Database Stuff

I just threw this up here for refernce. If you find it useful, leave a comment, or comment what I didn't mention here.

You will need a database reader:

https://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/

https://en.chessbase.com/pages/download

You will need a database or collection of games:

I paid for my database from Chessbase.

They have a Mega Database and a Big Database.

The difference is Mega has annotated games, and Big does not.

I purchased the Mega a few years ago and keep it updated with This Week In Chess downloads.

To compile your own or less expensive to free options follow.

https://www.chessgames.com/

https://www.openingmaster.com/

https://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/opening-database.html

https://www.shredderchess.com/online/endgame-database.html

https://database.chessbase.com/

https://database.lichess.org/

https://www.chess.com/games

https://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html

https://old.chesstempo.com/game-database.html

https://shop.chessok.com/

https://caissabase.co.uk/

https://theweekinchess.com/twic

To download and update the This Week In Chess (TWIC) files:

TO DOWNLOAD THE whole collectoin of zips file and keep them updated from 
 "This Week In Chess" https://theweekinchess.com/twic :
You can download them using 1 of 2 tools that I found on the interenet:

For Windows machine:

https://www.cavemanchess.com/twicsync

https://github.com/kphurley/twic-sync/releases/tag/v0.4.1

If you run Linux or Linux virtual machine: 
A bash script to maintain an updated SCID database of chess games downloaded from The Week In Chess (TWIC):

https://github.com/KatolaZ/twic_script

once you unzip them all, you may want to merge them into one file:

https://github.com/olleeriksson/merge-pgn

or at the command prompt:

(windows) type: copy *.pgn combined_games.txt

(linux) type: cat *.pgn > combined_games.txt

Then rename the combined_games.txt to combined_games.pgn