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.)
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2 comments:

  1. PeteDecember 1, 2009 at 1:57 PM

    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+

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  2. Rick KennedyDecember 1, 2009 at 4:06 PM

    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

    ReplyDelete