Subject: Chess History on the Web (2001 no.12) Date: 15 Jun 2001 14:13:57 -0000 From: "World Chess Championship" Site review - Schach-Datenbank Chess in its present form has been played since the late 15th century, but the historical record for formal chess competitions started only in the first half of the 19th century. 'Schach-Datenbank' by Wilfried Günther provides a Web-based index to these competitions. The address of the site is... http://www.schach-datenbank.de/ ...I understand Schach-Datenbank to mean 'Chess Database' or 'Chess Databank', although I've never understood the difference, if any, between a database and a databank. The start page for the site tells us that 'Schach-Datenbank is a project to record all important tournaments and matches from 1831 onwards'. The page design of the site uses three frames. The top frame runs across the entire page, displaying two banner ads; the left bottom frame navigates the site; and the right bottom frame displays the current page. The start page ('Startseite') welcomes the visitor in German at the top of the frame and in English at the bottom. The greeting, a compact explanation of the purpose of the site, says, 'On the following pages you will find detailed information from chess events, like - Place, name and country of the event - Date - Number of players and rounds - Category - Type (match, tournament, open, ...) - Number of games (in gamefile / played) - Crosstable. You can download the games in pgn- and ChessBase-format (cbh)'. Most of the site's text is bilingual, so even if you don't understand German, you won't need an online translation service to understand the many pages. The start page also lists recent changes to the site; the latest update was on 05.05.2001, while the latest addition was on 26.03.2001. The last time I looked at the start page, it told me, 'Sie sind seit 10.04.2000 der 9117 Besucher meiner Seite', which means, 'You are, since 10.04.2000, the 9117th visitor to my page'. That date could be a mistake, as other pages tell us that the first seven events were added to the site on 18.08.2000, and I imagine that the start page gets more than 21.2 visitors per day. The navigation frame links to three pages covering chess events, where each page lists the events over a 25 year period. Each event in the lists leads to another page which is specific to that event. The number of events on each page is... 27 1800-1849 113 1850-1874 41 1875-1899 ...making a total of 181 events. The last entry on the 1875-1899 page is for the year 1881, but the activity on the site seems to be slowing. The number of events added per month since August 2000 (2000-08), has dropped off dramatically since January 2001... 2000-08 39 2000-09 49 2000-10 6 2000-11 25 2000-12 23 2001-01 30 2001-02 4 2001-03 5 ...and, as the start page confirms, there have been no new events added since the end of March. This type of project is necessarily long term and these statistics may simply indicate a lull in the preparation of additional events. Let's hope that this is the case. --- A few months ago, in Chess History on the Web 2001 no.3 & no.4, I looked at Chess Records Management (CRM), another site with information on chess competitions. The address of the CRM site is... http://users.imag.net/~lon.jpope/ ...In case you're interested, my two reviews covering the CRM site are linked from... http://Mark_Weeks.tripod.com/chw01d15/chw-1d15.htm ...or more specifically... (No.3) 2001-02-01 UPITT (V; Events); CRM I http://Mark_Weeks.tripod.com/chw01d15/2001-03.txt (No.4) 2001-02-15 CRM II http://Mark_Weeks.tripod.com/chw01d15/2001-04.txt ...I remarked in no.3 that 'No games are available for download from the [CRM] site, but lists of events covered by the collection are available'; and I calculated in no.4 that the CRM collection covers 'a total of 712.989 games in 6665 events of all types', adding that 'the most recent events in the database were played in 1998'. For events played before 1882, how does the information in Schach-Datenbank, which I'll call SDB, compare to CRM? A simple count shows that there are 181 events listed in SDB versus 119 in CRM. Somewhat curiously, each site lists a different event as the earliest. The first SDB event is a five game 1831 match in London between A. McDonnell and W. Fraser, which McDonnell won 3.5-1.5. The first CRM event is a five game 1824 'corr. Edinburgh vs. London (tt)' event, won by Edinburgh, where 'corr.' means correspondence and 'tt' means team tournament. The next event on both sites is the series of 1834 La Bourdonnais - Macdonnell matches, listed in both sources as six separate matches. After this, we find two events in SDB, but not in CRM. Both are listed as 'London m(atch)', the first in 1836 and the second in 1840. I compared the number of events for each year, and, in general, SDB seems to be more comprehensive than CRM. In 28 years, SDB lists more events than does CRM; in 9 years they list the same number; and in 8 years, CRM lists more than SDB. These last 8 years are... Year CRM SDB 1824 1 1842 2 1 1845 2 1 1857 7 3 1861 7 5 1863 3 2 1866 8 6 1877 4 3 ...Of course, we have to be careful here. The same events may easily have been counted in different ways on the two sites. Let's look at the year 1857, where CRM lists 7 events to SDB's 3. Year Event Winner CRM 1857 Hammond,G-Morphy,P (m) 1857 Kennicott,H-Morphy,P (m) 1857 Manchester (KO) Lowenthal,J 1857 Morphy,P-Schulten,J (m) Morphy,P 1857 Morphy,P-Stanley,C (m) Morphy,P 1857 Morphy,P-Thompson,J (m) 1857 New York - Congress (KO) Morphy,P SDB 1857 BCA-01.Kongress Manchester 1857 New York m 1857 USA-01.Kongress New York I determined that the two New York Congress entries are for the same event, which was Morphy's first great triumph. I also determined that the two Manchester entries are for the same event. Another curiosity is that CRM lists Lowenthal as the winner of the Manchester Congress, but SDB gives:- Finale / Final Boden - Loewenthal 1/2-1/2 Did Lowenthal win because he drew with the Black pieces? As for the matches, I was less successful. The '1857 New York m(atch)' listed by SDB is for:- Thompson - Mead 1.5 - 1.5 and is missing from CRM. Of the five Morphy matches listed by CRM, one seems to be the New York Congress match listed in SDB as:- 1. Runde / 1st round Thompson - Morphy 0 - 3 which would make it a CRM duplicate. The other matches are missing from SDB completely. I concluded from this brief analysis that, considering no more than the two lists of events, there are significant differences between the two sites. In addition, nothing I looked at convinced me that either site is more accurate than the other. CRM lists thousands of events, but gives only a few pieces of data for each event. SDB lists only a few hundred events, but it offers game scores. Both sites have been put together by serious researchers, and they complement each other nicely. --- Since it's beyond the scope of this short review to look at nearly two hundred events, I decided to take a closer look at one specific 19th century event. I chose the London 1851 knockout tournament, because:- (1) it was the first international tournament and (2) it ran exactly 150 years ago, from May to July, 1851. SDB lists nine events under London 1851... 1851 London 1851 London knockout 1851 London m1 1851 London m2 1851 London m3 1851 London m4 1851 London m5 1851 London m6 1851 Provincial London ...The second event ('1851 London knockout') is the great international tournament, but what are the others? This brings out a small, annoying weakness in the design of the SDB site -- the descriptions of the events in the top-level lists are not always sufficient to identify the event. For example, in which of the six matches identified as 'm1' through 'm6' did Howard Staunton play? To answer this question I had to click through each of the links. Let's look at the first event ('1851 London') to see what information is available about the different events. There is some detailed data... Titel / Event : Club Tourney Datum / Date : 28.07. - 08.08.1851 Nation : ENG Spieler / Players : 9 Runden / Rounds : 9 Kategorie / Category : - Typ / Type : Turnier / Tournament Partien / Games : 13 / ? ...as well as a crosstable, where I copy only the final score for each player... 1 Anderssen, Adolf (GER) 7.0 2 Meyerhofer, Karl (AUT) 2.0 3 Harrwitz, Daniel (POL) 1.0 4 Deacon, Frederic (BEL) 1.0 5 Kieseritzky, Lionel (FRA) 1.0 6 Horwitz, Bernhard (GER) 0.0 7 Szabo, G 0.0 8 Loewe, Edward (ENG) 0.0 9 Ehrmann, August (GER) 0.0 ...This is an excellent resource to have on the Web, but it would be even better if some of the details appeared on the higher level list. As for the six matches, here's a summary... 1851 London m1 Buckle, Henry Thomas (ENG) - Loewenthal, Johann Jacob (HUN) 4.0 - 3.0 --- 1851 London m2 Horwitz, Bernhard (GER) - Bird, Henry Edward (ENG) 9.0 - 5.0 --- 1851 London m3 Deacon, Frederic (BEL) - Loewe, Edward (ENG) 7.5 - 2.5 --- 1851 London m4 Staunton, Howard (ENG) - Von Jaenisch, Carl Friedrich (RUS) 7.5 - 2.5 --- 1851 London m5 Loewenthal, Johann Jacob (HUN) - Williams, Elijah (ENG) 9.0 - 7.0 --- 1851 London m6 Staunton, Howard (ENG) - Williams, Elijah (ENG) 7.5 - 5.5 ...which shows that Staunton played in two of the six 1851 matches. Finally, the details for the last event in the list ('1851 Provincial London') are... Ort / Place : London Titel / Event : Provincial Datum / Date : 03.06. - 15.07.1851 Nation : ENG Spieler / Players : 10 Runden / Rounds : 4 Kategorie / Category : - Typ / Type : k.o. Partien / Games : 30 / 30 (1 Partie ohne Notation / 1 game with missing gamescore) Download : pgn / cbh ...where it appears that the event was held at the same time as the international tournament. The winners were... Finale / Final Boden, Samuel Standige - Ranken, Charles Edward 3 - 0 --- Plof-3pl Hodges, Albert - Brien, Robert Barnett 2 1/2 - 1 1/2 ...After looking at London 1851 on the Schach-Datenbank site, I searched the Web for other material related to this landmark event in chess history. Since this will make the current review much longer than I like, I'll save that material for the next time. Bye for now, Mark Weeks