When I search for the position arising after 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 c5 4.Ngf3 Nf6 5.exd5, I get six results, but the games from 2001 and 2002 aren't accessible when I click on the list. Instead, a page opens with a yellow box containing the message: 

"The page you've asked may have been removed, or perhaps never existed. Please check your spelling or try another page on our site from the navigation bar."

Investigating a bit further, I found that the game from 2001 (Dritan-Brynell, EuTCh 2001-06-11) can be accessed via the November 2001 French update. In contrast, the 2002 game (Kveinys-Brynell, Bundesliga 2001-2) is in the April 2002 update, but there's no link to reach the pop up with the game and Neil McDonald's notes. Apparently the links were discontinued with the February 2002 update.

I noticed that the date of the Kveinys-Brynell game was given in the search results as "2002-24-02" instead of the correct 2002-02-24. I'm not sure if this is a factor.

Looking a bit more, I tried a couple of other games by Brynell as Black. Wedberg-Brynell, ch-SWE 2001-01-07 turns up in the search when I enter the first eleven moves, but clicking on the result in the search list produces the error message in the yellow box. The game is accessible from the July 2001 French update.

On the other hand, the search fails to find McShane-Brynell, Bundesliga 2000-1 09-12-2000 when I enter the moves to the game. I know it was in the ChessPublishing archive at some point because I downloaded the PGN and saved it to a database.

Since the position search function is a beta version, It's unreasonable to expect it to work perfectly. I'm mentioning the above findings in case they're helpful in improving this already useful feature. At the moment, it does seem that some games from the early days of ChessPublishing are falling through the cracks.

Very useful addition, awesome job Tony! 

GMTonyKosten wrote on 10/26/24 at 08:15:56:

That's precisely what makes it useful.

I originally assumed the position search would only include the moves played in the actual games, so I was a little surprised to see that it also uses all the variations from the PGN games in its database, and thus includes all the games mentioned in the sub variations as well.
However, I've actually found this quite useful myself, what do others think?

hicetnunc - I did the position search and also found the Riazantsev-Carlsen game among the results. Like you, I did not see the position in that game when I clicked on it from the search results. However, when I used ChessBase to look at the PGN version of the game that I downloaded early this year, I saw that there were seven alternatives to 5.cxd5 that were analyzed by Max Illingworth. Among these was 5.e3 dxc4 6.Bc4 b5, transposing to the position in your search. I don't know why this large section of annotations has been excluded in the version of the game that we directly access on the ChessPublishing site. Perhaps Tony can weigh in on what's happening.

All is solved! I simply ran CCleaner, and the page now loads up fine.

Quote:

Is it working for you right (here and) now, hicetnunc?

Wonderful resource! Except that this morning it seems not to be working, or is it just me?