Dearest chess players. Have you ever asked yourself what is the biggest chess database? How do you measure it? Who says who is the biggest, largest? What are the criteria. We will examine couple scenarios and let you decide.

Discover the ultimate chess winning game with Opening Master chess databases! Our exclusive collection features over 31.4 million top human chess games, making it the most extensive human chess database without any duplicates. The OM OTB with 10.2 millions human chess games or OM CORR with 2.2 millions correspondence chess games is something for every chess player.  ♥ Join today and unlock the biggest chess database package, carefully crafted over 20 years of research and development. Opening Master is official database partner of FIDE - International Chess Federation Education Commission, a proud sponsor of ICCF global tournaments and a trusted chess database partner of many chess federations. For our youngest ones we partner with ChessKid.com - the safest online chess platform for children. Opening Master gives back to the community by partnering with Gift of Chess, a humanitarian charitable organisation from NY, USA, to support underprivileged communities in Africa by giving out 1 million free chess sets. We offer you the most reliable and comprehensive chess databases starting as low as 39 EUR. Don't wait any longer to take your game to the next level - sign up now and start learning and winning! 

         

Support the charity cause - donate a chess set to a kid

In a world where children face various challenges, one activity stands out as a powerful tool to foster personal growth, critical thinking, and resilience: chess. It is with great excitement that we announce our charity cause, a groundbreaking initiative that connects two seemingly different worlds: Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and Chess. Through this unique event, we aim to raise awareness about the incredible benefits of chess for children, highlighting the significance of both physical and mental activities in their lives. Together, we can awaken the warrior within every child and ensure they have access to the transformative power of chess.

Read more about the cause here. 

The biggest chess database

So what is the biggest chess database? How do you define it? First of all, we do not mind somebody has bigger, let them have it. We care about the quality and officially recorded human chess games. We split the large chunk into two pieces and still working on it. The OM OTB with more than 10.2 million chess games is intended for over-the-board players, FIDE registered chess games. The size is already large enough to say we got it all. The other smaller is OM CORR with more than 2.2 million correspondence chess games. The OM GOLEM is basically all together plus our large piece of chess portal games called OM PORTAL. 31.4 million games should be really enough for your statistics.

OM OTB vs. OM CORR

The correspondence chess games played on various correspondence chess portals such as ICCF, FICGS, Lechenicher SchachServer (LSS) is a different animal. The games usually go much deeper in the analysis, there are much less human mistakes but you are risking the help is by the machine / engine. So somewhere back in 2011 we decided to split these two ever since kept them separated. However, both databases are created by human chess players. We do not support engine vs. engine games.

What is the intention of a chess database?

1. Collect and present the chess history

2. Analysis and statistics of a position

3. Learning the openings.

Collection and history in one chess database

Despite getting our games from different sources, we dedicate a lot of time to eliminate duplicates. We also normalize the names of the players, which amounts to dozens or even hundreds of corrections a month. The free databases are often very low-quality and cluttered with lots of duplicates. There is no such thing as free lunch. We ask for a fair price starting at 39 EUR for one year (OM CORR) and 59 EUR for OM OTB. It is much cheaper than less quality commercial chess databases out there.

Recently we found a great comparison published on chess.com website.

I want to summarise the different databases, i divide this post depend on online chess games and onsite chess games, ordered in decreasing order by chess games.

FREE and PREMIUM databases.
1. YottaChess with 11.2 million chess games and FREE.
2. Opening Master Chess Databases with 10.2 million chess games and 60€. {edit 10/2024)
3. MegaDatabase 2021 with 8.4M chess games and 190€.
4. ChessOK Database with 7.6M chess games and 76€.
5. Chess24 Database with 6 million chess games and require premium user.
6. Caissabase with 4.27M chess games (included Millionbase – Kingbase) and FREE.
7. 365Chess database with 4 million chess games and FREE.
8. Chess Tempo Database with 3.9 millions chess games and FREE.
9. Chess.com Database with 3.2 million chess games and FREE.
10. Gorgonian database with 2.81M chess games (included PGNMentor + TWIC) and FREE.
11. Theweekinchess with 2.5 million chess games and 30€ (or free download each file).
12. Chess games Database with 1 million chess games and FREE.
13. Shredderchess database with 0.5 million chess games and FREE.

Online chess games databases

1. Lichess Elite Database with 2.173 million chess games standard rated games, played on lichess.org and FREE.
2. Ficsgames with 256 million chess games and FREE.
3. Opening Master Chess Databases it has two databases first one CORR with correspondence chess games ICCF and with the price of 40€, and GOLEM with 29.8 million chess games including correspondence games ICCF, FIDE players human game and online games - 100€.

Analysis and statistics of a position

Perhaps the best explanation of the problem is provided by GM Simon Williams, CEO of GCHESS.

“It’s the biggest and strongest chess database out there” - GM Simon Williams, CEO GCHESS

All the best,

Alexander Horvath

co-founder

Opening Master team