Largest available pgn collection?

**Lee Hendon** · Wednesday, 25 April, 2012, 03:04 PM

Re: Largest available pgn collection?

Hi Gravin

TWIC is the best for current games
PGN Mentor for older events

**Hugh Brodie** · Wednesday, 25 April, 2012, 04:57 PM

Re: Largest available pgn collection?

If you care about quantity, and less about quality, you can download a database of 154,933,930 games from:

http://www.ficsgames.com/

These are all the games ever played on FICS (Free Internet Chess Server). There may now be some restrictions as to the number of games you can download at once, but about a year ago I downloaded them all (not quite as many games then) to see if I could filter out some good games amongst all the "garbage" games. Unfortunately - Chessbase started croaking around the 15 million game mark - and I gave up. (I kept all the games).

There are several public downloadable databases (largest is 4.7 million games) - links at Lars Balzer's chess database site:

http://www.chessgameslinks.lars-balzer.info/#large-databases_worldwide

Megabase 2012 is available for purchase from Chessbase for $177. 5.1 million games.

http://www.chessbase-shop.com/en/products/mega_database_2012

Former "En Passant" editor Knut Neven maintains a 6,550,356 game database for $59 (optional periodic updates also available). It also may be available at the CFC online store.

http://neven.ca/Chess/Research

My own carefully-edited database contains about 4.8 million games. I have cleaned it up going back to 1973, and will eventually do more.

WARNING: note that databases differ in their treatment of player's names - I always want the player's full first name - TWIC and Neven supply only the initial(s) which can cause problems when merging with full-first-name databases (such as Megabase).

**Larry Bevand** · Wednesday, 25 April, 2012, 05:09 PM

Re: Largest available pgn collection?

Originally posted by Hugh Brodie View Post

If you care about quantity, and less about quality, you can download a database of 154,933,930 games from:

http://www.ficsgames.com/

These are all the games ever played on FICS (Free Internet Chess Server). There may now be some restrictions as to the number of games you can download at once, but about a year ago I downloaded them all (not quite as many games then) to see if I could filter out some good games amongst all the "garbage" games. Unfortunately - Chessbase started croaking around the 15 million game mark - and I gave up. (I kept all the games).

There are several public downloadable databases (largest is 4.7 million games) - links at Lars Balzer's chess database site:

http://www.chessgameslinks.lars-balzer.info/#large-databases_worldwide

Megabase 2012 is available for purchase from Chessbase for $177. 5.1 million games.

http://www.chessbase-shop.com/en/products/mega_database_2012

Former "En Passant" editor Knut Neven maintains a 6,550,356 game database for $59 (optional periodic updates also available). It also may be available at the CFC online store.

http://neven.ca/Chess/Research

My own carefully-edited database contains about 4.8 million games. I have cleaned it up going back to 1973, and will eventually do more.

WARNING: note that databases differ in their treatment of player's names - I always want the player's full first name - TWIC and Neven supply only the initial(s) which can cause problems when merging with full-first-name databases (such as Megabase).

Hi Hugh,

Always so modest...could you share the link to your Canadian database with folks please...hey are you back from vacation? :)

Larry