Chess

Chess is everything: art, science, and sport.

Anatoly Karpov

Some links and hints on chess databases and chess computer engines I recommend for training …

Chess in numbers

• ca. 10⁴⁰ legal positions
• 10¹²⁰ various games

10¹²⁰ = 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000

estimation:
ca. 33 moves per position
typical game: 80 half moves
>> number of various games: 33⁸⁰ = (33 x 33)⁴⁰ ≈ 1000⁴⁰ = 10¹²⁰

• Comparison: ca. 10⁸⁶ atoms in our universe

Chess engines

• The first “chess engine” 😉 Der Schachtürke
• Modern engines: Modern gerneral purpose CPUs
• Evaluation function
• Minimax algorithm with alternate moves (best variant: best move for white, best move for black … etc.)
• Cutting of branches: Alpha-Beta-Search-Algorithm (alpha-beta pruning)
• Chess Engine ELOs rating list
• Own talk about chess engines for training (Karlsruhe, Nov 2017, German pdf)

Chess databases

• What is a database?
• Popular chess databases
  • SCID (Shane’s Chess Information Database, Freeware)
  • Chessbase (commercial)
• Portable Game Notation (PGN): popular format for saving chess games
• Own talk about chess databases for training (Karlsruhe, Feb 2018, German pdf)

Sources for games

• Prisoned Dr. B. in “Die Schachnovelle” had his secret source for chess games: he maintained his sanity only through the theft of a book of past masters’ chess games which he played endlessly …

• TWIC (The Week In Chess): recent games of world class players: https://theweekinchess.com/twic  (scroll down for pgn files)
• 365chess.com Chess Games Database Online: https://www.365chess.com/
• Chess DB: The biggest chess database https://chess-db.com/public/index.jsp
• Shredder Opening DB (free)
• Shredder Endgame Database (free)

SCID

powerful chess toolkit and chess database (updated Jun ’21), open source

• SCID wiki: https://sourceforge.net/p/scid/wiki/StartHere/
• recent SCID version: http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/
• documentation: http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/doc/Contents.htm
• download: http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/#toc3
• installation (Linux, Windows, Mac): http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/#toc4
• hint: merging of pgn’s in SCID
  • “File” → “New”  (name new db)
  • “Tools” → “Import PGN files” (select pgn files)
  • “Tools” → “Export all filter games” → “Export Filter To PGN” (name resulting file)

Downloading many PGNs

• hint: simplified download on Linux-based systems in a shell e.g. :

for i in {1005..1152}; do wget https://www.theweekinchess.com/zips/twic"$i"g.zip; done;
for i in {1005..1152}; do unzip twic"$i"g.zip; done;

… merging of pgn files e.g. with SCID (see above)

Stockfish

powerful, multithreaded UCI chess engine, open source, currently for 64bit 4CPU → ELO > 3600 (Version 15)

Best move in starting positions? 1. d4 (+0.39) is minimal better than 1.Nf3 (+0.36) – with some dynamics (search depth 43 half moves, Stockfish Version 15, 2022)

• Stockfish in action
• extremely useful to connect with SCID
• download: https://stockfishchess.org/download
• support: https://blog.stockfishchess.org

More

More about chess in my chess blog https://www.schachlich.de (German)