Chess Training

Chess databases like ChessBase or Chess Assistant or the Open Source SCID are nice tools for chess study, but there are some online databases that can serve in a pinch. You can’t search for a particular pawn structure or material balance as you can with a desktop chess database, but you can search millions of games for a particular position or explore an opening tree with victory percentages based on the actual games.

Here is a collection of online chess databases that I use from time to time. Enjoy.

1. ChessGames.com - probably the best community online database out there. Strong players kibitzing on games. Nice features like “game of the week,” “guess the move,” etc.. No position search, but a pretty standard opening explorer with PGN download and a Java Applet game viewer. Tons of high quality games. Site slightly crippled for non premium members. Roughly $20/yr. to be a premium member.
2. 365chess.com - similar concept to the one above, but not really a community. Has an opening explorer, JavaScript game viewer. Slightly crippled for non-members. Has more of a mix of top level and lower level tournament games, which can be good if, like me, you aren’t playing against the GM’s.
3. ChessBase online database - Java Applet position search. Play through your variation on the board, then search. One of the largest databases out there. You can review the game on the board, look at the player database, download games as PGN (some limitations here on number of games). Free.
4. NICBase Online - the emphasis here is on high quality games rather than sheer quantity. Flash based interface. You can search by player names, etc., and also drill down through the NIC Key opening classification tree or enter a sequence of moves on the board, classify it and drill down via the tree into games and subclassifications. Pretty slick.
5. GameColony.com chesslab - similar in concept to the ChessBase site but fewer games and homelier interface.
6. GameKnot database - just games played on GameKnot since 2000 by 1600+ rated players. Again, useful if you want to know what the patzers play, rather than theory. Especially good for booking up on dubious gambits, like 1. d4 e5 2. de f6.
7. Chess Database - a little different. Annotates a submitted PGN or FEN with relevant games.

Let me know if I’ve missed any.

dkappe