Master Games Database Small and Out of Date

One thing I would have expected to have improved faster than it has on chess.com is the quality (and size) of the GM games database. With the availability of the chess games databases like Chessbase Mega Base and so on, and with all current major tournaments providing .pgn files for all the games, I would think it would be simple for someone to write a script to import the games into the chess.com database for use in Opening Explorer and Game Explorer.

When using the Games Explorer I seem to still run into games from the 80s and 90s far too often, and not from the highest rated players.

Is anyone else frustrated by this?

I'm not yet good enough for it to really matter to me, but yes I have wondered why the "house" database isn't larger and more up to date.

Good big and updated databases are usually for sale at 60-80 dollars. You can easily understand that it's unreasonable to feel frustrated because this very expensive service is not included in a premium membership costing less than the database alone and including plenty of other stuff ;)

I'm not following your logic. I like Chess.com and want it to become the center of my chess activities. It's especially nice while traveling, when I can access the web from any computer and study chess. Chess.com offers an Opening Explorer and a Game Explorer. Why not make them more valuable to everyone? If they are not considered useful features, why not drop them entirely? Chess.com could spend a tiny fraction of what its thousands of members pay in membership fees each year and provide a decent database for all to enjoy. Then thousands of players wouldn't need to spend the extra $60-80 you so helpfully suggested that I spend.

One idea that occurs to me is for Chess.com to allow members to upload games directly to the master database. Basically, treat it like a wiki, and allow everyone to upload .pgn files of master games, with someone doing some moderating if necessary. I'd gladly participate.

Maybe the staff needs more DIRECT input here.  The GE DB  is about 500,000 games or so (the last time I checked) and my ChessBase BIG DB 2011 with updates to 2012 is now about 5.3 million games. I believe Chess Assistant also has a massive DB available and I presume CA and CB don't have a monopoly on huge DBs.

Chess.com now has +5 million members, if only 1% are primo members that's 50,000 players (at least) who deserve access to a state-of-the-art, up-to-date DB. I'll let the free members argue their case for also having access to it - I'm neutral on this point. Of course it's a moot point unless and until chess.com upgrades their DB.

PS: CB MegaDB is no bigger than the BIG DB but has more annotated games

It's not really something that interests me directly (i'm a free member), but it seems to me that you're badly underestimating the work needed to create a decent db. If people are willing to pay 80 dollars for a good database, it's not because everyone can create something similar with minimal effort . Entire websites are devoted to this, so chess.com is certainly not going to archieve this with a "tiny fraction of what its thousands of members pay in membership fees".That said,  your idea is interesting and maybe you can ask chess.com whether such an idea might prove applicable.

NimzoRoy, of course premium members deserve (and of course already receive) something for their money,  but no, they do not deserve a "state-of-the-art, up-to-date DB". For a simple reason: a person spending 30 dollars on a premium membership clearly do not "deserve" to receive among other things a service which alone has a commercial value of 80 dollars.

bresando you've got to be kidding right? 50,000 or so paying members (assuming 1% of the total membership pays) do too deserve a better DB than the current Game Explorer, and some of us are paying more than $30/yr - which you can verify for yourself by looking up the cost of gold, platinum and diamond memberships.

BTW a really good DB costs a few hundred bucks, (assuming you buy one from Chess Assistant or Chess Base) not $80 although you might possibly perhaps probably not find a used one that cheap at eBay or Amazon, and unlike used cars used DBs generally are still in perfect shape.

Finally do you think that chess.com would have to purchase a separate DB for every paying member? That's the only way your line of "reasoning" makes any sense - to me at least. Even at $30 x 50,000 that's $1,500,000.00 so I think chess.com can afford a better DB

BUT, maybe they can't just post a CA or CB DB online here and would have to make their own, I don't know...

Fundamentally, yes, that's the point. A database is sold for personal use only, so it's not like chess.com can buy one CB DB subscription and give it to the whole community, it would be slightly illegal .

So the only option would be chess.com creating his own up-to-date database. Which is again a very expensive thing to do (again, databases are sold at a very high price because you need a lot of money and time to create one). Supposing that chess.com manages to create one, the only way not to lose money is to sell it as a "subscription with DB", and a price of...well...80 extra dollars.

Your reasoning is something like: some associations spend 100 to create a DB they sell at 10, and people happily buy these DB, suggesting that the price is adequate. Chess.com can magically create a comparable database by somehow spending "a limited amount of resources", sell it for 1 and not lose massive amounts of money.

(i know that some of you pay more that 30 dollars, it was just a sample number to show that regardless of how what subscription you have you are not paying enough to fund the creation of a state of art database).

well simple chessbase and chess assistant databases have copyrighted material. You cannt just take it all and shove it into a database that easily with out risking lawsuits. you do not get to purchase 1 database and post it on a website for everyone's use . seriously chessbase isnt that stupid. 

they could though go into The week in chess and use their database since its free and keep the games going. there are other databases too out there with public domain games. 
i am not sure if they have someone actively updating that portion of their site. It certainly is not even close to an of the stuff offered by Chessbase or chess assistant.

The problem with member uploads is quality control. if your doing a search I really dont want to see what class players think when i want to consider possible good plans. some people here would take great pride sin spamming their crappy pet system so it comes up as the number 1 option.

Yes, quality control would be the issue. Chess.com would probably need to hire 2-3 moderators (optimistically) permanently managing the database to erase duplicates and irrelevant games (I can easily see the "Game Solodovnichenko-Godena Bergamo 2012" submitted 14 times as Solodovichenko-Godena, Slovovnichenko-Godena, Sodolovnichenko-Godema Bergano 2012 etc... :P even top notch pro databases checked have problems with duplicates).

I don't think it's really possible to create a good database with member uploads (this is foundamentally what already happens with free online databases, and the result is 99% of the time really atrocious). But it might be worth a try with such a big community.

Certainly it's more realistic than the other options discussed.

A DB with member uploads? I'd hate to see your idea of unrealistic.

On the other hand at least this forum seems to have had a high level of intelligent input (aside from mine which may have been a tad bit flaky)

Looks like I picked the wrong day to start discussing DBs at chess.com...

I thought every game we've played is added to the DB!

By doing that (prob not easy) youll create a huge database over time..

I want a DB with mostly FM/IM/GM games, not games played by fish - like myself

Well, I totally agree, but I also see that it would be copyright infringement to take games straight from ChessBase.

Major tournaments today regularly post full game scores in .pgn format at the official web site for the tournament. Do these tournaments/sites have copyright in the game scores? I don't know. So let's visit Tata Steel 2012 and find out.

First off, here is their official copyright and disclaimers page:

http://www.tatasteelchess.com/index/disclaimer

If you read the copyright section, they claim copyright only in the images on the web site. No mention of the game scores.

They provide links to all of the tournament games in .pgn format. Here is one:

http://www.tatasteelchess.com/year/2012/pgn/round1.pgn

It wouldn't take a competent professional software developer more than a few hours (or indeed minutes) to figure out how to process these files and add them to a database.

I wonder whether Chess.com has a tacit agreement (perhaps even a paid agreement) with commercial database publishers not to do this, as it could be seen as endangering their market?

NimzoRoy, while you may be correct, I will point out that many, many people said the same thing about Wikipedia and, to be blunt, they've been proven very, very wrong.

There's no need for a new conspiracy theory...

You shouldn't have wasted your time checking: I can confirm there is no copiright on chess games. Almost every decent tournament has a link to download all the games in a second.

The copiright is on the database. A pro DB is a collection of games product of the hard work of a group of people. You can have the single games for free, you can't have the database for free without stealing.

Your mistake is believing that collecting an enoumous amount of games from hundreds of tournaments (you certainly realize that top events alone are not enough for a database; you have to dig for rather obscure stuff played in a local events between NMs if you want a vaguely decent product) is an easy, fast and unexpensive task. Then you also have to correct mistakes, erase duplicates, and the work is done. You need a group of people working at this for months (and people likes to be paid for their work, you know) to have your database.

The idea that chesssplayers are buying databases for a consistent amount of money, and nobody ever realized that that "It wouldn't take a competent professional software developer more than a few hours (or indeed minutes) to figure out how to process these files and add them to a database" so that thay can have the same thing for free is just ridicolous. Nobody can really believe that.

You apparently fail to understand the notion of "marginal improvement." (A very important idea in evolution, by the way!) Even if Chess.com did nothing else besides import the .pgn files of every major tournament (with no annotations of any kind), the Chess.com Master Games Database would be marginally (I'll even go out on a limb and say significantly) improved.

I never argued that Chess.com could or should provide a product "for free" that could compete with a commercial database. I did, and do, argue that it should improve its offering, since doing so, even in the way I've just suggested, would be a very big improvement over what we've currently got, and would make a number of players like me more satisfied with the Chess.com offering.

Capice?

Major tournaments would not be enough for even a slightly noticeable improvement (a few hundred of games per year are absolutely nothing from a database point of view), but of course you're right, in principle it would be a little something and chess.com can easily do it; you might submit this suggestion at the appropriate site improvement thread. Don't be worryed about a secret agreement between chess.com and the dark forces behind pro databases, such an operation is certainly not going to take customers away from them ;) By the way the chessgames database is free and already contains all the games from the major tournaments usually uploaded the very same day they got played, so you might want to use that in the meantime.

I made some confusion between you and  nimzoroy, as you righty say it's him who claimed that subscribers should get a top class database for free. I just tought your point of view was the same, but i was mistaken.