Being an active ICCF player my experience is that time wasting within ICCF tournaments is in my opinion a real problem and ICCF don't seem interested in taking a hard line against this.

After 20 plus years of playing ICCF when I finish my current games I'm looking at other correspondence options. It is not my idea of enjoyment to be playing an opponent who playing down a mainline of the Petroff  takes 39 days to make ten moves before getting another 40 days to play the next 10 moves....and we are still playing a mainline!!

Hi.

Thanks for posting that. On the face of it there is a quite impressive number of older games that up the total.

Have nice day.
/ CbT

Hi.

In principle of course you would want as much information as possible. The problem for me is not exactly that the base gets to big or anything; the very marginal disadvantage in ease of usage from adding more games is not very concerning. It's more like statistics is the problem. First of all you may use it in decisionmaking, even if more commonly when I played at least, I based opening decisions more after what I found to be current best games in line. Secondly it is conceivable that I'd want to convey to others some statistics about some line and it does not feel credible to do that without a good idea of what is in the data.

In general I'd say a large chunk of games in the corr database are already not very relevant. Big engine improvements over time mainly (and hardware). To me there would appear to be a split in what you can do as a corr player with the invention of widely available AI engines. For this reason I'd rate fresh games to be volumes more valuable than ones before people started using AI engines.

If we go back to commercial corr databases. If not ICCF games or Lechenicher what other places are there where you could possibly find hundreds of thousands of qualitative games? (not post AI introduction qualitative more both players would be very likely to use decent engines qualitative) To me it seems more likely to be not very relevant ones that fill up these bases. If I am wrong though that would be very ok as then it would seem likely I'd learn about som new source of nice games. 

Have a nice day.

Hi.

LeeRoth wrote on 11/01/20 at 15:37:04:

Sure. Thanks for the tip. I still don't get what the added value is though, since those extra games may be just about anything

Have a nice day.

Hi.

Updated my homemade corr database with latest ICCF games now and actually bothered to make a spreadsheet with game sources.

ICCF
2004                              205
2005                              6442
2006                              17 356
2007                              28 251
2008                              36 880
2009                              39 600
2010                              42 978
2011                              43 686
2012                              49 809
2013                              53 900
2014                              60 220
2015                              60 984
2016                              62 479
2017                              65 502
2018                              68 056
2019                              64 282

(2004-2019                  =            700 630)

202001                        4998
202002                        4501
202003                        5937
202004                        6070
202005                        5269
202006                        5843
202007                        6155
202008                        5062
202009                        5781
202010                        6025

(202001-202010            =            55 641)

Lechenicher
Lechenicher startto201512            240 902
Lechenicher 201601to 202006      103 604
Lechenicher 202007to 202009      4133

(Lechenicher                  =            348 639)

Other
IECG                              166 659
Chessfriend                        22 675
ASPCCto201912                  694
DESCto201912                  612

(Other                        =            190 640)

TOTAL ALL = 1 295 550


It's nice that you can get a decent corr database without buying it but... What I still really don't get is how Chessbase corr database 2020 (over 1.6 million games - if anyone knows the exact number please share) and Opening Master (1 924 684) have so many games. Any ideas?

I also have ICCF old archives and Lechenicher No engine games that I did not include but that's only 96 586 and 32 858 games respectively.

Confused_by_Theory wrote on 06/28/20 at 08:31:40:

To come back to this. By now I've realised that in Chessbase 15 there is a function for this. Not sure how things were previously. Anyway you open the .cbh file in chessbase, select games you want, click "file" near top left and go to selection to text file then it says format and there are two places to check in PGN and if you do that the exported file becomes .pgn

Confused_by_Theory wrote on 09/26/20 at 15:39:09:

To update on tournament progress. Games progressing less slowly now. Managed to lose the black game where I was clearly worse out of the opening. Won two on time from the same opponent. Think I've gotten nearer to more or less clearly winning positions in two white games. Also my experimental game (as black) where the thinking was I was either gonna lose like an idiot or draw very straightforwardly seems to have gone in the latter direction. Edit: In that game I had the position that happened after move 22 in my analysis that was done before move 4 btw

Have a nice day.

Hi.

Ok. I will have to check the individual sources then and add them all up. Quite possible I've missed something in the merging process (or do you have other sources?). Prolly do it when I update though, i.e. when ICCF releases new games.

It's from lechenichers site. They hosted (host?) tournaments for these two other organisations ASPCC and DESC apparently. Only 694+612 games though so not the largest thing. Hopefully they are also not duplicated in the Complete Archive of Games played on LSS. Dunno that actually.

Archive of ASPCC Tournaments played on LSS upto Dec 2019      694      0.1 MB      0.1 MB      87      78      
1/20/20
Archive of DESC Tournaments played on LSS upto Dec 2019      612      0.1 MB      0.1 MB      96      62      
1/21/20

Chessfriend is, I think, an old non-operational site that Lechenicher provides a games archive for.

Agreed that ICCF and Lechenicher are clearly most important.

Have a nice day.

trw wrote on 09/28/20 at 19:35:37:

Cool. I also think it is a good initiative.

Confused_by_Theory wrote on 09/28/20 at 16:36:51:

Ok so I have some numbers now. Sadly don't have corr 2020.

Chessbase corr database 2018
1 431 813 games
of which:
Chessbase corr database 2018 years all games 1804-1990 (up to and including)
176747 games

Chessbase corr database 2020 (€190 )
1 600 000 games minimum ("over 1.6million")

My downloaded database comprised of:
ICCFto202008
Lechenicherto202006
IECGall
Chessfriendall
ASPCC&DESClechenichertournamentsto201912

1 279 611

Imo it looks like most of the discrepancy between what you can download yourself and the comercial corr-base could indeed be non-server events. There is obviously also postal events 1991 and later which didn't make the cut here due to my arbitrary cut off year 1990. That is sort of heartening as old postal games are not the most relevant to have in modern day corr database (at least ones for competitive use only) and it probably means I don't have to buy a new corrbase .

Have a nice day.