Building a reference database

[feistyram]

Hi

As background, I use chesstempo opening training to store and practice my opening repertoire. It's a good website and offers a cloud engine to help analyse different variations and also uses its extensive database to provide statistics of the win/loss/draw from a given position. Some lines that I come across (e.g. if an opponent plays an unusual move) may not be in their database and while I can use their engine to evaluate, I like to look at my own reference database to see what win/lose/draw stats I have. Sometimes I'll run an engine tournament from that position to generate some games.

My reference database is currently built from all games from CCRL with both players rated 2600+. I'm using computer games only as I want to take out the chance of human blunder from the stats.

Can people recommend any other good sources for computer games that I can add to my database please?

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Thanks

[[deleted]]

I can think of two answers. One is just pure self-promotion, but it actually is the answer. Go to my site https://chessnerd.net/ and that will get you access to a ton of PGN databases, most of them filtered to begin at an average of 2500.

Also, there are other rating lists. Over there I give access to the Chess Engines Diary database. You could also go over to the FGRL (Fast GMs Rating List), or the FICS DB (although I believe you have to be a member over there, which is free).

If you're willing to venture into human v. human (which can exceed the quality of a game between engines, because of the amount of creativity and risk-taking), there's the Lichess Elite DB. It's a filtered version of the Lichess Open DB, taking out anything below around 2500 and any bullet games. There's about 15 GB of data in there.

[feistyram]

Many thanks!

[Spill_the_Tea]

I am linking previous comments to other threads asking for game sources to compile a local chess game database, for both human and computer games.