Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Digging for Gold


I'm always looking for Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) and Jerome Gambit-related games.

Since I play much of my chess at FICS, I often go to their online database to search for games. My request for games identified as "C50" in the ECO system usually returns 200 games (the maximum in a search) from the day in question.

I can use my ChessBase8 to filter games that are likely to interest me, doing a position search (Kings and Queens on their home squares, the White Bishop on f7). I can do another search on players who used the Jerome in that previous search, to see if I've found an unknown member of the Jerome Gambit Gemeinde. 

I recently found over 170 Jerome Gambit games from one player, a pleasant discovery.

Recently Marcel Van Kervinck used his computer to pull 100 million games off of the FICS site. I haven't yet figured out how to handle a PGN file that size (supposedly my ChessBase program can handle files of "only" 40 million games), though.

At about the same time I discovered that Joshua Shriver had collected over 4 million FICS games, which were later refined and put on Josh's website. I happily searched those files for Jerome Gambit gold...

Right now, I'm wondering if there are other online chess-playing sites that would have large numbers of games that I could search as well.  

Readers are welcome to send in suggestions. (Of course, if you want to send in the games, that would be okay, too.)

2 comments:

Pete said...

Hi Rick,
This is the only one I can find at 365chess.com, which claims to be the biggest chessgames database online!

White, Lincoln (958)
Black, Chamaeleon, (1232)
Event: Internet Section 15-A
Site: Dos Hermanas
Round: 4 Date: 03/15/2003
ECO: C50 Score: 1-0
1.e4e5
2.Nf3Nc6
3.Bc4Bc5
4.Bxf7+Kxf7
5.Nxe5+Nxe5
6.Qh5+Ng6
7.Qd5+Ke8
8.Qxc5d6
9.Qe3N8e7
10.O-OBe6
11.d4c6
12.f4Bc4
13.Rf3Qd7
14.b3Bf7
15.f5Nf8
16.f6gxf6
17.Rxf6Bg6
18.Ba3Ng8
19.Rxd6Qg4
20.Nd2Rd8
21.e5Rxd6
22.exd6+Kd7
23.Re1Ne6
24.Qe5Qxd4+
25.Qxd4Nxd4
26.Nc4Nxc2
27.Ne5+Kd8
28.Rf1Nxa3
29.Rf8+Be8
30.d7Ke7
31.dxe8=Q+Kd6
32.Nf7+

Rick Kennedy said...

Hi Pete,

Yes, that's a bit strange.

I visited 365chess.com, where they say they have 3,500,00 games in their database. That made me hopeful.

When I checked how many games they had with ECO C50 (which includes the Jerome Gambit), the number was something like 31,750 games.

Like you, though, when I did a position search, I only found one Jerome Gambit game there.

Oh, well.

Rick