Chess Strategies: [Chess_General_Discussion] Chess Games Repository

Hello everyone,

I have started a blog (chessgamesrepository.wordpress.com) for one simple reason : frustration. How many of you quietly download and collect tons of PGN games that you patiently import into your database? We all do the same and waste tons of time, effort and bandwith while we could all cooperate and make things so much easier!

I came to the conclusion that if we all share the effort, everything would be so simple! That's why I'll start collecting PGN files and import them into one master database that we will all share. FOR FREE obviously!

I'm planning on releasing a new database once a month. I will use ChessDB (available for Unix and Windows) to manage the master database. I'm not decided on what to include/exclude in this database but I'm thinking on keeping only games where one of the player has over 2200 ELO rating. I guess we don't want crap in this database. Anyhow, suggestions are welcome and discussion takes place in the new Yahoo group I just created (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/chessgamesrepository)! I'm open to discussion regarding what to keep, what to exclude, what to normalize, etc.

If you have games in ChessAssistant format, ChessBase, SCID, Scid vs PC, ChessX, ChessMaster, etc., you're more than welcome to help and convert them into PGN format. If you own one of these chess databases, I will probably need your help to convert some of those files into PGN. The more we are, the better!

Ten million games in 6 months is my goal.

One contributor per country is also another goal I have! Every country has a chess federation/association/league, everyone of you knows a chess club we don't know about, everyone of you has its site no one knows about, everyone of you has games others don't have, etc.

Together, we're better, stronger, smarter!

Together, as a community of chess players, we can help each other towards a common goal : make a damn good and huge database of chess games!

You can answer me privately at: chessgamesrepository [@] yahoo [dot] com

Thanks!