Looking for databases

[playjunior]

Does anyone know free (preferably-good quality) chess databases? I want to import them into scid. Any large and good opening book suggestions? (For studying random shenanigan openings after losing 15th blitz game on exact same stupid sideline ). Thanks!

[Eelco de Groot]

Maybe this book is of some use? As posted on the Rybka opening Book forum

By Mark Mason Date 2011-07-19 07:53 ojh1993,

This is one of the strongest public books right now:

PHANTOM XS

optimise. 0-100

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2CPIQ9UN

or else Morpius 11.7 bin is faily recent, it is not yet available as .ctg Sekos posted but there is an polyglot version. See also the post on Rybka forum about Morphius 11.7

Not yet included in the Morphius 11.7 book but available as pgn game: move suggestions for the new variation in the French Tarrasch with 4. Bd3!? which was (re-)discovered by Rainbow Serpent



Of the commercial offerings I think HIARCS would be the best up to date book at least that I know of: http://www.hiarcs.com/chess-opening-book.htm

Regards, Eelco

[playjunior]

Thx Eelco!

Do you know how to convert this into scid-friendly format?

[Eelco de Groot]

Thx Eelco!

Do you know how to convert this into scid-friendly format?

Hi Adranik,

No, I would not know, if it is a .ctg book it can't be converted to a .bin book by any tool I have heard of. It would have to be done by hand...
You can study the moves (of Phantom XS I suppose you meant) with ChessBase Light of course but you would know all that. It is free and gives a lot of info. Morphius is a .bin book (Polyglot book) so that can be viewed and edited easily in SCID but Harm Geert muller's Winboard TM is now a powerful alternative, if you also would want to edit the book. Moves can be deleted now from .bin books! SCID could never do that.

I have not downloaded the Phantom book Mark Mason recommends myself, it is recent but there is a Harry Schnapp book that is not so recent but really, really big: HS-Masterbook 4.0.ctg . Maybe it has more shenanigans It is probably no good for computerbooks anymore because it is from january so lots of weak spots would have been discovered by the book cookers by now, but that is not what you are after I think, it could be useful for human study of those sidelines you may encounter on Playchess etc?

Regards, Eelco

[royb]

Does anyone know free (preferably-good quality) chess databases? I want to import them into scid. Any large and good opening book suggestions? (For studying random shenanigan openings after losing 15th blitz game on exact same stupid sideline ). Thanks!

Perhaps this will be worth a look?

http://www.top-5000.nl/pgn.htm

And download the Million-base 1.74 pgn file. I believe these are mostly GM and IM games but I've not looked through it game by game to be sure.

Roy

[Aser Huerga]

I like the Norm Pollock databases: http://www.hoflink.com/~npollock/chess.html
Give it a try (read the Readme file).

[playjunior]

Thanks everyone for the replies. Good stuff.

[hgm]

Moves can be deleted now from .bin books! SCID could never do that.

Well, it seems that SCID from now on will be able to do this too. Nice to see how one actively developed GUI can inspire another. SCID is also a good inspiration for me.

It is not that I want to draw away people from SCID. But I also use WinBoard a lot for Chinese and Japanese Chess, and SCID would be no good for that. That forces me to duplicate SCID functions that I need, which then of course will also work for Chess.