We are in India! Finally. Happy to announce OpeningMaster registered .in domain and will start to offer chess databases for its Indian chess players. Have you ever asked yourself what is the biggest chess database? How many Indian chess players are registered? Who are we partnering with?

Amongst Indian chess players there are 74 Grandmasters (GM), 125 International Masters (IM), 18 Woman Grandmasters (WGM including some who also hold the higher IM title), 42 Woman International Masters (WIM), and a total of 33,028 rated players, as of January 2021 according to FIDE, the International Chess Federation.

And now they are the GOLDEN WINNERS in OPEN SECTION as well as WOMEN SECTION. 

We would like to stop by with "little" Praggu. The chess prodigy GM Praggnanandhaa was only 12 when he earned his GM as 2nd youngest Grandmaster. (only few weeks after Sergej Karjakin). And there are three other GMs younger than 14. Reason? Indian education system invests into the chess. Chess is part of the school syllabus. Chess is taught at elementary or middle schools. We don't need to discuss why. 

(from left to right: Alexander Horvath, (founder Opening Master), GM Rameshbabu "Pragg" Praggnanandhaa (2648 ELO July 2022), Pragg's mother)

The biggest chess database

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 million games should be really enough for your statistics.

https://www.openingmaster.com/subscribe/india

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 990 Rupees for one year (OM CORR) and 1990 Rupees 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 by one Spanish chess player.

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 9.0 million chess games and 60€.
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

You can visit our tutorials page to learn how to operate with the Opening Master chess databases using the chess database software. In our older article we also cover the dilemma between the computer assisted games and computer games or in simple word is it evolution of chess or cheating.

Learning the openings

If you want to learn the openings and there is quite many of them (1327) you better start somewhere. There are classical 52 best openings we offer for free, so 1275 to go. Rumor has it, the best GMs know them by heart. So play and replay each opening on the board using your favourite chess software or GCHESS and learn to use them.

India Launch

We are happy we can offer services to Indian chess players. As of July 17, 2022, Indian chess players can register and purchase Opening Master chess databases a pay with local debit cards issued in India, 

• Visa
• Mastercard
• American Express
• BAJAJ
• Diners Clubann
• Maestro
• Rupay

The prices ₹990, ₹1990 and ₹2990 are introductory and we hope Indian chess players can enjoy working with Opening Master chess database.

https://www.openingmaster.com/subscribe/india

 

All the best,

Alexander Horvath, Jr.

co-founder

Opening Master team