 'Argentina' reference points to /jag/base1.htm, which is the broken link that we just saw. The top of the same page has a navigation bar which points to 'ARG-Base' at... http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Mound/7762/jag/base1.htm ...which was our starting point for Argentina. The 'JAG' connection popped up on another link from BRITBASE to ESPBASE... http://www.geocities.com/Augusta/Links/5245/ ...'Base de partidas de España, por Arturo González Pruneda y Julio Alberto González, Ultima actualización: 12/10/1999'. This is an unfinished work as the database covers only 1800-1939 (270 games) and 1998-1999 (7.928 games). ESPbase links to 'DiarioAjedrez' at w3.to/ajelibre/, which redirects to www.geocities.com/gonzalez_6620/ -- 'AJELIBRE - Dirección: Julio Alberto González, (Buenos Aires) ARGENTINA' -- another JAG site. There is a 'Links' section at the top of the page which lists many other sites, but I didn't have time to look at them. The Balzer & YUBASE sites link to many Britbase cousins with addresses like... http://www.ajedrez-de-estilo.com.ar/ade/jag/ambase/ber-base.htm ...which seems to be another 'JAG' site. The first time I tried this address, I received an error message 'Not Found. The requested URL was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.' The link was OK a few days later, when I discovered that the page was marked 'EN CONSTRUCCION' and had no other information. Another page on the site is ... http://www.ajedrez-de-estilo.com.ar/ade/jag/ambase/usa-base.htm ...USABASE, 'Partidas de Ajedrez de Estados Unidos, por Adolfo Bórmida'. Only later did I realize that this was the same page already seen under 'América-Base'. While exploring these sites I found what seemed to be a few older versions of the sites I've just covered. There is another ARGbase at... http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Track/2545/ ...'Base de Partidas Argentinas, Idea y creación: Julio Alberto González, Base actual 12.865 (Partidas)'. There is another America-Base at... http://www.geocities.com/Augusta/Links/5245/america.htm ...'Base de partidas americanas, por Julio Alberto González, Ultima actualización: 27/09/1999'. This page lists:- Argentina 6.250 Canadá 6.328 Colombia 3.600 Ecuador 742 Guatemala 1.303 Panamá 120 Puerto Rico 264 As with the first America-Base site, many other countries are listed without further information. It had taken me several hours to explore these links, because there is a problem with the concept. It may be a nitpick, but I saw with both Polbase and Argbase that the combination of -- (1) old, unmaintained versions, (2) broken links, (3) sites which are frequently out of service, and (4) pages under construction -- means lower confidence for visitors. In the case of America-Base, which of the two versions is more up to date? It would seem to be the first page, because there are more countries listed with games and because Argentina has more games (56.252 vs. 6.250). Of the other five countries on both lists -- Canada (5.308 games vs. 6.328), Colombia (2.421 vs. 3.600), Ecuador (138 vs. 742), Panama (100 vs. 120), and Puerto Rico (164 vs. 264) -- the second list has more games. Enough of that; let's move on. Other countries which have won more than one Olympiad medal are:- Tot Country 1st 2nd 3rd 3 Czechoslovakia - 2 1 3 Germany 1 1 1 3 Ukraine - 1 2 2 West Germany - - 2 2 Netherlands - 1 1 'Germany' covers pre-World War II and post unification; 'West Germany' covers the intervening period. Of the four distinct countries, Czechoslovakia (medal winners in 1931, 1933, and 1982, i.e. before the split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia) is represented at... http://www.fortunecity.com/olympia/chamberlain/316/ ...with tournaments (1907-2000), championships, international matches, Olympiads, and European Championships. These are supplemented by non-Czech tournaments, national tournaments, and players. The last category lists six players including 'Schlechter Karl (1874-1918) Worldchampion Candidat 224 games'. Germany is represented by two sites at... http://home.t-online.de/home/detta64/ http://www.schachfreunde-buer.de/download/ger-base.htm ...The first covers German championships, U20 events, Open tournaments - 1987-1999, players (Klaus Junge 1924-1944), and Olympiads held in Germany. The second covers German championships, DSB-Kongress, and tournaments classified by the German geopolitical boundaries. The Ukraine is covered by... http://chess-sector.odessa.ua/ukrbase.html ...UkrBase, a 'collection of Ukrainian chess games played in 1992-2000'. The three Olympiad medals won in 1996 (2nd), 1998 (3rd), and 2000 (3rd). The Netherlands are covered by... http://www.maxeuwe.nl/frameset/frames2.cfm?page_id=bibliotheek1.cfm?paginanr=3 ...Dutchbase is sponsored by the Max Euwe Centrum, which I reviewed in Chess History on the Web (2000 no.14). The introduction to the archive, which is organized by year, explains 'The aim of DutchBase is to be a comprehensive database of games played in important chess events in The Netherlands. The idea for a Website like this comes from John Saunders, who started his BritBase in 1997. [...] All the games in the files on this site have been checked, and the player names are given with as much detail as possible. [...] At the last update of 8.1.2001, there are 567 files that can be downloaded'. A few days later, the last sentence read 'All files are in PGN-format. At the last update of 12.1.2001, there are 570 files that can be downloaded.' Other sites covering countries not in the Olympiad prize list are... Australia http://www.auschess.org.au/archives/archives.htm OZBASE - Australian Chess Games Archive Page Brazil (33092 games) http://www.brasilbase.pro.br A history of Brazilian Chess through its players, games and tournaments by Adaucto Wanderley da Nobrega In addition to a game classification by Brazilian championship, World championship (including zonals], Olympiads, and other tournaments, it has a section on jogadores ('players') with details on the careers of Henrique Mecking, Jaime Sunye Neto, and Gilberto Milos. MontrealBase (Canada) http://132.206.45.67/chess/database.htm with games from the Canadian Closed and Open Championships Colombia http://www5.gratisweb.com/ajedrezcolombia/ Denmark http://www.dsu.dk/partier/danbase.htm Finland http://www.tpu.fi/~jarmo/suomipelit/ France http://perso.wanadoo.fr/eric.delaire/Base.htm Organized by year Ireland http://www.markorr.net/tica/ Italy http://members.tripod.com/~italbase/ Mexico http://proxycem.cem.itesm.mx/dae/ajedrez/bdmex.htm Classified by player (26 players) Portugal http://www.infoxadrez.com/portbase/base.htm Slovakia http://www.chess.sk/bazy/bazy.html Slovenia http://www.sah-zveza.si/szsgam.html An informed observer of the international chess scene might ask, 'What about India and China?' Nationals of these two countries are, after all, the current FIDE titleholders for both men and women. I could find nothing for China, but India is represented by IndiaBase... http://www.geocities.com/duvvuriravi/downloads.htm ...'a collection of chess games from tournaments in India and of Indian chess players, about 8500 games. I was somewhat disappointed to see that Belgium, my adopted country, is not yet in the Britbase family. One of these days, maybe I'll find the time... --- Taken together, these many sites represent a huge mine of chess information. Everyone who is interested in chess history owes thanks to John Saunders for having shown the way. What would the ideal site in the Britbase family offer? I would say it has information about:- - the national championship, - international tournaments & matches taking place within the national boundaries, - local tournaments & matches, - national participation in team championships, - careers of the strongest players, and - important exhibitions. The term 'international' includes regional events like FIDE Zonals and European/Asian Championships. Women, junior, and correspondence events would all be covered. The different events would all be cross referenced chronologically. One last question for the new millennium - where does Internet chess, events which take place in cyberspace, fit in? That is a question that I haven't been able to answer. Bye for now, Mark Weeks