Player names

The same player appears in many games, written in many ways: “Rossi, Mario” in one file, “Mario Rossi” in another, “rossi-mario” online. Terza Torre asks two questions of a name, with two different rules: who is it and does it find it?

In short

There are two rules because a search that is too broad shows: you have the list in front of you and you choose. A recognition that is too broad does not: it would merge the games of two people, or discard a game as a duplicate, without saying so.

Name or nickname

A nickname is a name written only with the characters the main online sites allow in a username: letters without accents, digits, “_” and “-”. A single space, comma, full stop, apostrophe or accented letter is enough to make it a person’s name. The app decides from the text alone: the same player appears in many games, and who they are must depend only on how it is written.

Recognising: who a player is

1. With a FIDE ID, the player is their ID, however the name is written. An ID of “0” is not an ID.
2. Without a FIDE ID, it is their name:
   • a person’s name counts by its whole words, in any order: capitals, accents and punctuation do not count;
   • a nickname counts as it is: the whole text counts, digits, “_” and “-” included, capitals do not.
3. A game with a FIDE ID never goes to a player without one, nor the other way round: that would be guessing.

An example

In an empty archive, these games imported one after another:

The name shown is the one from the first game that creates the player. A person’s name takes the usual form: “ROSSI,Mario” becomes “Rossi, Mario”. A nickname is always shown as it came, from any file; so is a name with a digit or “_”, and every name in online games, downloaded by the app or exported from the site into a file. Games that come later do not change it: you change it from Game data, and the change applies to all their games. If instead you write a name that is another player, for example from “Rossi-Mario” to “Rossi, Mario”, the game moves to that player: to move them all there is bulk editing.

Duplicates

Two games are the same if they have the same two players, recognised as above, and the same date, the same result, the same starting position and the same moves. The same game written “Rossi, Mario” in one file and “Mario Rossi” in another is therefore a duplicate. With “rossi-mario” in one and “Rossi, Mario” in the other, instead, they are two different games, because the players are two. See Importing games.

Your games

A game is yours if one of the players has your FIDE ID, your name or one of your aliases, with the same rules. The first and last name of the profile count as one name, in any order. Each alias counts by its own rule: by its words if it is a person’s name, as it is if it is a nickname. When the player and the profile both have a FIDE ID, only the ID decides.

With first name “Mario”, last name “Rossi” and the aliases “mrossi90” and “rossi-mario”:

Opponent dossiers

An account in a dossier, for example “rossi-mario” online, takes the games of the player without a FIDE ID with that nickname, capitals aside: never those of “Rossi, Mario”, who is another person.

Searching

Every word you type must be the start of a word of the name, in any order. Capitals, accents and punctuation do not count. A nickname is one single word. A word written with a hyphen counts in two ways: as a hyphen, for nicknames, and as a separator, for all other names, and then its parts are words of their own, in any order (“mario-rossi” searches like “mario rossi”).

The rule is the same in the field above the list, in the search window (a player’s name and team, tournament, site, opening), in the suggestions of Game data and in New opponent…. In the field above the list each word can be in a different field: “carlsen roma” finds Carlsen’s games in Rome. So can the parts of a hyphenated word: “carlsen-nakamura” finds the games between Carlsen and Nakamura, like “carlsen nakamura”.

Players

In an archive with these players: Rossi, Mario · Rossi, Marco · De Rossi, Mario · Rossini, Matteo · Rossi, Giacomo · Del Rosso, Anna · Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime · Öberg, Lars · Carlsen, Magnus · Ding, Liren · 丁立人 · and the nicknames rossi-mario · mario_rossi · magnus_carlsen · 84rook · mynick · DrCarlsen.

The suggestions, in Game data and in New opponent…, show first the names that start with everything you typed, then the others the rule finds, each of the two groups in alphabetical order. With “rossi m”: first Rossi Marco and Rossi Mario, then De Rossi Mario and Rossini Matteo. The unknown player “?” never appears among the suggestions.

Tournaments, sites, teams, openings

The same rule. There are no nicknames here, and the hyphen always separates words.

What is searched another way

• The ECO code is also found in part: “b9” finds B90 to B99.
• The FIDE ID is found only whole: “1503014” finds Carlsen, “150” finds no one.
• The annotator is also found from a part, because it is free text.
• The fixed lists, like titles, rates of play and terminations, are chosen, not typed.

Borderline cases

• A real name written like a nickname, like “Rossi-Mario” on its own or a surname without a first name, is taken for a nickname. It is corrected from Game data.
• A hyphenated surname written on its own, “Vachier-Lagrave”, is therefore a nickname: “vachier” and “vachier-lagrave” find it, “lagrave” does not, and it is another player from “Vachier Lagrave”. With the first name (“Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime”) it is a person’s name, and “lagrave” finds it.
• A surname written on its own is shown as it came, because it is a nickname: “CARLSEN” stays “CARLSEN”, while “CARLSEN, Magnus” becomes “Carlsen, Magnus”. It matters only for how it is shown, if it is the first game that creates it: who it is and how it is searched do not change, and you correct it from Game data.
• Two people with the same words in another order, without a FIDE ID, become one: “Wang Li” and “Li Wang”. More often it is the same person written two ways, like “Ding Liren” and “Liren Ding”.
• Different words are different people: “Rossi, M.” and “Rossi, Mario”, “Van der Wiel” and “Vanderwiel”, “De Rossi” and “Derossi”, “Müller” and “Mueller”. The app does not guess variants.
• A name without spaces in a script that does not use them, like Chinese, Japanese or Thai, is one single word: you find it from its first character. In PGN files these names are usually written in Latin letters (“Ding, Liren”).