Documentation · The archive
Building your archive
Only your games, or those of tournaments all over the world too: where to find them free on the web, what they are for, and how to thank the people who collect them.
A chess archive can be small, with only the games you have played, or large, with those of tournaments all over the world. Neither road costs anything: you already have your own games, and other people’s are collected and put on the web, free, by people who have been doing it for years. This page tells you where to find them and what to do with them.
Only your games
It is the simplest way to start. The games you play online the app downloads from your account name; those from tournaments are in the PGN files many organisers publish, or on your scoresheets, to copy into the editor. With the profile filled in, the app recognises them, and from there come the statistics, the repertoire and the explorer on you.
Other people’s games too
A bigger archive is above all for two things: preparing against the people you will meet, and looking at how the strongest play. Other people’s games go into the archive beside yours without getting mixed up with them.
Your next opponent
Many tournaments publish pairings and standings on chess-results.com: there you see who you get in the next round and which tournaments they have played in. Their FIDE ID, if they have one, is on FIDE’s site, ratings.fide.com.
Their games can come from several places. If they play tournaments whose games are collected, they are in TWIC or in Lumbra’s GigaBase, below; some organisers also upload them to chess-results, which has a game search and gives them in PGN. If they play online and you know their account name, the import downloads their games exactly like yours.
In the app you find them by searching for their name or FIDE ID (see Search). With Pro, their dossier puts their names and accounts together, shows you where their games meet your repertoire, and makes a scouting report of it to go over before you sit down at the board.
The great champions
Going calmly through the games of the best is one of the oldest ways of learning. Every week thousands are played at a high level, and TWIC collects them; for history there is Lumbra’s GigaBase; for one champion in particular, PGN Mentor.
In the app, search finds them by player, tournament or opening, and a double click opens a game in the editor, with the engine analysing it as you go through it. With Pro the explorer tells you, from the position on the board, what everyone has played, not only you, and position search finds the games that went through a structure or an ending.
Where to find them
The Week in Chess
Since 1994 Mark Crowther has published every week, usually on Monday, The Week in Chess,
TWIC to everyone: the news and, above all, the games of the week’s tournaments, a few thousand an issue, from those
of the world’s top players to the opens. Each issue is downloaded free from the TWIC Archive page as a .zip
file: a double click in the Finder opens it, and inside is the PGN. The Recent PGN page also has the files of
single tournaments from the last year.
Importing the new issue every week keeps the archive up to date, and the games just arrived are in Last import, in the sidebar.
Lumbra’s GigaBase
Lumbra’s GigaBase is the work of one person, in their spare time: more than twelve million games played over the board, cleaned up and put together from dozens of sources, federations, historical archives, private collections, and separately more than six million online games, mostly by strong players. It is updated every month. It does not contain the TWIC games: the two sources complete each other.
From the Downloads page you download PGN files: all the games over the board (OTB Complete), only those
between players above 2400 (OTB Elite), much lighter, or one year at a time. They are compressed in .7z format:
you extract them with a program like The Unarchiver, free on the Mac App Store. Before downloading you confirm the
licence: free for personal use, not for commercial use.
PGN Mentor
PGN Mentor has a file for each of about 250 players, from Kasparov to Carlsen, and one
for many openings: handy when you want the games of one champion and not a whole database. They are downloaded free
one at a time, as .zip files.
Live tournaments
Many top tournaments can be followed live, free, on lichess broadcasts: from a tournament’s page you download the PGN of its games.
Importing them
A PGN file is imported from the PGN file tab of the Import games window, or by dragging it onto the main window. Size does not matter: even a file with millions of games is read a piece at a time, and the import carries on in the background, under Background work at the bottom of the sidebar, while you use the app. A game you already have does not go in twice. With Import into the games from one source also end up in a collection, to find them all together. See Importing games.
Different sources write the same player in different ways. When the game has their FIDE ID the app recognises them anyway; without one, what counts is how the name is written: see Player names.
Thanking the people who collect them
Behind these sources are people who have worked on them for years, often alone. If they are useful to you, a donation helps them keep going:
- TWIC lives on advertising and donations: from the site you donate with PayPal, or with a contribution of 4 pounds a month.
- Lumbra’s GigaBase accepts a coffee on Buy Me a Coffee, and reports of the mistakes you find in the games.
- lichess is free and without advertising, and lives on the donations of the people who use it.