FAQs

This page provides some answers to what are or might become frequently asked questions

Every year in Australia tens of thousands of chess games and hundreds of tournaments are played. Most games are either lost forever or live on in private databases, ultimately disappearing when we shuffle off. This site seeks to preserve what it can from the past and capture current circumstances, while providing a platform for training the players of the future.

Google provides a free suite of tools with which the site has been built and a platform on which to store the games. The platform and tools are easy to use and there is no cost burden. Only a fraction of the storage capacity offered by Google has been used to date. But most importantly, the data can be transferred easily for maintenance by another person, through either sharing or direct transfer in the event that the current site author decides enough is enough or is unable to maintain the site. 

The is answer is yes and this will be apparent from the listing of tournaments (which is reflected in the file naming as well) and in the data then stored about the tournament and games. Wherever possible, uploaded games will have data stored for tournament name, tournament location, round numbers, category, start date, end date, game date, players, ratings, rounds, board numbers, etc. And then there's the notes .... 

The 'original' games are all stored in a single database using ChessBase software and its Player Encyclopedia. To reduce the incidence of duplicate or misleading names and to cross-check, it is important that the players' names are consistently applied. Hence, it is the names contained in the Player Encyclopedia that are used. That said, alternative spelling, shortened or lengthened names can be stored in brackets after the players' names. So for instance:

Sometimes the Encyclopedia uses full names first, other times shortened names and of course it is regularly updated and therefore changes often. This can result in inconsistent naming across the files on this site, though not within the author's Australian DB, which is also regularly updated. 

FIDE adds about 10,000 names per month to its rating list and from about 2019 the list became too long to store in an Excel spreadsheet, exceeding the maximum permissible rows i.e. 1,048,576 !!). Complicating matters further, the FIDE ratings list and the ChessBase Encyclopedia do not use consistent names either.

The primary source for the annotations or notes is referenced in the annotator and source fields in the PGN and CBV, for each game. In addition, the document source or sources are often referenced at the top of the actual game. 

Quite simply, I have goofed and left off a step in the process. When edits are made to a tournament uploaded previously, the process simply adds games to the existing file. It is then necessary to open the PGN and remove the old game versions. Sometimes I forget this step. In such cases, the last set of games in the file is the most current, with all preceding sets obsolete. Notifying me of the problem will help clean it up.

Yes, they are included in the total because its easier from this end! The reason for their inclusion in the files, apart from simply recording results, is that after conversion of the files to a ChessBase format, complete standings and crosstables can be produced, viewed and printed.

Before downloading, you will probably find it easier to expand the table containing the games by clicking the arrow that appears when you hover in the top right corner of the table. Once expanded, you might see tiny black arrows in the top-right corner of some cells. These arrows are not visible unless the window is expanded. Clicking the small black arrows activates a cell note which gives more explanation about what is contained in the file.

There are four types of file stored on Australian Chess.

Quite simply there is too much additional work involved in maintaining a single file, bearing in mind that since site inception (early August 2022) there have been almost daily uploads of games from new tournaments or additions to existing tournaments ... and there are many thousands more to come. In addition, it also makes it too easy for commercial chess enterprises to capture the data and sell it! Instead, each page includes a link and instructions in the header area that will take you to the folder for the page, where you can then select and download all the tournaments on that page. 

Many games filed on Australian Chess were played at a time when boundaries differed to those that exist today. Despite this, most of the republics (we are talking mainly of those in the USSR and Yugoslavia) existed but they were part of a larger entity. Australian Chess is interested in the games and where Australians played them, not the geo-political circumstances that existed at a point in time. The village, town or city in which the games were played has not changed, but the entity to which that conurbation belongs may have done so. For this reason and for the fact that the web page is simpler to run using the republics and not the larger (and in some cases, much larger) entities, the current countries are used to disaggregate games. Thanks to Ian Rogers for his input here, even though he may have preferred the alternative! 

OzBase is a great site and has been an excellent source of information for many years. While there are some of the same tournaments on OzBase and the source for some of the games that will be uploaded will be OzBase, there are some key differences between it and Australian Chess. 

OzBase stores only Australian games. It does not always store tournament and game detail, nor annotations. It does not have a consistent naming protocol enabling quick searching across the site and it has not been regularly updated for many years. OzBase has largely complete tournaments, whereas Australian Chess focuses on games and thus few of the uploaded tournaments on this site have complete game records.

Yes to both questions: