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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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© Dr Tim Harding
Last modified:
3 March 2025
In mid-January we released the 2025 edition of our UltraCorr correspondence chess database. It has more than 2,680,000 games: an increase of over 100,000 games on last year's edition.
The database is available in both the old (CBH) format and the newer 2CBH format introduced with ChessBase 17 in 2022. Both CB17 and CB18 (which was released late in 2024) can handle databases in both formats and can convert between them.
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IMPORTANT NOTICE: As we warned a few days ago, sales of the database are now suspended. This is because, due to some major upcoming family events, we are not able to guarantee being able to supply passwords to new customers in the next few weeks.
The download pages remain accessible in case anyone who has already paid this year needs to download the database again.
We will try to maintain our Seniors tournament calendar and maybe some other pages but perhaps not with the usual regularity.
If and when the database becomes available to new customers again that will be announced on our main homepage and would probvably be a version 2 with added games and different passwords.
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Typically CBH format databases have a smaller file size and will download quicker but the new format has fewer files and some of the new CB18 functions will perhaps only work (or work better) with the newer format.
Choose one of these links:
Download page in older (CBH) format
Download page in newer (2CBH) format
Also, as a free bonus, here is a file of over 8,000 more games that were completed on the Lechenicher Schachserver between July and December 2024. These were not available until after we completed our database.
Right-click and select destination on your computer to download the (CBV format) file, open it within ChessBase and then append these games to your copy of UltraCorr.
At the end of this page you can also find links to two new pages we have just added giving further information about how our database was built and edited.
CC-GM Jon Edwards, the 32nd (current) CC World Champion, last year recommended the 2024 edition in his chess column for American Chess Magazine, telling us:
"Ultracorr is extremely useful and now a daily part of my chess existence. I thank you sincerely for your extraordinary efforts."
As usual, Ultracorr2025 should be the largest and most accurate database of CC games ever published; moreover, many thousands of the games are annotated.
The new edition adds games completed during 2024 from the three major correspondence chess servers as well as a good many historical games from the 19th and early 20th centuries which have previously not been included in databases.
The database is edited by chess historian and ICCF senior international master Tim Harding. Its bargain price (60 Euro) is much lower than the rival product from ChessBase. UltraCorr2025 will not be available from anywhere except this website.
Today we have added an additional page with further information about the database and another explaining how we handle metadata.