Chess

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

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 gamesSchachnovelle Holzschnitt 2

  • 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 …

SCID

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

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)

Evaluation of starting positions with Stockfish 15 (search depth 43)

More

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