UltraCorr 2023

 ICCF Senior International Master Tim Harding has been mentioned on this blog a number of times.

Past columnist ("The Kibitzer") for the ChessCafe website, and later, WorldChess, he is known for his devotion to correspondence chess, including editing and publishing 82 issues of "Chess Mail" magazine.

He has also written a large number of chess books:

• Steinitz in London
• British Chess Literature to 1914: A Handbook for Historians
• Joseph Henry Blackburne: A Chess Biography 
• Eminent Victorian Chess Players: Ten Biographies
• Correspondence Chess in Britain and Ireland, 1824-1987 
• The Write Move 
• 50 Golden Chess Games 
• Red Letters with CC-GM Sergey Grodzensky
• 64 Great Chess Games 
• Startling Correspondence Chess Miniatures
• Why You Lose At Chess 
• Four Gambits To Beat The French (Chess Digest, 1998).
• Chess Openings for the Average Player 
• Play The Evans Gambit 
• Winning at Correspondence Chess 
• Better Chess For Average Players 
• Evans Gambit and a System v Two Knights Defense, Revised 2nd Ed 
• The Fighting Fajarowicz 
• The Classical French 
• Dynamic White Openings and Dynamic Black Defenses 
• The Games of the World Correspondence Championships I-X 
• Openings for the Club Player 
• Irregular Openings for the 1990's
• The New Chess Computer Book 
• Ponziani Opening 
• Philidor's Defense, A Reappraisal 
• Why You Lose At Chess 
• Nimzowitsch Defence 
• The Chess Computer Book 
• Queen's Gambit Declined: Semi-Slav 
• The Games of the World Correspondence Championships I-VII (1979).
• French: MacCutcheon and Advance Lines
• French: Classical Lines 
• Colle, London and Blackmar-Diemer Systems
• Spanish (Ruy Lopez): Marshall 
• The Italian Game
• The Leningrad Dutch 
• The Batsford Guide To Chess Openings 
• Sicilian: …e5 
• Vienna Opening 
• The Sicilian Richter-Rauzer
• The Sicilian Sozin 
• The Marshall Attack 
• Counter Gambits
• Bishop's Opening 

Dr. Harding's UltraCorr 2023 correspondence database has just been released. As he notes, it

is the only CC database edited by an acknowledged expert in chess history and correspondence chess...

The UltraCorr2023 database has over 2,452,000 games, about 100,000 more than last time [i.e. earlier edition], which are mostly games completed in 2022 but also include the fruits of more historical research. As usual, a considerable amount of work has been done to improve the player and event metadata and make it consistent for players who are active on more than one of the main CC platforms... 

UltraCorr2023 is a ChessBase-format database which has been created using ChessBase16 to guarantee backwards compatibility for people using earlier versions (back as far as CB10 at least and probably to CB8) and other programs such as Fritz which use the same file format.

Moreover we have checked that the database opens and functions in the recently released ChessBase 17 program. 

Correspondence games are often neglected by chess game databases (or under-reported, as is the case with the ChessBase correspondence CD, which doesn't quite compare). They are a great source of innovative moves and lines of play to sharpen and improve your play.

You can even find Jerome Gambit games in UltraCorr2023.