English Chess Forum

I've just posted a 771-game file of the 18th Lloyds Bank Masters tournament, played in 1994, on BritBase.

http://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/

This was the famous event in which Alexander Morozevich scored 9½/10 for a TPR of 2970 - believed at the time to have only been bettered by Fischer and Karpov (it may still be true).

I've used Mega Database as a source, adding further games and dates, and correcting quite a lot of the info which was on the 'Mega' version. I can't claim to have eliminated all errors - if anyone finds more, please let me know.

Most of the top players' games are to be found in the file but (as is obvious for such a huge event from that era - something like 290 players played) the game file is far from complete. If anyone can supply their own missing games, I would be happy to include them in the download.

Two regular contributors to this forum, Stewart Reuben and Leonard Barden, were the principal founders, promoters and organisers of this magnificent series of tournaments and they deserve a huge vote of thanks for it.

\o/ nice work John, is it too late to nominate you for el Presidente ?

Fortunately, yes. Probably a non-English non-member would be unacceptable. Although Fabio Capello seems to be doing a good job of ruling over the English...

John, thanks for posting all these games.

Am I allowed to point out that all the games attributed to Stuart C Brown were actually played by Simon D Brown? It was my last big tournament and I remember it fairly well.

I don't know Stuart, but he and I have swapped ELO points over the years - probably to my advantage as I haven't played at all since 1996, yet my ELO continued to move around before it landed on 2325. I'm long since worrying about that, and I suspect he is too, but knowing your penchant for accuracy (not shared by FIDE) I thought I would let you know.

All the best

Simon

Simon

Thank you for letting me know about the naming error. That is precisely why I have posted to the forum - so that people can help me with some free proof-reading! Not unreasonable, perhaps, since I give the files away for free... As I said at the top of the thread, I took the file from Mega Database and I'm afraid such errors are all too frequent. In their haste to standardise names, they quite often get it wrong. A few years ago they seemed to think Belgian GM Alberic O'Kelly took part in the British Championship in the 1970s, whereas it was actually Rory O'Kelly of Mushrooms Chess Club. I've noticed that they've mixed up you and Stuart Brown a few times before but I wasn't sure about the 1994 Lloyds Bank. I'll amend the file in due course and post the updated version on BritBase. Thanks again.

I have now corrected the 1994 Lloyds Bank Masters file to reassign the 1994 Lloyds Bank Masters games wrongly credited to Stuart Brown to Simon Brown.

A curiosity was that the published rating given on Mega Database 2009 was right (i.e. Simon's rather than Stuart's) though the name was wrong. This suggests to me that one of ChessBase's database editors may have used the facility for globally editing names some time after the games were input. It is a great facility but absolutely lethal if you use it in error. In all probability the games had originally been entered from the bulletin with correct names and ratings. Then along comes the database editor to standardise the names before publication of the disk. Finding two S Browns (and with an utterly vast number of other names to plough through - this is no easy task), he decides, like a football supporter, that "there is only one Stuart Brown" and, with a couple of strokes of his keyboard, edits some or all of the British S Browns to the one name and condemns Simon (or at least some of his games) to oblivion. There is no equivalent facility for changing ratings globally, incidentally, so the editor wouldn't be able to touch those without doing a lot more work.

When you globally merge player or tournament names in ChessBase, there is no warning message asking whether you really want to edit or not (just a message asking you to complete the merge - it really needs a 'dire consequences' warning message and skull and crossbones logo), and no Windows-style 'undo'. You can 'undo' certain things in ChessBase 8 and later versions, but this isn't one of them. Hence, globally editing tournament/player indexes is very dangerous - one wrong keystroke (or highlighting of the wrong name or names) can corrupt your data irretrievably. Probably best to make a back-up of the whole database before you do this sort of thing. At the very least close the doors and windows of the room you are working in before you press the edit button or the bad language if and when you cock it up may upset your housemates and neighbours.