 |
 |
Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
|
|
|
|
|
|
© Dr Tim Harding
Last modified:
23 January 2023
The 2023 edition of our UltraCorr correspondence chess database has just been released. Please download the database from this website and pay securely via PayPal.
UltraCorr2023 is a ChessBase-format database which has been created using ChessBase16 to guarantee backwards compatibility for people using earlier versions (back as far as CB10 at least and probably to CB8) and other programs such as Fritz which use the same file format.
Here is some further information about its contents.
Except for Chess-960, our database includes all recently played games from the servers of ICCF, LSS and FICGS (all to end-2022), as well as games collected from other sources. The much-improved Lechenicher Schachserver (LSS) has clearly now become the main free alternative to ICCF for CC players of all strengths, and there has been a consequent reduction in the amount of CC on the Free Internet Computer Game Server (FICGS) although some very strong players are still active there.
During 2022 Tim continued to spend much time on reviewing historical CC games from the 19th and 20th centuries. The 2022 edition included for the first time all games from Professor Pagni's book collections of matches between clubs— in several cases with corrections based on my own research. This time I have added many games from the 19th century volumes of the Deutsche Schachzeitung and other printed sources.
In addition, a large number of late 20th century postal games were sent to Tim in manuscript by Ohio tournament director Maurice H. Carter, for which we aremost grateful. A large number of previously unavailable games were input by me from this source, including many games from American team matches and the complete record of the Horowitz Memorial international tournament. Thanks to Maurice these games have been rescued for posterity.
Additionally these manuscripts enabled me to correct the dates, and in some case the game scores, of many other games which were previously imperfect in UltraCorr.
We are also grateful to some other readers who sent in corrections or other games for inclusion. We are happt to receive corrections or games at any time though there may not be another edition of UltraCorr until January 2024 which (we suspect) will be the last one.
We have continued to improve player and event identification generally and eliminated thousands of bad quality doubles and fragments which were not easy to detect previously.
It remains a problem that players sometimes register for different servers under different forms of their names (e.g., using nicknames or different transliterations from cyrillic) , and while we have done our best to sort these out there may still be mistakes and misidentifications especially of players with common surnames. It is also sometimes not understood that the first surname in Hispanic names is the father's family name and the last is the mother's family name.
Where you see a number in parentheses after a name, this is usually the player's ICCF ID number or sometimes their birth year.
It is virtually impossible to eliminate all duplicates, especially as certain players seem happy to repeat drawn games they have played previously against the same opponent when they meet again. In some popular sharp openings such as the Najdorf Sicilian whole games sometimes just repeat known theory, but from time to time important innovations come to light (thanks to new computer engines) which alter assessments.
Last year we had to complain about the large number of "mirror games" we detected and we sent an evidence-based report to the ICCF executive. They would not tell us what action they have taken, but it appears that the worst offender has been sanctioned and probably others have been warned to cease this form of cheating.
Games played under Chess-960 (also known as Fischer-Random) rules were not included because in the past some readers using earlier versions of ChessBase had problems with the database. Collections of Chess-960 CC games may be found on the ICCF and LSS servers if you are a member. We have also excluded Russian tournaments played with the bizarre "King" variant.
Back to the UltraCorr2023 introduction page.